The Socialist Party of Great Britain
Part of the World Socialist Movement
November 5, 2018
If you ask a modern sociologist how many classes there are, they will answer six, or maybe three, or twelve, or any other number that takes their fancy. Many definitions of ‘class’ are offered. They are usually spurious and unhelpful. A More Helpful Answer Our society is split up into two classes. There is one …
Why must profit always come first under capitalism?Capitalism is a system that requires companies to make a profit, if they are to survive. For a detailed answer to this question see Why Profit Gets Priority. What is the current extent of global inequality?For the facts about this, see our article: Who Owns the World? Why …
The main aim of this article is to present an appreciative and critical account of the contribution of Marx and Engels to the socialist movement. It will not deal with the `Marxism’ that has been developed by various writers, leaders, parties and movements that have used, extended, and in some cases distorted, the writings of …
Oscar Wilde was a well known critic of many aspects of the nineteenth century writer Britain in which he lived. Especially interesting from a WSM point of view are the views that he expressed in his essay, The Soul of Man Under Socialism. Wilde’s description of socialism was as a world without private property. He …
William Morris was one of the foremost creative artists of the nineteenth century. Designer of furniture and wallpaper, printer, architect, novelist and poet, Morris was respected by the ‘respectable’ people of Victorian capitalist society. His upbringing was far from one of poverty. He was born in March 1834 into a wealthy capitalist family. He was …
Read more “William Morris: How we live and how we might live”
I became acquainted with Shelley in 1944. At the time I was eighteen years of age and a Republican remand prisoner in Belfast jail. I liked poetry and, searching for something readable in the prison library—a cupboard which they opened twice weekly to the accompaniment of bawling screws, who could see no justification for delay …
Capitalism cannot live by bread alone—if ‘bread’ is a metaphor for the whole range of goods and services produced and sold on the market. The profit system needs the consuming time of workers as well as their producing time (Harvey, 1982:448). And to make both capitalist production and consumption possible, it needs the appropriate consenting …
Many members of the World Socialist Movement have considered John Lennon’s song Imagine an anthem of universal hope. In few other songs, and perhaps in no song that reached as wide an audience as that one, is the socialist vision so accurately and movingly conveyed. It was originally featured on the 1971 album “Imagine,” and …
The absurd claim of racism is that people’s behavioural, physical and cultural traits conform to a certain fixed and immutable pattern; and this determines the superiority or otherwise of a group in relation to others. This is an outlook that has been used to justify some of the most unspeakable and horrendous crimes against humanity, …
Fifty years ago this month Leon Trotsky was assassinated by an agent of Stalin’s secret police. We take this opportunity to critically assess his life and views. Trotsky was born Lev Davidovitch Bronstein, the son of moderately well-off peasant farmers in the southern Ukraine, in 1879. As a student at the University of Odessa he …