Month: December 2020
Pinochet y Socialismo
El apresamiento del ex-dictator Chileno Augusto Pinochet en Londres en octubre de 1998 reabrió el debate sobre el derrocamiento por las fuerzas armadas del gobierno de Salvador Allende ocurrido en el año 1973. En ese momento los Leninistas y los Anarquistas lo anunciaron como una confirmación de su argumento de que no es posible utilizar…
Paul Lafargue
From the issue 7 1994 of the Idler Magazine: The French labour activist. Paul Lafargue, dreamed of a three hour day for everyone, was thrown in prison for subversion and in 1883 wrote a searing attack on the work ethic called The Right to be Lazy. If you think you work too hard now, spare a thought for…
Robert Owen and New Lanark
Paternalism is a common attitude among well-meaning social reformers. Stemming from the root pater, or father, paternalism implies a patriarchal, benevolent but superior sensibility. Paternalistic social reformers feel a social responsibility and believe that they should “uplift” those beneath them, but also see those they help as inferior, or childlike, in some way. Paternalistic industrialists…
The Myth of the Transitional Society
‘Critique’ has recently published the translation of an article by Ernest Mandel, in which he develops his now familiar theme that, in the course of social evolution, there intervenes – and must intervene – between capitalism and socialism a transitional “society” with its own social base, relations of production, etc. [i] This is a point of view worth discussing but,…
Ending War
From the April 1984 issue of the World Socialist The Parties within the World Socialist Movement stand uniquely against capitalism. We reject that system utterly and completely in whatever guise it appears: State capitalism, run by “communists”, “mixed-economy” capitalism, run by “socialists”, social-democrats or centrists; or the more openly vicious variety of unfettered “free” capitalism run…
Mark Twain’s ‘The War Prayer’
It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading…