Author Archives: lauriemc

Arash Sadeghi and Hossein Ronaghi on Hunger Strike – Solidarity needed

Below is an article which appeared on the Iranian website Eshterak reporting on the barbaric treatment of two political prisoners. Communist Students has always been steadfast in defending those fighting the regime in Iran and as the drive towards war increases we all need to remember that opposing imperialist sanctions and war threats go hand ...

A dead end and dishonest initiative

James Turley and Ben Lewis argue that there can be no short cuts to building the mass, Marxist student movement we need We would like to express our concern at the drift of some Communist Students comrades towards the highly ambiguous Anti-Capitalist Initiative project. We are both veterans of, and also members of the Communist Party ...

Get real

Simon Hardy and Chris Strafford defend the 'Anticapitalist Initative' Ben Lewis’s criticism of the new Anti-Capitalist Initiative exposes not the weakness of our new project, but the problems of his own sect and its approach to politics (‘Ditch sects and fronts’, May 3). Firstly, deriding the meeting as small is petty and misleading. The meeting was initially ...

Between a rock and a hard place

Besieged workers in Iran urgently needs our solidarity, reports Chris Strafford Repression, economic crisis, mass unemployment, withdrawal of subsidies and the imminent threat of US led bombings have led to a great immiseration for the working class within Iran. The growth of poverty within Iran is stark, last month the cost of vegetables rose 92%, rice ...

Ditch sects and fronts

Last Saturday's launch of the Anti-Capitalist Initiative provided further evidence of an increasingly fractured, rightward-drifting left. Ben Lewis reports As I reported in last week’s Weekly Worker, bound up with the recent decamping of 15 younger comrades from Workers Power (British Section of the League for a Fifth International) is another far-left unity drive under the ...

Revolutionary unity and organising the fightback

The left must begin a process of rebuilding the movement and discussing how to create a revolutionary alternative, argues Chris Strafford The economic crisis and the austerity agenda has thrown the working class into largely defensive actions. The trade union leadership has crucially undermined any serious fightback and is offering only token resistance. We have a ...

A world to win

Politics is becoming polarised in austerity Europe. We must empower the working class with a revolutionary perspective, says Callum Williamson The results from the first round of voting in the French presidential elections were another indication of a growing rage against the liberal-capitalist political establishment, a rage which the populist right has been the most successful ...

Another split, another sect

The left must organise on the basis of genuine democratic centralism, argues Ben Lewis Readers might be aware that Workers Power, the organisation which heads the League for a Fifth International (LFI), has recently suffered yet another split - its second haemorrhaging of cadre in the last six years. Around 15, predominantly younger comrades departed, reducing ...

Breaking with the cold war consensus

Has today's anti-Stalinist left sleepwalked into a Stalinoid conception of 'Bolshevism'? This is an edited and expanded version of the speech delivered by Ben Lewis (CS executive & CPGB)  to the March 31-April 1 Platypus convention in Chicago. First published here. I must begin by thanking Platypus for hosting this debate. It is a shame that ...

Unite and rebuild

The demonstration in London against fees and cuts on 14th March should give the student left a lot to think about over the coming weeks. It was supposed to be the highlight of the National Union of Student's 'week of action', which went almost entirely ignored by the national media. The turnout - about 500 ...

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