Blogs

There is an ever-growing stream of media commentary on the Grenfell fire, increasing daily as the public enquiry unfolds. There are some elements in the media with the goal of obscuring or excusing the plain facts as part of a pre-emptive defence manoeuvre to protect those most implicated in what caused the fire and the 72 deaths. That they feel the need to use such distortions to defend the Grenfell landlords and those who ordered and oversaw the Grenfell refurbishment that fitted the lethal cladding only increases the suggestion of a general doubt on all sides about their innocence.

There is no time for hopelessness. Here are some ideas for what we can do – now – to fight back against the attacks we know are coming.

We read and reviewed David Ranney’s “Living and dying on the factory floor”, which was about his decision to put his academic career on hold and his subsequent experiences as a factory worker. [1] The following thoughts relate to this decision, which used to be widespread within the left.

The “synchronised stagnation” of the global economy since 2008 shows the capitalist class everywhere has no solution to economic crisis. Hence ever more strident nationalism has been adopted across the globe. It even engulfs its two greatest powers, now locked in a trade war. This nationalism is their “alternative”. For them the problem is not capitalism but one form of it – globalisation. The fact is that the continued existence of the system in any form means more misery for most.

Deliveroo was founded in 2013 by Will Shu, an investment banker, and Greg Orlowski, a software developer. It was a simple idea whereby customers place food orders through an app or on the website, and couriers, with the app on their mobile phones, deliver the food from the restaurant to the customer. However, like any technology (no matter how life changing) utilised under capitalism, in practice Deliveroo means exploitation for the workers on whose labour the success of the company depends.

The dispersed system of global production, united by supply chains stretching across the planet, has not only integrated our world but made capitalism more vulnerable to disruption. This workshop will identify and map potential choke points, exposing vulnerabilities where struggles could possibly circulate globally through acts of working class solidarity.

For those not fortunate to have been born with a silver spoon in their mouth and happy with the status quo, who want to see change, the task of finding a political home is no mean feat. For many the answer is obvious enough. It may be a simple ”Leave the EU” or “Get the Tories out”. But for many workers, Corbyn and his Labour Party represent the way out.

As the Brexit pantomime plays on, a General Election is now thrust upon us. Like all capitalist elections it will be a sham. About a third of the electorate (mostly working class) already have no illusions that a vote will do anything for them. In the UK the sham does not mean that ballot boxes will be stuffed with fake votes. Our rulers don’t need to do that. They have worked out how to get a result acceptable to the system without it.

In spring 2019, a crisis on an unprecedented scale was sparked in French hospitals. The emergency services went on strike in massive numbers. Barely three months from its beginnings on 18 March, in the Saint-Antoine Hospital in Paris, it had spread to around a hundred establishments all across France by July. The movement will not stop spreading as long as the situation remains untenable. In September, the number of emergency services on strike was 239, or more than half of all services. This mobilisation has not died down and even rose to 267 services on strike in mid-October.

This book is a thoughtful and easy-to-read account of the author's experiences in various industrial workplaces in the US in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

criticizing the vote as a strategy of "harm reduction"

An exploration into Boris Johnson's editorship of The Spectator magazine, and some of the Spectator columnist Taki's connections.

Statement of the Internationalist Communist Tendency

North or South, anyone who’s ever worked as a courier or care/support worker, or grew up in a working class nuclear family household, will have serious déjà vu watching the new Ken Loach film.

Analysis of the Fascist coup in Bolivia as the result of the failure of pink tide governments to bring change.

Today (‎9/11/19) marks the thirtieth anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall (which did not quite make its own thirtieth anniversary). It will be accompanied by the usual capitalist paeans to the wonders of democracy and the capitalist way of doing things. The following article from Communist Review 8 (later Internationalist Communist) appeared in January 1990 but has never been reproduced digitally before. It was our deeper reflection not only on the collapse of the USSR’s empire in the East but the burgeoning crisis of world capitalism as a whole

It is now 11 years since the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers. The crisis in the real economy, instead of fading from memory, has become a fixture.

Explanations of the cause of WW1 and its ending are always carefully avoided every year as regularly as the commemoration itself.

The translation of the Theses on Precarity and the ‘Gig Economy’ that follows, appeared in Mutiny/Mutinerie, the bilingual agitation sheet of our comrades in Klasbatalo, the Canadian affiliate of the Internationalist Communist Tendency. Here we just want to make a few observations to add to Klasbatalo’s correct summary of the situation of the workforce in this sector, as a contribution to further analysis and discussion.

We wrote the final part of our vulgar system-series about 'social alternatives'. We compiled the whole series into a pamphlet - see attachment. Feel free to comment and/or share...