Anti-sectarianism, Polish style

24May13

Published in Weekly Worker, 23 May 2013

As some of our British comrades in Left Unity contemplate sinking to unheard-of levels of blandness in the hope of attracting the tired, poor and huddled masses, such considerations do not seem to cross the minds of the Polish Władza Rad group. “We are communists,” proclaims the ‘About’ section of its internet portal proudly

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Tags: communism, marxism, poland, Polish Party of Labour, Polska Partia Pracy, Sierpien 80, solidarnosc, Trotskism, Władza Rad

A good beginning

02May13

Reader’s letter to the Weekly Worker, May 02 2013

I read with interest Anne McShane’s and Ben Lewis’s accounts of Alexandra Kollontai and August Bebel, and their relationship to feminism. It is remarkable how many different understandings of the term have been making the rounds in the pages of the Weekly Worker recently, and I am confident that we are now moving beyond merely mirroring the left’s lower-case feminism – often a pastiche of post-Stalinist ideologemes, coupled with an aggressive voluntarism – towards a better informed evaluation of the various currents.

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Tags: marxism, feminism, women's movement, August Bebel, Rosa Luxemburg, Alexandra Kollontai, Claire Lacombe

Austromarxism and terrorism

24Apr13

In ‘Why Marxists oppose individual terrorism‘ (1911), Trotsky contrasted individual terrorism with industrial action: “The anarchist prophets of the ‘propaganda of the deed’ can argue all they want about the elevating and stimulating influence of terrorist acts on the mass… it belittles the role of the masses… A strike, even of modest size, has social consequences: strengthening of the workers’ self-confidence, growth of the trade union, and not infrequently even an improvement in productive technology.”

According to Hans Hautmann’s book on the Austrian workers’ council movement, Geschichte der Rätebewegung in Österreich 1918-24, however, this is what happened in Austria five years later:

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Tags: assassination, Austrian workers' movement, Austromarxism, Friedrich Adler, marxism, SDAP, terrorism, Trotsky

Irrational and brittle

15Apr13

There has been some debate following the Weekly Worker’s series of articles on feminism, including on Labour Representation Committee member Louise Whittle’s blog, Harpymarx. It’s regrettable that a lot of it has been conducted in a less than sober manner

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Tags: anarchists, AWL, cpgb, feminism, Harpymarx, weekly worker

Kautsky On Colonialism: first English translation available now

07Mar13

The first English translation of Karl Kautsky’s 1898 text, ‘Past and Recent Colonial Policy’ – translated by Ben Lewis and myself and featuring a highly critical introduction by Mike Macnair – is now available  here.

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Tags: anti-imperialism, colonialism, imperialism, Kautsky, orthodox Marxism, translation

Class consciousness and partyism

19Feb13

A report of a joint event between the CPGB and the Assoziation Dämmerung in Hamburg, including my talk on the proletariat past and present, has been published in the electronic magazine Schattenblick. You can read the German language text here.

Assoziation Dämmerung have published an audio recording of the event here.

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Tags: Assoziation Dämmerung, class consciousness, cpgb, proletariat, Schattenblick

German school: Emerging from autonomism

15Feb13

Published in Weekly Worker, 14 November 2013

It’s class war! For a revolutionary perspective!” screamed the flyer in graffiti-styled letters set against a mural background, promoting a joint event between the Assoziation Dämmerung and our CPGB delegation to Hamburg. As the aesthetic sense suggests, the Assoziation Dämmerung emerged from what is known as Germany’slinke Szene, the subcultural radical left milieu steeped in autonomism, squatting and Black Bloc tactics – in this particular case, the association’s beginnings go back to a militant animal rights group founded as Tierrechtsaktion Nord in the 1980s.

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Tags: animal liberation, Assoziation Dämmerung, Autonome, autonomism, cpgb, critical theory, Die Linke, DKP, proletariat