Capitalism across the world is in crisis. The ongoing spectre of wars, environmental destruction and poverty is all too apparent. This crisis is not simply down to the greed or corruption of individuals but is endemic to a capitalist system in decline. The need for a higher form of society based upon the principle of human need as opposed to the needs of capital is more obvious than ever. Communist Students believes that Marxism is the best way of understanding the world and changing it. Communist Students exists to promote Marxism on our campuses, campaign for democracy in all spheres of life, and fight to… continue reading
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Both the media and bourgeois politicians want us to concentrate on personal strengths and weaknesses. But that is not the main issue, argues James Turley
Reports from Hands Off the People of Iran’s week of action
Reports from England, Wales, and Ireland by Ben Lewis, Dani Thomas, and Anne McShane
Convention Against Fees and Cuts report
Laurie McCauley reports on last Saturday’s surprisingly positive conference of leftwing student activists
Iran: fighting over the corpse
As the two wings of the regime continue to squabble, the opposition movement grows in radicalism and confidence, write Chris Strafford of CS and Iranian socialist Yassamine Mather
CS member Ben Lewis was at the demonstrationon December 5th against climate change
The Socialist Solutions to the Israel-Palestine Conflict
Moshé Machover, Israeli Socialist
On December 1st Manchester Communist Students hosted Israeli socialist and anti-Zionist Moshé Machover at the University of Manchester Students’ Union. This talk focuses on comrade Machover’s understanding that the oppression faced by Palestinians cannot be overcome without a change in the balance of forces on a regional scale. He also discusses his understanding of colonialism, either being exclusionary (e.g. America) or exploitative (e.g. South Africa) and argues that the project of Zionist colonialism takes the form of exclusion, which essentially amounts to ethnic cleansing.
Listen to Moshé’s opening here.
Robbie Folkard attended the demonstration against Homophobia in Liverpool and asks why the demo was taken down back streets and not through the city centre?
Cat Rylance attended the latest Stop the War demonstration and is not impressed with StW’s exaggeration of events
Manchester CS dayschool report
Over 20 people attended the Communist Students day school in Manchester on Saturday October 17. Most were from the city, where our comrades have been working hard to build the event, though there was a good contingent from London and the south.
Entitled ‘Fighting for Marxism on campus’, the day school was intended to introduce the politics of CS, provide a space for questions and arguments around communism in general and CS in particular, and also to stimulate discussion around the critical questions facing revolutionaries today… continue reading
Videos from CS dayschool
These videos were recorded at our dayschool in Manchester on October 17th, ‘Fighting for Marxism on campus’. Click here for a report of the school.
Caitriona Rylance: Internationalism
Chris Strafford on ‘CS: Who we are and what we fight for’
Students need Marxism- report of CS conference 2009
On April 26 members of Communist Students gathered in central London to thrash out our perspectives for the coming period and to look critically at our work over the last year. In spite of numerous apologies because of exams, essays and poor options for Sunday travel, over 20 comrades attended. Conference was opened by outgoing executive member Nick Jones, who reported on our activity over the past 12 months – not least the inspiring pro-Gaza occupations that spread across the UK. Comrade Jones also looked at various CS interventions within the student movement and our impact on the organised left, where we have consistently posed the need for Marxism in opposition to broad movementism. Although we are not exactly popular with the left groups, we have made modest progress in terms of influence and support over the last year. Comrade Jones also discussed our weaknesses, referring to our “sloppiness” in relation to NUS work, and called for a more systematic approach… read on
Organising school students video
Marxism and women’s liberation
The emancipation of women has long been of importance and controversy for Marxists. It is necessary to critically examine those attempts on the left to champion an ‘anti-capitalist feminism’ as the solution to this form of oppression, as expressed most recently by the Alliance for Workers’ Liberty’s front organisation, Feminist Fightback.
It is crucial for us to oppose the suggestion that feminism is able to adequately provide a solution to the root causes of women’s oppression, as well as the claim that feminism – even that of a ‘socialist’ stripe – is able to adequately explain its origins. We must first, however, briefly examine what is meant by the term ‘feminism’, particularly given the wide range of meanings that have been attributed to it… read on
Free education demo: Educate, Agitate, Organise!
Around 600 students gathered at SOAS University to demand free education and a living grant for all. Although numbers were slightly lower than had been initially expected, it was very encouraging to see students turn out in such numbers in an action that was organised completely independently of the National Union of Students – the first time since the late 1990s. It may also underline the fluidity of the current period we are entering into against the backdrop of the greatest crisis of capitalism since the 1930s… read on
Down with bureaucratic banality! Fight for Marxism!
Laurie McCauley, Communist Students candidate for President of Sheffield University Student’s Union, reports on the elections now the results are in
This year’s election yielded few surprises. The campaigns of the right wing and the genuinely apolitical have consisted of the usual mixture of uncontroversial, token policies, appalling slogans and embarrassing gimmicks… read on
As George Bush hands over the reins of power, James Turley looks at what to expect from the new man … The charismatic Democratic candidate, Barack Obama, rode anti-war and, above all, anti-Bush sentiment to become America’s president-elect. The atmosphere following the victory was electrifying and, while communists opposed a vote for Obama, we recognised that the victory pointed to the weakness of the most vulgar and open pro-imperialist ideas that have so dominated American politics at least since the 9/11 attacks. We shared the people’s sigh of relief, if not their optimism about the next four years… read on
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