Student politics is forever an interesting world. In 1959 Colin MacInnes spoke of the youth’s ability to overthrow the entire system in his novel ‘Absolute Beginners’, 9 years later in Paris when combined with the strength of the workers they almost did. Many of the Bolsheviks were exceptionally young, and throughout history the youth have been at the forefront of political change. One might therefore expect that, at a time when capitalism Read more…
The whole world is in the mist of turbulent convulsions. Capitalism as a system has exhausted itself and the capitalist politicians, academics and strategists have no solution to the problems faced by young people today. The case for international socialist revolution has never been clearer. In one country after another young people are beginning to challenge the establishment and its cronies. Many are drawing revolutionary conclusions. The UK is no different. In Read more…
The cost of renting from private landlords has been steadily rising across the UK for years. Combine this with deeper cuts to public services, wages, and working hours, and the attacks on working class people get worse and worse with each blow. In parliament in February of this year, Sajid Javid, the Conservative communities secretary, admitted that the average house price in the UK was now at 7.5 times the average annual Read more…
Last term Queen Mary Student Union banned the university shop from selling copies of the Sun newspaper, which is fair enough because the Sun is a sexist, racist, homophobic, anti-working class rag. But this ban was voted through by a small meeting of the student union council, without much publicity or explanation for the wider student body. The result was that some students decided to defy the student union by handing out Read more…
In 1991, almost four million local authority dwellings were in use in England alone. By 2007, that figure had halved and remains desperately low today. This doesn’t reflect a fall in demand (there are over three million people in the UK on council house waiting lists) but rather a deliberate neglect of crucial low-cost housing by New Labour and Conservative governments. The National Housing Federation has estimated that private landlords make a Read more…
A Marxist Student Federation member came a respectable second in the King’s College London student union elections, which concluded last week. Running on an openly socialist programme, Joe Attard of the KCL Marxist Society received 500 votes (compared to 700 for the winning candidate) from fellow students and postgraduate TA colleagues, demonstrating a real appetite for radical ideas at a traditionally conservative university. Joe was contesting the newly created position of Vice-President Read more…
On Monday 13 March Keelan Kellegher from the Cambridge Marxist society debated Peter Hitchens – notorious right-winger and Daily Mail columnist at a meeting of the Kings College Cambridge politics society. The debate was over a framed Soviet flag that hangs in the student bar at Kings College, Cambridge. Hitchens argued that the flag should be removed, on the grounds that it’s the symbol of a brutally repressive regime. Keelan argued that Read more…
The Russian Revolution was the most important event in history, where for the first time the workers came to power and swept out all the landlords and capitalists. That revolution was led by the Bolshevik Party under Lenin and Trotsky. However, due to the revolution’s isolation in a backward semi-feudal country, surrounded by hostile imperialist powers, the revolution suffered a bureaucratic degeneration. After Lenin’s death, a bureaucracy seized power, at whose head Read more…
College lecturers across Scotland have voted overwhelmingly for industrial action in a dispute over the non-delivery of a pay agreement that was reached almost exactly one year ago. The consultative ballot of members of the EIS Further Education Lecturers’ Association closed on Friday 10 March, with 97% of lecturers backing industrial action, on a turnout of 64%. The pay agreement reached last year standardizes pay and conditions for lecturers across Scotland, giving unionized Read more…
We’re delighted to announce the publication of a new pamphlet, edited by Natasha Sorrell of the Sheffield Marxist society, to celebrate International Working Women’s Day. The pamphlet contains an introduction by Natasha which discusses the lessons that can be learned from the history of the struggle of working class women. Natasha explains how today’s fight for the emancipation of women is the fight for socialism. The pamphlet also contains an extract from Read more…
Voting has now begun for elections to the Kings College London Student Union (KCLSU) sabbatical positions. Joe Attard, President of the KCL Marxist Society, is standing for the position of vice president for postgraduate students on a political and socialist platform. Here’s Joe’s manifesto. Postgrads and workers: unite and fight! A vote for Joe is a vote for radical politics and radical change on campus The current political period has been explosive: between Brexit, Read more…
The board game Monopoly, which the majority of readers will have played at some point in their life, was created by Elizabeth Magie in 1903. It was designed to express the ideas of the political economist Henry George, an American anti-monopolist who put forward the idea of a land value tax on revenues rather than taxing labour, in his work Progress and Poverty (1879). The aim of the game is to accumulate Read more…
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