ROGER D HARRIS and SARA FLOUNDERS challenge propaganda against the blockaded socialist island
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What is a 'labour aristocracy' — did one exist in the past and does it exist today?
Did the entire British working class constitute a labour aristocracy during the colonial era? Do highly skilled tech workers now? The MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY investigates a controversial but useful area of communist discourse
Marx and Engels incorporated in their writings a critique of the way that capitalism destroys the environment but it is only in the last half century that environmental concerns have become an integral part of the fight for socialism, writes the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School
The racist Republican tactic of redistricting to keep Trump and his base in power is turning the clock back to the 1950s, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
With a political crisis engulfing the Labour Party, the case for PR is back on the agenda. TONY BURKE argues trade unions must now engage on changes to our voting system
YVETTE WILLIAMS and JOE DELANEY dissect the institutional dawdling that rubbed salt into the Grenfell open wounds prolonging the agony of survivors
The HS2 debacle exposes what happens when public infrastructure is handed to private contractors – especially when set against China’s state-led high-speed rail success, says CARLOS MARTINEZ
LET’S start with the first question — what “labour aristocracy” means, because the term has been and is today used in a variety of ways and it remains an area of debate amongst Marxists.
The Russian anarchist (and anti-Marxist) Mikhail Bakunin first used the term “aristocracy of labour” in the 1870s to refer to what he called the “upper layer” of the working class; “those who are the most cultured, who earn more and live more comfortably than all the other workers.”
In opposition to Marx and others, he challenged the idea that organised workers are the most radical and could lead to a “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
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