The Socialist Party of Great Britain
Part of the World Socialist Movement
November 5, 2018
Craft, or trade, unions represent a single craft or trade. In contrast, industrial unions represent all workers in a specific industry, or with a specific employer. Socialist Industrial Unions (SIUs) are industrial unions, representing entire industries, with the stated aim of creating a socialist society. SIU supporters claim that it is necessary to seize the …
What are labour vouchers? Labour vouchers (or labour cheques, labour certificates, labour-time vouchers) are a device suggested to govern demand for goods in “socialism”, much as money does today under capitalism. Originally proposed by Robert Owen in 1820, they were later taken up by Marx in 1875, to deal with the immediate and temporary shortages …
For the past twenty-six years there has been an armed conflict in Northern Ireland which the media, both local and foreign, has offered to the public as a religious war between Catholics and Protestants. It is not only the media. The most recent contribution to this fallacy comes from Dr Brian Walker, the Director of …
Fifty years ago this month Britain relinquished control over the Indian sub-continent. It was the start of a thirty-year period in which European imperial powers progressively withdrew from direct rule of their overseas possessions. It had been accepted as far back as 1833 that India would at some stage advance to self-government. The British practice …
Some so-called socialists claim: That in November 1917, the Bolsheviks set up a “socialist workers’ state”. That the economic form of this state was not capitalism (some call it “socialism”, some call it “state socialism”, some suggest it was some other non-capitalist economic form). That later on, this “socialist workers’ state” was perverted from what …
So often Russia is described at having tried ‘socialism.’ Russia under Lenin, Stalin and the rest is usually described as socialist or communist by the media. Yet, as these extracts from our British-based journal, The Socialist Standard, argue, Russia was never socialist… 1920 When we are told that Socialism has been obtained in Russia without …
Read more “Russia was never socialist—and why … what we said over the years”
When the major powers become involved in armed conflict, whether Operation Restore Hope or Operation Desert Storm, these conflicts are presented as a temporary measure, necessary to restore ‘peace.’ Each time political leaders expect support for their wars it is always with the subtly implied promise that all will be well eventually. It was the …
In considering the question of how realistic it is to expect a socialist revolution, it is important to consider the hidden history of events that most people are unaware of. It was in the Paris Commune of 1871 that French workers actually created organisations of mass control which challenged the old system for a brief …
Compared with a lion, a gorilla, or even a horse, the human animal is weak, slow and defenceless. And yet homo sapiens has become the dominant species of the planet. Our species developed none of the specialised attributes that have fitted other creatures so well for their environments. Physiologically, we have hardly evolved at all …
When the major powers become involved in armed conflict, whether Operation Restore Hope or Operation Desert Storm, these conflicts are presented as a temporary measure, necessary to restore ‘peace.’ Each time political leaders expect support for their wars it is always with the subtly implied promise that all will be well eventually. It was the …