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.
Human life is utterly dependent on social organisation and activity. Yet addicts of the free market declare that there is no such thing as society.
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.
How did previous working class gains materialise? Improvements and reforms came out of past struggle and campaigns by organised workers.
At a time when some are calling for a General Strike we need to get clearer about what happened last time there was one in Britain…
Seventy years ago the world held its breath as Nazi troops came up to the gates of the Soviet Union’s capital city... It was not only the greatest battle in the Second World War but also the largest battle ever fought between two armies.
Over the past 32 years, Britain’s political leaders have lectured us with their mantra of disaster, “Let the markets decide!” Though the personnel in Downing Street have changed, the message has remained obsessively constant.
We only have one shot at life. Consigning workers to periods of prolonged idleness is a criminal waste of talent and an indictment of this flawed society that treats us as just flotsam and jetsam.
Britain’s brutally aggressive adventure in Libya is to be utterly condemned. Claiming falsely to protect civilians, British military jets are raining munitions from the sky on to Tripoli and other Libyan cities…
For those working in the NHS, our best chance of entering the field in our best shape is the battle for pay...
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,
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.
