General secretary of the General Federation of Trade Unions GAWAIN LITTLE calls for support and participation in the national partnership organised to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the 1926 general strike
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Anti-communism v the unions, neo-anarchism v mass movements
ZOLTAN ZIGEDY reflects on the lessons from two books looking at the US labour movement and the recent history of spontaneous mass uprisings – and finds two pernicious ideologies working against the interests of the people
10 - AFL-CIO_Headquarters_by_Matthew_Bisanz
After brutal police crackdowns on pensioners and the forced approval of secret IMF deals, trade unions are finally responding to grassroots pressure and fighting back against savage neoliberal reforms, reports BERT SCHOUWENBURG
Bizarrely, Trump’s latest attacks now include the National Zoo, but his real and racist agenda is to strip everything black from the country’s cultural institutions, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
The transformation of a stable secular state into a fractured ruin largely ruled by Western-backed fundamentalists exposes the hollow nature of ‘multipolarity’ and the absence of principled anti-imperialism today, writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
Facing economic turmoil, Jim Callaghan’s government rejected Tony Benn’s alternative economic strategy in favour of cuts that paved the way for Thatcherism — and the cuts-loving Labour of the present era, writes KEITH FLETT
The economic value of disability benefits far outweighs their cost, argues Dr DYLAN MURPHY
As tensions rise in the Middle East, the role of Iran in the region’s political balance becomes ever more significant. STEVE BISHOP assesses the current situation
VINCENT BEVINS’ work If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, and Jeff Schuhrke’s Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor’s Global Anticommunist Crusade (reviewed in the Star at www.bit.ly/blueMS) were maybe the two most important books that I read this past year.
I have read many good books, many well-written books, many timely books, but these were arguably the two most important books.
They are important because they attempt to tackle questions that are neglected or only superficially discussed on the political left. They are most important because they surface popular assumptions that are among the greatest obstacles to the success of any authentically left project: spontaneity as an organisational philosophy and anti-communism as political orthodoxy.
More from this author
The transformation of a stable secular state into a fractured ruin largely ruled by Western-backed fundamentalists exposes the hollow nature of ‘multipolarity’ and the absence of principled anti-imperialism today, writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
ZOLTAN ZIGEDY argues Trump’s victory shows the deep failure of liberal calculations that write off huge swathes of the electorate and mirrors the worldwide rise of right-wing populism amid Establishment collapse
From ‘middle class’ to ‘microaggressions,’ from ‘fascism’ to ‘terrorism,’ ZOLTAN ZIGEDY makes an anguished cry for us to turn away from the most misused and misleading terms and tropes – or at least use them accurately
The left’s retreat from class, embrace of ‘hyphenated capitalisms’ and tepid reformism in tropical settings needs to be finally dumped in favour of a bold socialist programme and Leninist party organisation, writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
