Working people across Britain are fighting back against austerity, war, repression and exploitation. The challenge now is to unite those struggles, says Communist Party of Britain assistant general secretary JOHNNIE HUNTER
Marxism is about economics and class. What about the environment?
Our growing understanding of the human impact on the planet poses some profound questions for all socialists, including Marxists, says the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
Train drivers’ union Aslef general secretary DAVE CALFE speaks to Ben Chacko about his hopes that Burnham’s devolution agenda will include the importance of the railway
DIANE ABBOTT provides an analysis of the reasons for EU and British voters’ dramatic swing to the right
Some of the review’s proposals could make the benefits system less cruel and dehumanising. But its vague plans for services and non-cash support revive the threat that disabled people will lose control over the money we need to survive, writes DYLAN MURPHY
Believe it or not, there was a time when the US government built beautiful homes for working‑class Americans to deal with a housing shortage, writes ERAN BEN-JOSEPH
MAT COWARD has heaps of good advice on recycling garden and household waste over the winter
IT’S true that much of Karl Marx’s own work was to do with economics. And class is central to a Marxist understanding of history.
Much of Marx and Friedrich Engels’s writing was concerned with examining the inherently exploitative and dynamic nature of capitalism, seen as underlying the struggle between exploiting and exploited classes which would lead to socialism (and eventually to communism) in which inequality would be abolished and there would be plenty for all.
But both Marx and Engels were well aware of the wider, environmental aspects of human “conquest” over nature. And Marxists today have a good deal to say about the environment.
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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
Humans are part of the ‘animal kingdom’ – and of nature in general – but also distinct from it and labour (work) is part of what makes us unique, declared Engels. His insights 150 years ago into how our species came to be and how we differ from the rest of nature, are as important today as they were then, says the MARX MEMORIAL LIBRARY
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