Skip to main content
Work with the NEU
How can the left take on the state and big business?
It vitally important for the working class movement to discuss, debate and understand the nature of the state, writes JONATHAN WHITE

OVER the course of 2007 and 2008, two things happened that were supposed to be impossible.

First, the financial systems of the most advanced capitalist states went into meltdown as the big banks stopped lending to each other, each one panicking that they were all holding worthless assets.

Far from boom and bust being a thing of the past, as Gordon Brown and others had claimed, the global economy was thrown into a massive recession.

The 95th Anniversary Appeal
Support the Morning Star
You have reached the free limit.
Subscribe to continue reading.
Similar stories
heavens
Book Review / 3 December 2025
3 December 2025

BEN CHACKO welcomes a masterful analysis that puts class struggle back at the heart of our understanding of China’s revolution

Rise
Features / 16 August 2025
16 August 2025

LAURA PIDCOCK and PAUL O’CONNELL introduces Rise, a political platform for working-class activism

U.S. Army aircraft Lockheed Martin C-130J-30 Super Hercules drops military equipment during a 'Swift Response 2025' military exercises at the Gaiziunai Training Area, some 130 kms (80 miles) west of the capital Vilnius, Lithuania, May 16, 2025
Features / 17 May 2025
17 May 2025

Speaking to a CND meeting in Cambridge this week, SIMON BRIGNELL traced how the alliance’s anti-communist machinery broke unions, diverted vital funds from public services, and turned workers into cannon fodder for profit

US President Donald Trump gestures to the crowd as he depart
Eyes Left / 16 April 2025
16 April 2025
ANDREW MURRAY casts an eye over past upheavals and asks whether the left can find a fire escape before the world goes up in flames