Author: alanjjohnstone
Power to No One but to Every One
There is an old adage, if the people lead, the leaders will follow. “There goes my people. I must follow them, for I am their leader.” Gandhi said (probably apocryphal.) Rather than a leader being in advance and in the vanguard of a movement he or she is only the reflection of it. The actions of…
We Are All Foreigners
“What happens to workers anywhere is the business of socialists everywhere” Borders have been around for so long they seem natural. People can’t imagine a world without them and they’re told it would be impossible, although once upon a time there were no borders in the modern sense of the word. Even today millions of…
Selections from Anton Pannekoek
Pannekoek, a neglected Marxist theorist, marginalised by the Left and dismissed by the Leninists, found it difficult to have his ideas disseminated and the Western Socialist , the journal of of the World Socialist Party of the United States, companion party of the World Socialist Movement, published a number of his essays. Many anarchists are sympathetic to…
Selections from Paresh Chattopadhyay
Another non-WSM member highly regarded by us is Paresh Chattopadhay and some of his analyses is worth citing. “…the Bolshevised socialism is a state under the absolute rule of the communist party, passing for a proletarian state, owning the means of production under the appellation of “public ownership” and employing wage labour whose products take…
Selections from Gerrard Winstanley
Gerrard Winstanley’s writings are cloaked in the religious phrases of its time. “In the beginning of Time, the great Creator Reason, made the Earth to be a Common Treasury, to preserve Beasts, Birds, Fishes, and Man, the lord that was to govern this Creation; for Man had Domination given to him, over the Beasts, Birds,…
Selections from Eugene Debs
The World Socialist Movement admire Debs and on the whole, we share much of his outlook. There is one important issue on which we do not agree with Debs – the attitude that a socialist party should take toward reforms and reformism. This disagreement is explained in a commentary inserted after one of the quotations….
Selections from Rosa Luxemburg (1906-09)
Rosa Luxemburg was not infallible. Her economic theories have been found somewhat wanting. However, there are many of her ideas on socialism that remain relevant and we can learn from these. On the Day after the Social Revolution ”… there can be nothing more foolish than wanting to predict the shape of socialist society. The more…
The Worker and Work
Because of a legendary incident in the Garden of Eden (for which Adam blamed Eve, who blamed the serpent), many Christians believe that work is a curse laid on sinful humanity: “Cursed is the ground for thy sake; in sorrow shall thou eat of it.… In the sweat of thy face shall thou eat bread.”…
Labour Theory of Value and the Green Marx
It was actually Lenin taking advantage of the already growing revisionism of the gradualists (then called state-socialists) in the 2nd International who was primarily responsible for the shift in the meaning of the term “socialism” away from how Marxists had originally defined it as an attempt to garner political support for the Bolsheviks’ state capitalist agenda. Thus, in 1917…
Against the Left
Arguing with the Left is not always a useful way for socialists to spend their time,”We’ve got the wrong leadership” is the perpetual cry of the left-wing. Many political groups believe themselves to be the “leaders” of the working-class. We do not. We say that workers should spurn these would-be vanguards and organise for socialism…