Listen to Mark Fisher on ‘Capitalist realism & education’
Recorded at the meeting organised by Communist Students & the CPGB on Monday 22nd of October. Mark Fisher's intro: Replying to the debate: Replying again:
‘This house believes that capitalism has failed’
CS member Ben Lewis was invited to the Durham Union Debating Society to debate the above motion with various establishment thinkers (and the Stalinist Harpal Brar). These are the edited notes for his speech1. Even a cursory glance around our world is enough to see it is in serious trouble. Many of the tensions and contradictions ...
NUS vs Galloway: unreason all the way down
The National Union of Students no-platforms George Galloway, Galloway sues the NUS, the left talks nonsense throughout and Paul Demarty wonders what the hell is going on A sad truth about today’s left is that it is pretty irrational, all told. Normally this irrationality comes out in more or less disguised form: the standard practice, adopted ...
London meeting: Capitalist realism and education
Author of Capitalist Realism (Zero Books), Mark Fisher is the speaker at this meeting jointly organised by the CPGB and Communist Students. All are welcome, and there will be plenty of time for discussion. Mark sent us this intro, which gives a taster of his talk. Recent changes in the funding of higher education in the UK have ...
CS hitting freshers’ fairs
It's that time again. Communist Students comrades will be hitting freshers' fairs in the coming weeks, taking our message to campus. That message is simple: Capitalism is past its sell by date - we need a revolution to replace it with socialism. Doing so requires the greatest level of democracy possible - in the organisations of the left, ...
Mass arrest of trade unionists in Iran
Yesterday, Friday 15th of June at 12 noon 60 members of the Coordinating Committee to Help Form Workers' organizations and a number of labor activists were arrested in the city of Karaj. According to the latest news, Mitra Homayooni, Vafa Ghaderi, Reyhaneh Ansari, Khaled Hosseini, Mahmoud Salehi, Saeed Moghaddam, Cyrus Fathi, Ghaleb Hoss are amongst those ...
Opposition fails to show
Michael Copestake reports from the 2012 Communist Students conference This year’s Communist Students conference took place in London over the weekend of June 9-10 against a background of controversy and intra-organisational struggle - up to and including a recent coup attempt against the elected leadership by comrades in Manchester CS branch around Chris Strafford. As such, ...
Be careful what you wish for
As the next Greek elections loom, Paul Demarty takes a look at the lines being taken by the left and the current controversy in the SWP On Sunday June 17, the Greek population will march once again to the polls - this time in even more dramatic circumstances. The polarisation of support between the rightwing New ...
None of the above
Calling on Egyptians to vote for the Muslim Brotherhood is insane, argues Paul Demarty (first published in the WW) The May 23-24 first round of voting in the Egyptian presidential elections produced, as has been widely noted, the worst possible outcome for the masses, lining up the Muslim Brotherhood’s Mohamed Mursi against erstwhile Mubarak crony Ahmed ...
Republicanism and the form of working class rule
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 ...
The Occupy manifesto: or, how to learn nothing
The emergence of a programme from the Occupy movement has caused a flurry of debate on the ACI website, Paul Demarty decides to join in The emergence of a written programme[1] from the Occupy movement is in some ways an odd turn of events. It has been a source of some excitement in the Anti-Capitalist Initiative, ...
CS response to Revo on unity
Here we publish our reply to comrades from the Revolution youth group, who emailed CS (see below) suggesting closer collaboration between our organisations. Dear comrades, We thank you for your correspondence dated April 20 2012. The question of revolutionary unity and rapprochement is absolutely vital to our movement today. We in Communist Students are willing to debate and ...
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 ...