DYLAN MURPHY looks at how Labour is breaking its pledge to protect the disabled and vulnerable
Women’s oppression, the origins of the family and the condition of the working class
The Star publishes here an abridged version of Engels Memorial Lecture given by PROFESSOR MARY DAVIS at the Marx Memorial Library earlier this week
Peasant Woman Cooking by a Fireplace by Vincent Van Gogh
STEPHEN ARNELL on how US power politics is seeping into British broadcasting
The belief that leadership removal can dismantle Iran reflects a flawed reading of history, write RAMZY BAROUD and ROMANA RUBEO
Behind the smoke clouds over Beirut lies a radical vision of a “Greater Israel.” The tactics from Gaza are now being deployed to depopulate south Lebanon, clearing the way for a permanent occupation and the reshaping of the Middle East, says MARC VANDEPITTE
Beneath the folklore of leaping salmon lies a stark reality: the River Wye is under siege from industrial agriculture – but locals aren’t letting water polluters off the hook, says MARK SEDDON
A centenary tour of north-west England uncovers powerful exhibitions and archives connecting the history of the 1926 General Strike with the fights facing workers today. General Strike 100 national co-ordinator HENRY FOWLER reflects on his recent visit to partners in the region
THE great significance of Friedrich Engels’s Origins of the Family, Private Property & the State is that it is one of the first Marxist analyses of development of family and origins of women’s oppression (the first was August Bebel’s Women & Socialism, 1879) — a subject in which most men were uninterested.
A short summary of Origins
Much is made of the shortcomings of the anthropological evidence employed by Engels who drew much of his empirical material from two 19th-century anthropologists, Morgan and Bachofen.
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Professor MARY DAVIS argues that feminism has been hollowed out by liberal co-option – and only a revival of socialist, class-based politics can restore International Working Women’s Day’s original, radical purpose
The legacy of socialist feminists such as Alexandra Kollontai challenges us today to confront an uncomfortable truth: framing prostitution as empowerment lets the abusers of the Epstein class off the hook, warns HELEN O’CONNOR
In Part 4 of her look at the Chinese revolution JENNY CLEGG addresses the relationship between the Peasant Movement and the National Movement
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