Aslef general secretary DAVE CALFE looks at how rail workers and miners stood together against wage cuts 100 years ago – and why the legacy of collective action endures today
Latest editorial
Red Books Day 2023: Marx, Engels and Byron
A new annual appreciation of Marx and leftist literature has spread across the globe from India in only three short years – for Britain’s Manifesto Press, NICK WRIGHT joins this year’s celebration
A view of the grave of Marxist philosopher Karl Marx (1818-1883) in Highgate Cemetery East in Highgate, north London
As Africa’s progressives aim to consolidate its anti-colonial programme, VIJAY PRASHAD reports on the US getting a military foothold in Ghana
KERRY FLECK explains how the annual event unites thousands in a celebration of workers’ power, culture and collective resistance
The former Nato chief stirred up dark historical undercurrents with his call to cut welfare for military spending, says SOLOMON HUGHES
The life of a modest Norfolk organiser contrasts with the dramatic rise and disappearance of a controversial figure in US labour, says MARK SEDDON
JACK YOUD explains how Salford City Council has taken on rogue landlords and won, setting an example to the rest of the country
TWO books take us back to the middle of the 19th century — the poetry of Byron and the Manifesto of the Communist Party.
It was perfect timing. Just as a chain of democratic revolutions against the tyrannies and despotic royal regimes of Europe began, two young Germans, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, penned The Manifesto of the Communist Party. It appeared in print on February 21 1848.
Marx and Engels later recounted: “The Communist League, an international association of workers, which could, of course, be only a secret one, under conditions obtaining at the time, commissioned us, the undersigned, at the Congress held in London in November 1847, to write for publication a detailed theoretical and practical programme for the party.
Similar stories
The selection, analysis and interpretation of historical ‘facts’ always takes place within a paradigm, a model of how the world works. That’s why history is always a battleground, declares the Marx Memorial Library
NICK MATTHEWS recalls how the ideals of socialism and the holding of goods in common have an older provenance than you might think
The summer saw the co-founders of modern communism travelling from Ramsgate to Neuenahr to Scotland in search of good weather, good health and good newspapers in the reading rooms, writes KEITH FLETT
ROGER McKENZIE expounds on the motivation that drove him to write a book that anticipates a dawn of a new, fully liberated Africa – the land of his ancestors