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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…
Where Leninists go wrong
From the Summer 1986 issue of the World Socialist The whole Leninist theory of imperialism turns on two or three major concepts: the twin notions of super-profits and super-exploitation, monopoly (denned in a strictly legal sense) and investment strategy. In Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism (1916), Lenin pretended to have discovered an ultimate and final stage of capitalism, and…
Feminist theory – a socialist critique
To attempt to write a socialist critique of feminist theory is difficult. This is not the result of any ambiguity in the attitude of socialists towards the role of women workers in capitalism, but because of the difficulty in finding a single body of theory that can be identified as feminist. While most feminists would…
Building Profits V Building Homes
A post about the practicability of socialism, this is an abridged version of an article from World Socialist (No.2 Winter 1984) by Brian Montague and Ray Rawlings about how socialism will address real problems. The article anticipated the rise of the internet and the home computer and interactive television and the promise of E-democracy. Housing is one…
Capitalism as a world system
From the Summer 1986 issue of the World Socialist Capitalism is basically an economic system, one in which production is oriented towards the accumulation of capital out of monetary profits realised on the market, the source of these profits being the unpaid labour of those who produce the goods that are sold. Production for a market,…
Here Comes The Robots
The aim of this article is to explore the effects of a particular form of technology on the state of society. It will examine the concepts of robotics and artificial intelligence; the concept of the technological singularity; what such an event would mean for the labour market; and, because of the central role of the labour…
Bedtime stories for your children and grandchildren
The Donkey and the Common: A Fable A donkey once had the freedom of a delightful common. There was plenty of sweet grass to be had for the cropping, and though the fare varied with the course of the seasons, there was never a lack of thistles to give piquancy to the diet. Gorse bushes…
The WSM: Our Practical Program
An article by the late comrade Isaac Rab. This was published in The Socialist,1929. What practical program do you fellows propose? What are your demands? Such comments have been made concerning our first issue. A perusal of the contents of that number ought to have cleared away this confusion regarding our position. The similarity of the…