Those who have had such high hopes in Podemos will surely see them dashed, says Daniel Harvey It is difficult to overstate the artificiality of Podemos as a populist project. That applies to its deliberately vague name (meaning literally ‘We can’, which is reminiscent of Barack Obama’s original election campaign). Leaks also reveal the shallow process ...
Die Linke is plumbing ever greater opportunist depths, writes Ben Lewis The twists and turns, the international alliances and intrigues in the unfolding human tragedy that is the Islamic State’s barbaric siege of Kobanê pose many challenges to both bourgeois and working class political ideas. Hence we have the spectacle of US bombing in support of ...
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 ...
Tom Munday on the turning over of an SWP stall and the burning of their papers at Sussex university Hurrah for the autonomists! Hurrah for the comrades bringing revolution to the campuses of Sussex last week, felling the dastardly Socialist Workers Party and purging its bilious propaganda with fire! Also there was some kind of political ...
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 ...
The latest developments in German politics should serve as a reality check for the ‘broad party’ advocates in this country, argues Ben Lewis For all the talk of the recent German elections being the most boring in memory, having been met with huge levels of apathy and indifference on the part of the population, the results ...
Daniel Harvey examines the politics underlying recent regroupment efforts The International Socialist Network’s October 26-27 ‘politics conference’ saw a left ‘grouping’ (actually too disorganised to be a faction in the proper sense) around Tim Nelson and Paris Thomson narrowly winning votes against the right (led loosely by Richard Seymour) on rank-and-file strategy and on any immediate ...
Robert Eagleton reports on the Manchester policy conference The September 28 Left Unity policy conference at Friend’s Meeting House in Manchester was attended by around 100 comrades - which was good, considering many members felt that having a discussion on the policy of a new party before its founding conference was putting the cart before the ...
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 ...