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
What is a 'labour aristocracy' — did one exist in the past and does it exist today?
Did the entire British working class constitute a labour aristocracy during the colonial era? Do highly skilled tech workers now? The MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY investigates a controversial but useful area of communist discourse
NEIRLAY ANDRADE, a member of the Communist Party of Venezuela’s political committee, outlines her party’s position on the crisis facing the country
A look at Taylor Wimpey’s accounts shows why Labour’s market-led housing strategy won’t deliver more, cheaper homes, as promised, says SOLOMON HUGHES
DAVID HORSLEY remembers the remarkable life and death of US black revolutionary George Jackson, whose politically passionate prison letters were published as Soledad Brother
Cuban trade union federation CTC leader OSNAY MIGUEL COLINA speaks to Ben Chacko about life and work under a crippling US siege
A part of the British empire’s network of slavery, today the Caribbean island of Nevis faces a new form of exploitation in the form of crypto-colonialism, CLAUDIA WEBBE writes
Challenges from the unscrupulous misuse of AI to steal actors’ voice and physical likenesses is being met with a firm union response, writes LYNDA ROOKE
LET’S start with the first question — what “labour aristocracy” means, because the term has been and is today used in a variety of ways and it remains an area of debate amongst Marxists.
The Russian anarchist (and anti-Marxist) Mikhail Bakunin first used the term “aristocracy of labour” in the 1870s to refer to what he called the “upper layer” of the working class; “those who are the most cultured, who earn more and live more comfortably than all the other workers.”
In opposition to Marx and others, he challenged the idea that organised workers are the most radical and could lead to a “dictatorship of the proletariat.”
Similar stories
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
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.
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