Ndongo Samba Sylla The fair trade scandal: marketing poverty to benefit the rich Pluto Press, pp208, £16 There has been very little discussion around the inadequacies of so-called ‘fair trade’ (FT). As Marxists, we know, from a theoretical standpoint, that capitalistic commodity exchange can never be ‘fair’, but how many of us can provide concrete examples ...
Communist Students were stirring things up at this year's conference of the National Union of Students Members and supporters of Communist Students made a stand for principled Marxist politics at the 2014 conference of the National Union of Students, where CS member Robert Hayes was standing for the ‘block of 15’ individually elected members of the executive. The ...
Communist Students member Robert Eagleton outlines the platform he is standing on for the National Union of Students ‘Block of 15’ From April 8 to 10 students from across Britain will gather in Liverpool for the annual conference of the National Union of Students. This year, comrades in Communist Students have decided to stand me as ...
Bob Crow, June 13 1961 - March 11 2014 Bob Crow: a loss for the working class The death of Bob Crow, general secretary of the Rail, Maritime and Transport union and one of the most intransigent fighters for the rights of trade union members, represents a serious blow to the working class movement. Comrade Crow died ...
IS Network is in trouble again. Daniel Harvey looks at the regroupment efforts by the marsh For those pulling out of the Socialist Worker’s Party into an uncertain political future, an unedifying prospect greets them in the shape of the previous split from earlier this year, now calling itself the International Socialist Network. Women’s liberation has ...
Ben Lewis spoke at an international conference in Paris on ‘Rosa Luxemburg’s concepts of democracy and revolution’. This is an expanded version of his paper This presentation forms part of ongoing research into the origins and evolution of the political programmes of the German workers’ movement, in which I am attempting to grapple with some particularly controversial ...
The Socialist Workers Party leadership is attempting to divide the opposition. Taking the bait would be suicide, reckons Paul Demarty When the attack begins, act as one The Socialist Workers Party’s special conference looms ever closer. Though there are still a few aggregates to take place as I write, most of the delegate votes are in, and ...
Ben Lewis saw few signs of 'Revolt' at the recent Socialist Worker Student Society day school The March 3 ‘Revolt’ day school in London, organised by the Socialist Worker Student Society, was conceived of as a ‘mini-Marxism’ to sign up new activists sympathetic to SWSS and to provide new comrades with an understanding of the ‘International ...
The ‘softly, softly’ approach of the Socialist Workers Party opposition contrasts with the leadership’s aggression, argues Paul Demarty Opposition needs to stop being the victim There have been several times during the Socialist Workers Party’s ongoing crisis when it looked, for all the world, like it would be over soon. It looked, first of all, like the clockwork-regular ...
The leadership can no longer lead - but a positive outcome to the crisis requires more than the removal of the entire CC, argues Paul Demarty The Socialist Workers Party has been waiting a long time for a revolutionary situation. On some occasions, as with the fatuous ‘All out, stay out’ slogan it advanced to striking ...
Ben Lewis surveys the British left’s response to the crisis gripping the SWP, and calls for a radical change of culture Judging the crisis at present ripping through the Socialist Workers Party, our writers have has quite rightly stressed that thetrigger that set the whole thing off was the scandal surrounding its former national secretary, Martin Smith. Yet we ...
The central committee claims that the SWP has a consistent record of fighting for women’s liberation. Former SWP national committee member Dave Isaacson sheds light on the not so excellent truth Women’s liberation: a class question Firstly I must say that I do not think that the massive crisis currently taking hold of the Socialist Workers Party ...
As the constitutional monarchy state proclaims its commitment to privilege and the status quo, Michael Copestake looks back to a rather different tradition (for a classic Marxist take on the monarchy and republicanism, see the bottom of this article for links to Karl Kautsky's 'Republic and social democracy') There were many who doubted whether or not the ...