It was recently announced that a speaker from the “Socialist” Party [was to appear on television’s Channel 4]. We believe this was to have been a first for the party. But on that evening one of the unions, in order to ensure greater freedom of speech, prevented the announced programmes from appearing. We very much… read more »
Dear Editors. The article “To Have and to Hold” in the August 1985 issue of the Socialist Standard says the capitalist class control the means of production. Other statements by the party say they do not. Telling us that Dukes, Lords and so on own vast areas of Britain. the article goes on: “They can… read more »
This is from Socialist Comment, Official Journal of the World Socialist Party of Australia, September 1984, reporting the Biennial Conference of the Australian Labour Party: The ruling factions departed to continue their role of ruling the working class on behalf of their capitalist masters. According to this companion party of the “Socialist” Party it is… read more »
(The following is part of an attempt to relate the major ideologies to particular stages of social development. It concerns the ancient hunter-gatherer communities; the nature of these is difficult to grasp, both from the lack of direct and indisputable evidence and from their lack of definite structure. This preliminary and tentative draft is presented… read more »
Systematic ideology indicates that the ideological structure of a developed society resembles a stepped pyramid, the larger numbers of people on the lower levels and the more sophisticated ideologies toward the top. This being so, one would expect to find the same structure appearing in party politics, with numbers diminishing as one moved from the… read more »
The events of the Chinese Revolution, even since 1945, are complex, dramatic, and on an enormous scale. Some of them, particularly incidents of the Cultural Revolution, are bizarre; in the course of that upheaval the youth of Peking and other cities smashed monuments, invaded homes, broke records, burnt books – and demanded red as the… read more »
We have just closed down our Research Department, firing the staff, selling the buildings and disposing of all the computers and other equipment. Drastic, certainly, but there was no alternative; only last week did they bring us news of Jane Jacobs’ The Culture of Cities, published by Jonathan Cape in 1970. It has long been… read more »
There is a paradox built into freedom: We can have it only while we don’t use it. At any given moment there is a wide range of possible actions open to us, but by performing any action, realising any one of these possibilities, we eliminate all the others. We can avoid limiting our freedom only… read more »
After it had been recognised that Russia was not, after all, on the road toward communism, it was China that took on the revolutionary halo. But after the Hundred Flowers Movement, the Great Leap Forward, the Socialist Education movement and the Cultural Revolution had all collapsed the People’s Democracy of China, like Soviet Russia before… read more »
London’s buses and underground trains are to have computerised ticket machines; experience suggests it will take a while to get the bugs out of these. Several years ago buses were introduced which had automatic ticket machines instead of conductors. Some of them worked properly; the others – well, we ourselves hit the jackpot once, but… read more »