Home » Article Type » Marxist Thinking

Marxist Thinking

Marxist Thinking

Waging wars abroad

Capitalism not only generates periodic world war but also on a regular basis unleashes war against individual nations, unable to tolerate others’ independence or accept restrictions on their influence

Twenty-five abnormal years

Normally we associate the workings of capitalism with attributes such as mass unemployment and economic downturns. But the twenty-five years following the end of the Second World War were markedly different from all other capitalist periods.

War and capitalism

Of the many unacceptable costs of living with capitalism, probably the biggest is its periodic tendency to generate orgies of mutual slaughter that originate in the same way. Contradictions and economic conflicts between capitalist blocs become increasingly antagonistic then eventually erupt into global wars.

Boom produces bust

The surge in capitalist markets from 1997 to 2007 was only achieved by deliberate, reckless stimulation of credit growth, enacted through a combination of abnormally low interest rates (relative to inflation) and exceedingly lax regulation of both credit and housing markets.

Social democracy

Social democracy, including its British counterparts such as the Social Democratic Federation and successors including the Labour Party, saw workers as passive, an electorate, a force to be harnessed,

Labour aristocracy

Anxious to work out why the oldest working class, the British, had avoided moving to revolution, external commentators at the height of empire concocted a false argument in an effort to explain away this behaviour. In some circles it is still lazily dispensed a century or so later.

State and revolution

In 1917, after three years of world war, Lenin identified the nature and function of the state. He declared that a partnership exists between the state and the dominant ruling class with the former charged with serving the interests of the latter.

Workers are thinkers

Nothing is more insulting to the history of working class struggle than the notion, born of ignorance and malevolence, that workers have to be instructed and commanded to do the correct thing. Indeed, according to some of the disconnected, to do anything at all.

Manufacture matters

At the heart of the birth and development of our working class – and hence of the nation itself – is making things, “manufacturing”. Revitalising it, reinvesting in it, is essential for the health and strength of both our class and nation. 

Dialectics

As thinking beings we always try and make sense of the world around us. Dialectics is the tool for appreciating the inner workings of things, events, phenomena, but more importantly, how they change.

Pages

Twitter