Sudan: the Year of Peace or Renewed Civil War?

By Ba Karang

"Beat for Peace" protestors took to the streets in 14 countries the weekend of 9-10 January to call for greater Western pressure to ensure that the peace agreement in Sudan stays on course. Elections are scheduled in Sudan for April 2004 with a referendum in the south on secession set for January 2011.

12 January 2010 - Armed conflict between the main liberation movement, Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM), in southern Sudan and the Khartoum government officially ended in 2005. According to Global Witness, an estimated 1.5 million people were killed in the more than two decades of armed conflict. According to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement (CPA) signed on 9th of January 2005,  a referendum will be held in 2011 in which Southern Sudan will determine if it still wants a unity government or an Independent State. (READ IN FULL - 1 comment)

Resist Neocon Witchhunters!

Recently, our friend the radical educationist Peter McLaren has come  under attack from the rightwing National Association of Scholars for his links to the thought of "Paulo Freire, Raya Dunayevskaya, and Che 
Guevara," as can be seen in NAS's Dec. 15 polemic against Marxist  influences in schools of education and especially the Journal for  Critical Education Policy Studies:

http://www.nas.org/polArticles.cfm?doc_id=1127

We firmly oppose such McCarthyite attacks and express our solidarity  with McLaren and other critics of capitalism menitoned in the NAS  polemic. For McLaren's own position on these matters, see his 2007 response to  Bill Ayres, a leftist critic.  Writing from an empiricist position, Ayres had attacked McClaren for resorting to a philosophically based  critique of education, claiming that this is a distraction from radical activism:

http://www.tcrecord.org/discussion.asp?i=3&aid=2&rid=12888&dtid=0&vdpid=2695

Ian MacDonald: Class Warrior, Marxist-Humanist

1957-2009

Ian MacDonald, a leading contributor to The Hobgoblin, has died from cancer, aged 52. As Unison lead convenor for Surrey, Ian made a video for his trade union colleagues from his hospital bed, with solidarity greetings on the ongoing struggles in children’s services. “But at the moment,” he said “I’ve got my own fight; I wish you the utmost the very best and in yours.” Days later Ian lost the fight.

When, in 2004, Ian joined the London Corresponding Committee – the British Marxist-Humanist organization – he was no stranger to left-wing politics. Politically, during the final years of the old Cold War politics, Ian never saw any contradiction in opposing both Stalinism and capitalism. READ IN FULL

On the Current Passivity and Stoicism of Organised Labour

By Ian MacDonald

"It is vital that theory and philosophy are combined with the activity of the working class now and in any developing working class political formations.... The reason it is important is that, apart from the need to understand the complex nature of capitalism so it can be destroyed, it is central for there to be a convergence of intellectual and labour before the revolution; not primarily to guard against a bureaucratic elite akin to Stalinism, but so that there will be a mass consciousness that is capable of overthrowing capitalism and achieving a free society. READ IN FULL

Dialogue: Karl Korsch's Marxism and Philosophy

Chris Cutrone (Platypus1917) writes:
Karl Korsch's seminal essay on “Marxism and Philosophy” (1923) is a historical treatment of the problem from Marx and Engels’s time through the 2nd International to the crisis of Marxism and the revolutions of 1917–19 in Russia, Germany and beyond. More specifically, Korsch took up the development and vicissitudes of the relation between theory and practice in the history of Marxism, which he considered the “philosophical” problem of Marxism. Korsch, like Georg Lukács and the thinkers in Frankfurt School critical theory, was inspired by the “subjective” aspect of Marxism exemplified by Lenin’s irreducible role in the October Revolution. MORE

Philosophy and Revolution

A talk given at the Anarchist Bookfair London 24 October 2009

By David Black

If there is one dominant philosophy in the modern world that embraces both left and right (not to mention post-modernism) that philosophy is pragmatism. As a philosophy pragmatism is really quite simple. If you want to eat a bowl of soup, and the choice is between using a fork or a spoon, you will choose the spoon because it will do the job best. If you want a society where the maximum number of commodities is available to the maximum number of consumers, you might try and create a free market; or, if that doesn’t work, you might try state-control and nationalisation; and, if neither does the job, there is always a mixture of the two, such as market-socialism (or something a lot nastier). The question for pragmatism is always and only, ‘what works best’. If on the other hand you advocate a society in which there is no commodification of production and no reification or alienation of human labour, the pragmatist will say you are not living in the real world. You are talking abstractions. As for alienation, well what does a non-alienated state of being look like? And the pragmatist might accuse you of looking for a concealed reality behind appearances, the consciousness of which – and this isn’t allowed either - might lead to consciousness of a possible alternative.

Go back two and a half thousand years and we find Plato arguing that there is indeed a reality beyond the false appearance of the phenomenal world. Plato, who doesn’t give a damn about public opinion, argues that the truth in its totality, like the soul, is universal, beyond time and beyond space. MORE

Support the Iranian People’s Movement against the Repressive Regime!

The protests over the blatant theft of the June presidential elections have touched off the biggest crisis for the Islamic Republic of Iran in over two decades. Since June, millions of people have taken to the streets to decry the blatantly fraudulent re-election of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, especially youth, women, workers, and intellectuals.  Chanting “Death to the Dictator,” they continue to do so in the face of beatings, arrests, imprisonment, torture, and rape. MORE

Behind the 2009 Upheaval in Iran

By Kamran Afary and Kevin Anderson

The upheaval in Iran has shaken up Iranian and even regional politics. Not since the Palestinian Intifada of 1987 has the Middle East seen such a massive and persistent grassroots mobilization. At the same time, the Iranian upheaval is also the product of deep divisions inside nation’s dominant classes. On the one hand, reform-minded and pragmatic conservative regime leaders hold that things can no longer continue in the old way if the edifice of their Islamist regime is to survive. On the other hand, the more dominant regime conservatives believe the only way to survive is through heightened repression of a new generation seen as increasingly at odds with regimes Islamist ideological practices. READ IN FULL

Save Vestas

3 Sep 09 - For eighteen days, from 20 July to 7 August, a group of workers at the Vestas wind turbine factory at Newport, on the Isle of Wight, on the south coast of England, held a sit-in at the plant. READ IN FULL

The TEXT: My 'Awakening'

"At the college, the Deans and Directors meet to celebrate the Text. The young Directors are giddy about the Text-given careers they have skewered. The aging Deans fearfully sense that the Text has replaced the text they once knew and ostensibly understood… and controlled. They are close to the truth."

Jeffrey Ross, who teaches English at a College in Arizona, explains how he learned to see the TEXT. READ IN FULL - COMMENTS (2)

The Crisis in Childrens Services - trade unionists debate 'What type of society do we want'

Union activist Ian MacDonald discusses the dispute in Surrey County Council Children's Services, now in its 7th month, as part of the ongoing debate about the struggle in Social Care and the need for socialist transformatiom.  READ IN FULL.

Abolish Money?

Following our call to “get real” about “alternatives to capitalism” John Steinsvold drew our attention to his "utopian" article in American Daily, entitled "Home of the Brave?" In it, he says “The advantages of a way of life without money stagger the imagination; but they are real and cannot be disputed. Perhaps it is time for us to grab the brass ring.” First, David Tate assesses the arguments, then John Steinswold responds. MORE

On the Upheaval in Iran

(By US Marxist-Humanists and the London Corresponding Committee - Hobgoblin)

The blatant theft of the June elections has touched off the biggest crisis for the Islamic Republic of Iran in over two decades.  Large sectors of the Iranian people have come into the streets to protest, especially youth, women, and intellectuals.  Already, the population is beginning to lose its fear, at least in major cities like Isfahan, Tabriz, and Shiraz, and especially Tehran, where protestors have repeatedly confronted the fundamentalist Basiji militia, in some cases driving them off the streets. READ IN FULL 

'This Place is a Thousand Times Worse than Guantanamo'

During the early morning hours of  June 15, 2009,  The dormitory of Tehran University was attacked by Iranian security forces and plainclothes policemen.  Five students were killed and many were arrested.  Below is a report which describes the ordeal of the arrested students. READ IN FULL

BBC Panorama on Baby Peter:

What the Program Didn't Say About Social Work

11 May 2009 - As a social worker and UNISON rep I am in the interesting position of reviewing a programme in which I participated, albeit briefly. Read in full.

Why Philosophy? Why Now?

On the Revolutionary Legacies of Raya Dunayevskaya, CLR James and Anton Pannekoek