Tag Archives: Theory

Only the working class taking power from capitalists and bureaucrats can defeat reaction Izquierda Revolucionaria Venezuela & Socialismo Revolucionario On 30 July elections were held to elect members of the “National Constituent Assembly” (ANC). In the days prior to the election, US imperialism and the MUD (the coalition which unites the right and far-right in Venezuela) backed a campaign of ...

The forerunner of the Socialist Party was the ‘Militant tendency’, so-called because it was organised in the Labour Party around the newspaper, Militant. The following is the transcript of an interview with Peter Taaffe, General Secretary of the Socialist Party, and one of the founders of The Militant, conducted by Shaun Ley for the BBC Radio 4 programme ‘The Party’s ...

A Response to Bhaskar Sunkara This article was originally published in the left wing American magazine, Counter Punch on the 28th July 2017. The author, Alan Jones, is a member of the Executive Committee of Socialist Alternative, the American sister party of the Socialist Party. At the end of June, in the midst of a growing discussion about socialism in ...

Massive demonstrations involving nearly a million people erupted in Petrograd on 2-3 July 1917, in a colossal outburst of anger and discontent. Workers, soldiers and peasants were reacting in fury at the failure of the provisional government – installed after the February 1917 revolution – to transform their terrible conditions. They were suffering high food prices, poverty wages, factory lockouts ...

Michael Johnson, from the Socialist Party’s LGBT group, examines the lessons of the Russian revolution for the struggle for LGBT+ rights today. The Russian Revolution is not typically held up as a significant event in the advancement of the struggle for LGBT+ rights. In fact, it’s often seen as the opposite, given the terrible oppression that LGBT+ people faced under ...

Here we re-publish an article written by Per Åke Westerlund, from Rattvisepartiet Socialisterna (Committee for a Workers’ International in Sweden), first published in Socialism Today, magazine of the Socialist Party of England & Wales in 2004.   VLADIMIR LENIN, the main leader of the Russian revolution, made the following insightful observation in mid-1917: “During the lifetime of great revolutionaries, the oppressing ...

Saturday, January 21st, 2017, will go down in the history books as a truly historic moment. We saw a global revolt of women, not just against Trump but against the ideas and interests he represents; misogyny, racism and the rule of the billionaires. These massive displays of defiance have not come out of thin air. They have come on the ...

The 1917 Russian revolution was a momentous moment in working class history, in which women played a pivotal and active role. It started with a strike by women textile workers on 8 March (International Women’s Day – 23 February according to the calendar in use in Russia at the time). Not able to take their impoverished conditions and food shortages ...

23 February 1917 (8 March in today’s calendar) marked the beginning of the socialist revolution in Russia, which sparked a revolutionary wave that would travel around the world. In the Socialist in 2007, Socialist Party general secretary Peter Taaffe analysed the lessons of February for the working class today and how the leadership of the Bolshevik party, particularly Lenin and ...

By Hannah Sell (Deputy General Secretary, Socialist Party) The IMF now calls for state intervention to stimulate the ailing global economy. And many on the left also propose Keynesian-style policies. So, does this mean the IMF would welcome a Corbyn-led government in Britain? If not, why not? From the 1980s onwards neoliberal economics have reigned supreme. Now, eight years after ...