The UK Prime Minister may have the regal touch in northern England, but he’s been wrong-footed on the constitutional challenges posed by the Celtic Alliance of first ministers from Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, argues KENNY MacASKILL
LET’S start with the “production” bit first. In common with other animals, people need food and shelter to survive.
But unlike most other animals, even in the earliest human societies many of the necessities of life couldn’t be found ready-made in nature. They had to be made — “produced.”
Material production has always been the basis of human existence without which everything else in society — ideas, knowledge, science, religion, even language — would not exist.
Class struggle is the motor of history but the direction and detail of change at any time and place is the outcome of many factors, suggests the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School
Humans are part of the ‘animal kingdom’ – and of nature in general – but also distinct from it and labour (work) is part of what makes us unique, declared Engels. His insights 150 years ago into how our species came to be and how we differ from the rest of nature, are as important today as they were then, says the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
Nature as well as society works dialectically, asserts the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School
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


