A California union’s decision to host a meeting about US policy towards Cuba has prompted a congressional probe and renewed attacks on international solidarity, writes CAMERON HARRISON
What is ‘useful’ knowledge?
In their 100th Full Marx column, the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY looks at how socialists have grappled with the direction and framing of working-class self-education over the last 200 years
The Marx Memorial Library in London
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The Baltic state is set to reverse its constitutional prohibition on nuclear weapons and foreign bases as part of accelerated Nato war preparations, warns TOM UNTERRAINER
Long-term underfunding and state neglect, while simultaneously probation services have been undermined, have intensified the prison crises, argues SOLOMON HUGHES
Holyrood incompetence has cost jobs and put the future of Clydeside’s Ferguson Marine shipyard into jeopardy. Its future should have been assured, argues KENNY MACASKILL
With the agitated debate now raging in the media about the early release schemes, Prison Officers Association general secretary STEVE GILLAN gives the view of those who work in the sector
The hounding of the late Jason Arday is an all too familiar experience for many black people. ROGER McKENZIE calls for collective action to combat what can feel like personal isolation
MOST people would agree that all genuine knowledge is potentially useful — though a little knowledge can sometimes be a dangerous thing and, in the wrong company, knowing too much can be positively lethal.
We are bombarded continually with “facts” together with advice: “useful” knowledge — how to get a job, improve your credit rating, save for a deposit on a house. Rarely are we helped to any real understanding of the workings of a society in which poverty is increasing amidst massive wealth for the few.
This 100th Full Marx column is perhaps as good an occasion as any to mark the birth of a movement for workers’ education which started 200 years ago, in Glasgow, Edinburgh and most importantly in London with the establishment of the London Mechanics’ Institute (LMI, later London University’s Birkbeck College) and which spread rapidly throughout Britain as well as in the “new worlds” of Australia and North America.
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Dignity is important to all humans, argues the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School, but it does not come about automatically. In a less than perfect world, dignity can accompany suffering, but the collective dignity of working people is achieved through acting together to change the world.
Internationalism is deeply embedded in socialist theory and practice. Examination illuminates its complexity asserts the Marx Memorial Library and Workers’ School
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