Durham Miners’ Association chair STEPHEN GUY speaks to Ben Chacko about the Reform threat, what’s needed from Labour and why the Big Meeting will never lose its politics
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Socialism, democracy and the division of labour
Stereotyped ideas about the 20th century’s actually existing socialism do a disservice to the working class and fail to grasp the complexities facing every revolutionary generation, argues ZOLTAN ZIGEDY
FLAGS OUT: The hammer and sickle flag of the Soviet Union is hung over the entrance to Claridge’s, London. Russian leaders Marshal Nikolai Bulganin, chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR, and Nikita Krushchev, first secretary of the Soviet Communist Party, were residing at the hotel at the start of their 10-day visit
to Britain, April 1956
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Andy Burnham’s message of hope will defeat Reform if Labour delivers the New Deal for Working People in full, says JOANNE THOMAS
General Federation of Trade Unions president and bakers’ union general secretary, SARAH WOOLLEY, guides us through the GFTU’s Summer School happening this week at Quorn Grange Hotel
The government’s latest asylum proposals abandon labour movement values and fuel division by aping Reform UK, writes DIANE ABBOTT MP
Can Andy Burnham’s programme deliver a productive economy – or merely a softer version of capitalism, asks VINCE MILLS
IAN LAVERY MP warns that decades of neoliberal policies have left former industrial communities behind — but a renewed Labour commitment to working people could change the political landscape
PROFESSOR Richard Wolff is a prominent, influential intellectual, with a big following on the left. He is an erudite, clear and passionate speaker and writer. He is well-regarded for his exposition of Marx’s ideas — a “go to” when the media tolerates a conversation critical of capitalism, one even advocating “socialism.”
For all of that, he does not represent Marx’s thought well, nor does he offer a viable, serious alternative to capitalism.
It is not a question of Wolff’s scholarship or his commitment to justice. It is, instead, a deep-seated, unwavering hostility to the real existing socialism of the 20th century and the century’s leading Marxist exponents, the communists.
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