In the third of a four-part serialisation from her new book No to Nuclear, LINDA PENTZ GUNTER explains how the world had a chance to build an energy system around renewables more than 70 years ago — instead, it chose nuclear
Whither proletarian revolution – it’s coming home
Lenin’s theory of the weakest link shifted the centre of gravity of the proletarian revolution towards peoples’ struggles in the developing world, contrary to the expectation of Marx and Engels. The effect was to hinder the cause of socialism by decades. Time bring it back to its natural home, argues FAWZI IBRAHIM
IN THE BELLY OF THE BEAST:
Thousands of protesters march
against the excesses of
capitalism in London, 2009
Elon Musk says AI will make work optional. The world of abundance he predicts actually spells the end of the capitalist system, argues FAWZI IBRAHIM
Indian students have fought for the right to education, schooling us all in the process. Comrades from the Students’ Federation of India (SFI) — UK comment on the resistance and its ripples here
Edinburgh’s upcoming by-elections offer tenants a chance to put politicians under pressure over soaring rents and a council that has repeatedly sided with landlords and developers, says ADITI JEHANGIR
The real welfare dependency is at the top of our society, says ALAN SIMPSON
Tony Benn’s constituents chose him by an overwhelming majority — but because he had inherited a peerage, parliamentary rules declared their choice invalid, writes MAT COWARD
IT WAS the publication of the Communist Manifesto in 1848 and, subsequently, Capital in 1867 that explained that, as capitalism was born within its predecessor, the feudal system, so it is with socialism — it is born within the capitalist system.
As capitalism evolved, its productive force would come into conflict with its relations of production, and at an advanced stage of its development, proletarian revolution would overthrow the capitalist order and establish socialism.
Communists thus looked to the advanced industrial countries in Europe for such revolutions and they were not disappointed with workers’ rebellions and revolutions that took place across Europe in the early and mid-19th century. There were the Luddites, 1811-13, the Merthyr Tydfil armed insurrection in 1831, the Swing Riots in 1830 by agricultural workers in southern and eastern England, and of course the European revolutions of 1848.
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