Luddite machine breaking began in 1811 in the hosiery districts of the Midlands counties but quickly spread. More and more factories began installing machinery and increasingly handloom weavers were thrown out of work.
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.
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.
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.
What were our origins as a working class? The British working class was the first in the world to emerge out of the land, the first to become an overwhelming majority.
Political statement from the Communist Party of Britain Marxist-Leninist, 15th Congress, London, November 2009. The British government and the capitalist class internationally want us to believe that the working class cannot change anything, everything is beyond our control. We think differently.
Marx analysed 19th-century capitalism as being in decline, never to recover. Many claim this shows Marx was wrong, because capitalism always manages to recover from its frequent crises. Yet Marx was right.
In late 1942 and the beginning of 1943, the most momentous battle in modern history was fought out in a city on the Volga River – Stalingrad. On its outcome rested the fate of the world.
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.
It is a fact that the only force to defeat fascism is the organised working class. Sometimes in a particular country, as in Britain prior to the Second World War when Mosley was broken, orr internationally – as in the Second World War, when the forces of progress epitomised in the Red Army cleared Europe.
This historical survey of British foreign policy since 1870 shows it to be a consistently malign force in international affairs.
Transforming nature through labour is the source of all wealth. Skilled labour combines comprehension with technique. Without the ability to develop the knowledge and practice that is essential to production, humanity would perish.
