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A Revolutionary History of Germany Discussion Series

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Manchester Communist Students is launching a series on ‘A Revolutionary History of Germany’ with speakers from across the country and the Left. Everyone is welcome to attend, we always meet every tuesday at 6.30pm at the University of Manchester Students’ Union in Meeting room 2 or 3. Below is a provisional list of dates and subjects: 
 09/02-  [...]

Kautsky, Lenin and the ‘April theses’

Below we publish a Karl Kautsky article from April 1917, translated into English for the first time by Ben Lewis. It is introduced by Lars T Lih, a historian based in Canada, who has been at the forefront of re-examining the complex relationship between these two widely misunderstood figures of the 20th century workers’ movement. [...]

Manchester CS: Communists in the French Resistance (Voice files)

Explaining the resistance

Explaining the resistance
‘Communists in the French Resistance’ Part 1
‘Communists in the French Resistance’ Part 2
Matthew Cobb communist and author of ‘Resistance: The French Fight Against the Nazi’s’ spoke on the role of communists in the movement to expel the Nazi occupiers and overthrow the colloborationist government under Marshall Petain. He gave comrades an account of the [...]

The working class intellectual and the apparat

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James Turley offers an appreciation of the life of Chris Harman, 1942-2009
A prominent figure on the British far left for several decades, Chris Harman, has died aged 66. All that time, he was a member of a single organisation.
Perhaps remarkably, that organisation is the Socialist Workers Party – or its antecedents in the shape of [...]

March 8 is International Working Women’s Day!

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Women's Day demonstration – Tehran 1979
What is now known as International Women’s Day was initially called International Working Women’s Day and was a key date in the communist calendar. Unfortunately over the years the connection between this day, on which we mark the fight for women’s liberation, and the struggle for communism has weakened. We [...]

Gays and the left – part 2

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You can now read the second and concluding part of the symposium on ‘Gays and the left’ from the New Politics journal. It can be accessed here: http://www.newpol.org/
We published an introduction to the first part here: http://communiststudents.org.uk/2008/10/gays-and-the-left/
Comrades might also be interested to look at the archives of Gay Left, a journal produced by gay men [...]

Tolstoy’s literary estate

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The last in our series of previously untranslated works by Rosa Luxemburg shows a different side of her output. It was first published in Die Neue Zeit 1912-13, Vol 2, pp97-100. CS member Ben Lewis has been assisting with these translations

Tolstoy’s literary estate, which has been published in German in  three volumes by Ladyschnikow in [...]

Notting Hill Race Riots 1958

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Last year was the 50th anniversary of the Notting Hill Race riots. CS member John Sidwell wrote this article examining some of the issues
The riots that broke out in Notting Hill, 1958 marked the first major race riot in Britain post-mass immigration.  It spanned five nights over the August Bank holiday, sparked by the bating [...]

SPD and the swamp

Philip Scheidemann

This previously untranslated article, ‘After the Jena congress’, by Rosa Luxemburg is of particular interest. A cool analytical summation of the Jena congress of German Social Democracy in September 1913, it sounds a warning against the new alignment of the party’s centre and right against the left. In a sign of things to come, the [...]

Socialism excludes minority rule

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‘Blanquism and social democracy’ is a June 1906 polemic against Georgi Plekhanov, ‘father of Russian Marxism’ and Menshevik leader, taken from Czerwony Sztandar, paper of the Social Democracy of the Kingdom of Poland and Lithuania. It continues our series of Rosa Luxemburg’s previously untranslated writings, translated by CS member Ben Lewis

Comrade Plekhanov has published an [...]