Starmer promised a reset after Labour’s dire electoral performance, but the government’s programme still falls far short of the bold action needed, says ANDY McDONALD MP
Latest editorial
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
Author Michael Rosen asked people how we confront a takeover by Reform. The Labour Party would do well to listen to the answers rather than shuffle more deckchairs on the Titanic, writes LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
ROGER McKENZIE looks at how ancient traditions practiced today can be the cornerstone of anti-imperialism in Africa
The Starmer project is going up in smoke – but if the left cannot swiftly build a viable alternative, the country faces the grim reality of a hard-right takeover, says ANDREW MURRAY
POA general secretary STEVE GILLAN argues that while Labour’s 2025 Act was a step forward, a second wave of legislation is vital to restore the fundamental right to strike and end the exploitation of prison officers
Mehmet Turkmen, president of Birtek-Sen, has been cleared of criminal charges after speaking out against the high rate of workplace injuries and deaths in Gaziantep’s textile and carpet industry. OZLEM TEMENA reports
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.
Similar stories
ALEX HALL is fascinated by a lucid and historically convincing account of how rent has dominated capitalist economies from feudalism to modernity
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