- Brexit, Jeremy Corbyn, and Contempt for Democracy
Introduction to the July 2, 2016 issue of Other Voices
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2016
A constant theme in elite reaction to the Brexit referendum, expressed especially through the mainstream media, has been a visceral contempt for democracy. Ordinary working people are portrayed as stupid and reactionary, incapable of understanding how wonderful the European Union project is. Again and again, one hears the comment that the great unwashed should not be allowed to vote on issues which they are incapable of understanding. This reaction is not new: ruling classes for centuries have loathed democracy, which is seen as an existential threat to the wealth and privileges of the elite.
- Class War in the British Labour Party
Tories, Blairites Turn the Screws on Jeremy Corbyn
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2016
Ever since Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader of the British Labour Party last September, the party has been in a state of internal class warfare. Corbyn is a decades-long member of old Labour’s left wing and is hugely popular among working people. Pitted against Corbyn and his followers are the vast majority of Labour Members of Parliament (MPs) who uphold the legacy of Tony Blair and are unashamedly committed to "free-market" capitalist exploitation and imperialist military slaughter in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and elsewhere.
...
James Bronterre O’Brien, an Irish-born leader of the Chartists, gave voice to the need for the working class to fight in its own interests instead of begging its oppressors:
"My motto is... 'What you take you may have.' I will not attempt to deal with the abstract question of right, but will proceed to show that it is POWER, solid, substantial POWER, that the millions must obtain and retain, if they would enjoy the produce of their own labour and the privileges of freemen."
- Corbyn's Labour Party is Being Made to Fail - By Design
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2018
The embattled Labour party is reportedly soon to adopt the four additional working "examples" of anti-semitism drafted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). The full adoption of the IHRA definition of anti-semitism will be a victory for Israel and its apologists in Britain, who who have been seeking to curb all meaningful criticism of Israel.
- The Crisis in Corbyn's Labour Party is Over Israel, Not Anti-Semitism
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2018
If there is indeed an anti-semitism problem in the UK's Labour party, it is not in the places where the British corporate media have been directing our attention. What can be said with even more certainty is that there is rampant hatred expressed towards Jews in the same British media that is currently decrying the supposed anti-semitism of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
- The elites hate Momentum and the Corbynites - and I'll tell you why
The movement that backed the Labour leader challenges MPs and journalists alike - because it's about grassroots democracy
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2016
As the rolling catastrophe of what's already being called the "chicken coup" against the Labour leadership winds down, pretty much all the commentary has focused on the personal qualities, real or imagined, of the principal players. Yet such an approach misses out on almost everything that's really at stake here. The real battle is not over the personality of one man, or even a couple of hundred politicians. If the opposition to Jeremy Corbyn for the past nine months has been so fierce, and so bitter, it is because his existence as head of a major political party is an assault on the very notion that politics should be primarily about the personal qualities of politicians.
- Inside Corbyn's Office
An interview with Matt Zarb-Cousin
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2017
Jeremy Corbyn’s former press officer on sabotage within the British Labour party, his relationship to the media, and how Labour can close the polling gap.
- Left parties
Introduction to the November 11, 2017 issue of Other Voices
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2017
"There is no alternative." That is capitalism's message in the neo-liberal era. The rich keep getting richer and richer, millions of people are unemployed, millions more are trying to survive on precarious, marginal, and part-time work, hundreds of millions are without health care, housing, education, or clean water. Environmental collapse is increasingly likely, masses of people are fleeing wars and economic disasters, nuclear war is a real danger. And all that the corporate elite, the corporate media, and the mainstream political parties have to offer is their insistence that there is nothing we can do about it: there is no alternative.
- Left reformism, the state and the problem of socialist politics today
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2017
The recent calls for the British left either to “reclaim Labour” (Len McCluskey) or to build a new party capable of emulating Syriza’s successes in Greece (Ken Loach) demand serious consideration on these pages. At their core these proposals reflect a widespread desire, shared by members of the Socialist Workers Party, to fight the cuts, alongside revulsion at the Labour Party’s failure to do so. They also reflect a genuine excitement across the left about the prospects for new left formations such as Syriza and France’s similar Front de Gauche.
- Other Voices: The Connexions Newsletter - November 11, 2017
Left Parties
Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
Published: 2017
In recent years, there have been repeated attempts to build left political parties and coalitions, i.e. parties to the left of the established social democratic parties which have long become part of the neoliberal capitalist mainstream. Left parties have emerged out of mass movements in countries like Spain (Podemos), Germany (Die Linke), and Greece (Syriza). In Latin America, in the last two decades, left movements or parties have formed governments in Venezuela, Bolivia, Brazil, and Uruguay. What these new left parties/movements have in common is a strategy of engaging in grassroots organizing and also running in elections. They all describe themselves as socialist, though in many cases their programs are more reminiscent of what social democrats used to advocate decades ago: reforms that would tame and manage capitalism rather than abolish it. Their ultimate vision may be a world without capitalism, but their immediate proposals are more modest and incremental, though still significantly to the left of the neo-liberal consensus.
- A search for roots and connections
Resource Type: Article
Published: 2018
The post-third-way Labour Party is trying to encourage its many new activist members, especially among the young, to turn the party into a social movement.
- The Socialist Register 1964
Volume 1: A Survey of Movements & Ideas
Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
Published: 1964
- The Socialist Register 1966
Volume 3: A Survey of Movements & Ideas
Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
Published: 1966
- The Socialist Register 1968
Volume 5: A Survey of Movements & Ideas
Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
Published: 1968
- The Socialist Register 1980
Volume 17: A Survey of Movements & Ideas
Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
Published: 1980
- Socialist Register 1996
Volume 32: Are There Alternatives?
Resource Type: Serial Publication (Periodical)
Published: 1996
|
AlterLinks
© 2021.
|