Why Communist Students?
CS members first distributed this postcard at fresher's fairs last Autumn. Click either image to view the PDF file.
Correspondence with a Syrian socialist
The Syrian left, like the left generally at the moment, is weak and marred by many of the problems familiar with the British left - reformism, nationalism, popular frontism etc. Nonetheless, the left across the Arab world is beginning to organise and discuss the way forward. Syria is no exception, and communists worldwide can only welcome ...
National Student Strike: coming to a campus near you this March
From the National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts The National Campaign Against Fees and Cuts is calling for a National Student Strike this March, in support of a nationwide strike on pensions by the lecturers’ union, UCU, and coinciding with an official walk-out called by the National Union of Students. A date will be announced later this week, ...
Left goes back to school
Michael Copestake reports on the CPGB's Marxist political economy weekend event As the present crisis of capitalism rolls relentlessly into its fourth year, there is still no sign of the ostensibly revolutionary left taking political advantage of this situation. Across Europe social democratic governments have been given the electoral boot and the left has not benefited ...
Education, not exam culture
Education targets become ends in themselves, argues Michael Copestake The pernicious and self-defeating influence of targets, league tables and over-examination in schools has thrust the education system once again into the media spotlight. This time outside its regular place in the annual news cycle, which, as residents of Britain at least will know, usually follows the ...
CS member on Chicago Community Radio
CS executive member Ben Lewis was the guest on last Tuesday's Radical Minds show on WHPK, a community radio station broadcasting in Chicago (stream after the jump). Ben was invited to discuss the tumultuous history of the German worker's movement, and specifically his recently published translation of the speeches of Zinoviev and Martov at the ...
Capital cannot consider our environment’s future
The Durban conference on climate change is likely to be even more useless than its predecessors - James Turley argues it is time to serve notice on capital's stewardship of the environment The first casualty of war, they say, is the truth. The first casualties of an international conference of governments on climate change, on the ...
We are the alternative to austerity!
Callum Williamson looks forward to the biggest demonstration of working class power for decades There are obvious reasons why students should support striking workers (many of whom work in education) this Wednesday. On the specific issue of pensions, it is clearly not in the interests of the working class majority - of which most students are ...
Occupy Sheffield: non-political politics
Michael Copestake has been talking to the occupiers at Sheffield Cathedral Remarkably there are now 21 ‘Occupy’ camps dotted across the urban landscapes of Britain’s cities. The largest and most prominent is, of course, the one in London outside St Paul’s Cathedral, and one could be forgiven for not being aware of most of the others, ...
Debating the republic and extreme democracy
CS executive member Ben Lewis reports on some interesting exchanges at the 'Historical Materialism' weekend The eighth annual Historical Materialism conference held at the School of Oriental and African Studies last weekend was a genuine success, with four days rammed full of papers, plenaries and discussions. While it is hard to tell just how many attended ...
The exploitation of student nurses
A student nurse explains how students are used to fill the gaps in the NHS In a conversation with a friend a few weeks ago, he implied that student nurses are lucky because they don’t have to pay for their qualification, as opposed to other university students. Although he wasn’t coming from a Marxist perspective he ...
Student movement needs organisation- and ideas
One year after breaking into the lobby of Tory HQ at Millbank, on November 9 students marched through London again, the central themes being tuition fees, soaring youth unemployment and the restructuring of higher education. Attendance was around 8,000-10,000 (though police estimates put it at much less), significantly lower than last year. This should be expected ...
For the unity of Marxists
If a group of people all wanted the same thing, one would expect them to work together in order to achieve their common goal - that is, so long as the differences that existed between them were not sufficient to jeopardise that final goal in the process. One may particularly expect this of the far-left: ...