Material World – A Socialist Future: How it works and how society is organised

Socialism is not a reform of capitalism nor a system of state management exercised by a minority. It is a fundamentally different form of society based on common ownership of the means of producing and distributing wealth, democratic control by the whole community, and production carried out directly for use rather than for sale and …

Venezuela: what has really happened and what may lie ahead

Venezuela has once again been making headlines around the world. Explosions, military movements, international pressure, mutual accusations and a great deal of confusion. To understand what has happened so far, it is necessary to look beyond the propaganda, both from the Venezuelan government and the US, and from those who defend one gang or the …

Venezuela: another failure of reformism

Venezuela is a petro-state, defined as a country with an economy and government that depend heavily on money from extracting and selling oil and gas. Oil was first extracted there in the 1920s and Venezuela was one of the founding members in 1960 of the oil-producers’ cartel, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), …

Proper Gander – Processing progress

The 2020s is a particularly unsettling decade to be living in, and the whole of the 21st century so far hasn’t been the utopia which our forebears might have expected it to be. Cultural historian Matthew Sweet explores this current bleak mood by asking What Happened To Progress? in his BBC Sounds documentary series. The …

Action Replay – Both sides now

One of the attractions of watching sport is that of giant-killing, where an underdog defeats a far more powerful or wealthy club or player. This can be even more surprising and satisfying than a long-priced winner in a horse race. Cup competitions, in football and elsewhere, can throw up encounters between mismatched opponents which sometimes …

Life and Times – The World Unspun

Ever since I can remember I’ve had a subscription to the New Internationalist magazine. Its watchword, ‘The World Unspun’, marks it out as a campaigning publication which aims to present matters of both local and global importance in as direct and straightforward a way as possible. Its main focus has always been what used to …

An Introduction to World Socialism – A Post-Capitalist Society