TUC general secretary PAUL NOWAK speaks to the Morning Star’s Berny Torre about the increasing frustration the trade union movement feels at a government that promised change, but has been too slow to bring it about
Boris Kidric, visionary architect of Yugoslavia's socialist alternative
Tito's famous split with the USSR to walk the path of a mixed economy and the 'self-management' of production was the work of a former partisan hero whose transformative economic project's success still has much to teach us today, argues JOHN CALLOW
It fell to Kidric, as the chief economic thinker within the new socialist government, to go far beyond the reconstruction of pre-war industry in order to create an entirely different form of society, whereby capital was subordinated to labour, exploitation would be ended and productive capacity would rise hand-in-hand with the living standards of the working class
DIANE ABBOTT exposes the misconceptions, rumours and downright lies perpetrated around immigration issues
With 12,000 fewer teachers since 2010 and dwindling resources, Scotland’s schools desperately need investment to support diverse learners rather than empty promises from politicians, writes ANDREA BRADLEY
Reversing outsourcing is the pre-election promise the government must honour, says Unison general secretary CHRISTINA McANEA
EMAN ABU ZAYED reminisces about the perilous time her family and neighbours endured in northern Gaza and how they were forced, in fear of their lives, to flee south
The EIS president who defended Marxist politics in the 1980s fought Thatcherite educational policies while organising Teachers for Peace rallies and ensuring Morning Star circulation in Scotland’s pit villages and factories, writes JOHN FOSTER
SOME monuments endure. Tucked away behind the parliament building in Ljubljana, an oversized and strangely hectoring statue memorialises Boris Kidric, one-time prime minister of Slovenia and architect of self-management in Yugoslavia.
He is hardly a household name in the West. A tragically early death from cancer; being written-out of Milovan Djilas’s self-serving memoirs; eclipse on account of his friend and comrade Edvard Kardelj’s longevity at the heart of government and overshadowing by the personality cult surrounding Marshal Tito, are more than enough reasons to explain his omission from the socialist pantheon or from considerations of alternative economic strategies.
Yet, we ignore him and, by extension, engagement with transformative socialist economics, at our peril.
More from this author
JOHN CALLOW tells of the rise, fall and rise again of a young martyr to the early French republic, Joseph Bara, whose short life was elevated by Robespierre and, later, others for its emotional and ideological appeal
As the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia rebuilds support through anti-cuts campaigns, the government seeks to silence it before October’s parliamentary elections through liberal totalitarianism, reports JOHN CALLOW
The problem with the National Museum’s exhibition on the communist-governed era is that the public liked it and the values it represented too much — looking at the beggars under the bridge outside, who can blame them, writes JOHN CALLOW
John Callow salutes the life and struggle of the gifted and persuasive educationalist who oversaw the unification of teaching unions and refoundation of the Communist Party
