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Blood for Blood says General Ludd
Chant no more your old rhymes about bold Robin Hood,His feats I but little admire,I will sing the Achievements of General LuddNow the Hero of NottinghamshireBrave Ludd was to measures of violence unusedTill his sufferings became so severeThat at last to defend his own Interest he rous’dAnd for the great work did prepare. Ned Ludd,…
A Conversation with Karl
Question 1: Dr Marx , you are well known as the author of a book on economics but I think you studied law at university, didn’t you?Karl Marx: Although I studied jurisprudence, I pursued it as a subject subordinated to philosophy and history. In the year 1842-43 , as editor of the Rheinische Zeitung, I first found myself…
Producers and Parasites
The only useful people today are those engaged in producing the wealth. It is they alone who must eliminate the parasites and usher in a new social order. The future of civilisation is in the hands of the producing class. Many other workers talk about “my job.” It is partly habit and partly belief that…
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…
The Materialist Conception Of History
For an easy to understand explanation of the Materialist Conception of History, read on. The socialist is politically opposed to the system in which he finds himself; this opposition arises from an analysis of capitalism, and the realization that socialism will solve the majority of the economic and social problems that exist today. We further claim…