Robinson successfully defended his school from closure, fought for the unification of the teaching unions, mentored future trade union leaders and transformed teaching at the Marx Memorial Library, writes JOHN FOSTER
Bad ideas: why is the left so keen to champion every idea that avoids confrontation with capitalism?
The class struggle is a zero-sum game, argues ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
Workers sent home by the pandemic have been reluctant to return to work, from fear of infection or a sophisticated understanding of the gains possible from the withholding of labour — the result is capital offering bonuses, benefits, higher wages and a more assertive workforce
A judge in a German court ruled that the ban activity imposed on renowned Dr Ghassan Abu-Sittah was unlawful, reports LEON WYSTRYCHOWSKI
At the very moment Britain faces poverty, housing and climate crises requiring radical solutions, the liberal press promotes ideologically narrow books while marginalising authors who offer the most accurate understanding of change, writes IAN SINCLAIR
From Gaza protest bans to proscribing Palestine Action, political elites are showing a crisis of confidence as they abandon Roy Jenkins’s apologetic approach for Suella Braverman’s aggressive ‘hate march’ rhetoric, writes PAUL DONOVAN
ANSELM ELDERGILL examines the legal case behind this weekend’s Tolpuddle Martyrs’ Festival and the lessons for today
Ben Chacko talks to RMT leader EDDIE DEMPSEY about how the key to fixing broken Britain lies in collective sectoral bargaining, restoring unions’ ability to take solidarity strike action and bringing about the much-vaunted ‘wave of insourcing’
The summer of 1950 saw Labour abandon further nationalisation while escalating Korean War spending from £2.3m to £4.7m, as the government meekly accepted capitalism’s licence and became Washington’s yes-man, writes JOHN ELLISON
HISTORY is a corrective of ideas, serving as a reality check on intellectual inflation. Sometimes it takes years, decades, even centuries for big and even not so big ideas to be properly deflated.
I remember fondly many heated arguments with the late Fred Gaboury, a former union logger from the north-west United States, who became an organiser for Trade Unionists for Action and Democracy, editor of Labour Today and World Federation Trade Union representative to the United Nations. Fred was a serious thinker in ways that many of his contemporaries missed.
When the eurozone — the European monetary union — was about to be established, I argued that between nationalism and uneven European development, a common currency was not sustainable. Posthumously, I conceded to Fred. But, today, there is plenty more reason to doubt the eurozone’s future sustainability. History has yet to speak definitively.
More from this author
The prospect of the Democratic Socialists of America member’s victory in the mayoral race has terrified billionaires and outraged the centrist liberal Establishment by showing that listening to voters about class issues works, writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
In 2024, 19 households grew richer by $1 trillion while 66 million households shared 3 per cent of wealth in the US, validating Marx’s prediction that capitalism ‘establishes an accumulation of misery corresponding with accumulation of capital,’ writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
The transformation of a stable secular state into a fractured ruin largely ruled by Western-backed fundamentalists exposes the hollow nature of ‘multipolarity’ and the absence of principled anti-imperialism today, writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
ZOLTAN ZIGEDY reflects on the lessons from two books looking at the US labour movement and the recent history of spontaneous mass uprisings – and finds two pernicious ideologies working against the interests of the people
