Author: alanjjohnstone
We Are The World Socialist Movement
Month after month, year after year, our fellow-workers appear to be satisfied with the capitalist system — or perhaps too apathetic —to want to put an end to it. They seem to look with an almost fatalistic resignation upon its continuance, despite having to suffer the anxieties and indignities of that system. Workers feel powerless to deal with the vital questions…
Lest We Forget
We cannot let March pass away without a reference to an event of great significance in the history of the working class movement. 2021’s March has some important dates in socialist history. In Germany it is the 150th anniversary of the birth of Rosa Luxemburg and a hundred years since the abortive March Action by the Communist…
Sex in a free society
From the Winter 1985-6 issue of the World Socialist It is a myth to believe that only the wealthy suffer from sexual and neurotic problems. My work as a Reichian psychotherapist allows me a glimpse of people’s private lives, their joys and their misery. There is an enormous amount of shame, self-loathing and guilt. Some feel…
Marx and Keynes
From the November-December 1955 issue of the Western Socialist Classical economy, whose beginning is usually traced to Adam Smith, found its best expression and also its end in David Ricardo. Ricardo, as Marx wrote, “made the antagonism of class-interest, of wages and profits, of profits and rent, the starting-point of his investigation, naively taking this antagonism…
A Modern Fairy Tale
Palace in Blunderland From the February 1944 issue of the Socialist Standard Once upon a time there was. a strange world called Bluuderland. In this world there was a palace in which there lived Baron Butrich. He wore the most costly clothes, and adorned himself with bejewelled rings on his fat fingers, and a sparkling tie-pin in…
Bellamy, socialism and utopia
Winter 1987-88 issue of the World Socialist For as long as there has been human oppression there have been dreams of the oppressed. Oppressed people have not usually had access to the means of recording their dreams, so too many of them have been lost. Nor have they had the power to communicate their dreams as…
Socialism is a worldwide solution
From the Summer 1986 issue of the World Socialist The world we inhabit is split up into many competing units called nations. The nation is a product of property society; it is an area in which one group of property-owners is dominant and has borders and tariff regulations and armies keep its rivals out. The capitalist class —…
American Imperialism
From the Summer 1986 issue of the World Socialist The history of US imperialism dates back to the times of the foundation of the nation. Whether making and breaking treaties with various American Indian tribes and “nations”—expropriating their lands—or in adventures in far-flung oceans and climes, US capitalism went all-out from its beginnings in muscling its…
World Socialism — A planet of unity and abundance
From the Winter 1987-88 issue of the World Socialist The modern age is noted for its declared desire for a world of accord. Over the past century since communications have brought the human population into closer contact, national leaders have never ceased to proclaim their desire for a world of peace. This has been rhetoric without…
Imagine Free Access
Introduction It is the main job of socialists not to theorise about the exact workings of a future economy, but to educate people on the main principles that might underpin a future communist society in its lower and higher phases, and then give them the tools – in the form of socialist democracy – to…