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In the wake of the two-month-long Franco-Prussian war of autumn 1870, which saw the French capitalist state resoundingly defeated (with its self-styled emperor, Napoleon III, being captured on the battlefield) and witnessed the birth of a united Germany, the workers of Paris briefly established, for the first time, a dictatorship of the proletariat, the rule of … [Read more…]

In developments of great magnitude, wrote Marx, “Twenty years are no more than a day – though later on days may come again in which twenty years are embodied” (‘Letter to Engels’, 9 April 1863).The current revolutionary struggles in Tunisia and Egypt furnish yet more proof of the correctness of the above profound observation.  Tunisia, … [Read more…]

The political map of the Republic of Ireland has undergone an unprecedented change as a result of the general election held in that state on 25 February 2011.Occurring against the backdrop of the impact on Ireland of the eurozone crisis, which has seen Ireland forced into a humiliating £72 billion EU-IMF bailout to rescue its … [Read more…]

The Socialist Party gets it half rightThe decision taken by the National Shop Stewards Network at a special conference on 22nd January to put its growing weight behind a national anti-cuts campaign, with organised labour at its core, is welcome news.  The rising tide of popular support amongst union militants for the proposal to break … [Read more…]

The representatives of the world’s ‘great and good’ have just met, again, to discuss carbon emissions at the Cancun climate control summit where they pontificated, made solemn sounding statements, debated and tried to outwit each other, not to mention the rest of us, with various versions of an ecological ‘three card trick’, where each imperialist … [Read more…]

With the negative example of the crisis of the 1930s before them, bourgeois economists and politicians are struggling violently – if in vain – to avoid the “mistakes” of that era.  Anxious to blame “mistakes” rather than capitalism itself for the crisis that devastated the capitalist world at that time and blighted millions of lives … [Read more…]

As capitalist Britain spirals deeper into crisis, the curse of poverty spreads ever wider and deeper, taking ever nastier forms.  One kind of poverty has in recent years been sanitised with a fancy new name in social work circles: “fuel poverty”.  If a family has to spend more than 10% of its income on heating, … [Read more…]

Behaving just like a gang of muggers, the “international community” of imperialist powers once more want to play the criminal game of “regime change”.  This time the target of the bullies is the West African state of Ivory Coast.The scene is familiar: elections are held, the incumbent head of state is declared elected by the … [Read more…]

Lalkar is saddened to announce the death, on 23 December, at the age of only 77 of Mrs J Desai, following a long illness.  Mrs Desai became famous as the leader of the Grunwick strike that took place in 1976-78.  The 137 workers at Grunwick, in the London Borough of Brent, an establishment engaged in … [Read more…]

Shaker Aamer is a resident of Battersea, just south of the Thames in London. He has not lived there for a long while, but his wife, who is a British citizen, and four children still live there. His youngest son has never seen him. For over 8 years he has been locked away in Guantanamo … [Read more…]