Socialism Today

“It is time to study Caligula. That most notorious of Roman emperors killed what was left of the republic and centralised authority in himself. Donald Trump does not need to make his horse a senator; it will be enough to keep appointing charlatans to America’s great offices of state. Rome was not destroyed by outsiders. Its demolition was the work of barbarians from within… To judge from what Trump has done within a fortnight of winning the presidency, his path is destruction”.

This was the gloomy prognosis of the Financial Times US editor, Edward Luce, writing on 19 November 2024. Others, including Donald Trump’s own former chief of staff, retired Marine General John Kelly, have described Trump as a fascist. Large sections of the capitalist class are obviously dreading the consequences of Trump’s second term in the White House. Millions of working-class Americans feel the same, but the reasons for their trepidation are very different.

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Still dazed and disoriented from July’s general election humiliation, the Tories have a new leader, Kemi Badenoch – product of yet another leadership election fiasco. Surrounding her is a Conservative and Unionist Party – once capitalism’s electoral vehicle par excellence – that has haemorrhaged votes, seats, staff, members, and business engagement. It is unable to resolve its all-sided war of interconnected factions. Nor can it draw a line under 14 years of tumbling living standards, failed infrastructure, economic decline, instability and scandal. 

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Since 2010-11, councils have made cuts to local services of a huge £24.5 billion. They spent 42% less on services in 2022-23 than if spending had kept pace with cost and demand pressures since 2010-11.

Most cuts have come from Labour councils passing on Tory austerity without a serious challenge. Without an organised trade-union and community-based resistance, Starmer’s government brings no hope of the trend being reversed. Things are about to get far worse.

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Before the election Labour was clear about its aim of boosting investment – particularly in ‘infrastructure’ such as housing – while restricting day-to-day public spending. The manifesto emphasised ‘derisking’ private investment, ensuring profits for big capital, with public money used to subsidise institutional investors. Britain’s long-term low-level of investment was blamed on government not being helpful enough to business. House building was to increase to levels not seen since the 1970s, but unlike then not through state investment in secure low-rent council homes. 

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As this edition was being prepared the sad news came through of the death, on November 15, of Lynn Walsh, the founding editor of our magazine. Lynn was appointed by the Socialist Party’s executive committee as the editor of Socialism Today from its inaugural edition published in September 1995. He continued in that role until declining health led him to stand down in May 2019.

Lynn was a polymath of the Marxist movement and in future editions we will reprint some of his outstanding contributions to its ideas. This will be an integral part of our celebration in 2025 of thirty years of the magazine he did so much to sustain.

We start here by republishing an article written by Lynn for the first issue of Socialism Today, our founding statement, arguing that socialism was far from being ‘finished’, as was the ‘established wisdom’ of the 1990s even amongst those on the left.

The intervening years have filled out processes more tentatively identified in 1995, not least the qualitative transmutation of the Social Democratic and Labour parties into capitalist formations, and introduced new features. China in 1995, for example, was just the eighth biggest economy in the world not the power second only to US imperialism that it is today.

But the article, written in Lynn’s usual systematic-analytic style, still remains as a compelling case for why socialism will once again become the idea that guides workers and youth in the struggle for a new society. The most fitting tribute possible to one of the pioneers.

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January marks the 120th anniversary of the start of the 1905 Russian revolution, a movement shaped by the working class that shook the world’s then third most populous empire and bulwark of reaction on the global stage. CHRISTINE THOMAS draws out key lessons of 1905. The article is followed by a timeline.

Both Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky described the 1905 revolution in Russia as a dress rehearsal for 1917. Although the mass revolutionary movement that exploded in January 1905 failed to defeat the Tsarist autocracy that sat atop the vast Russian Empire, it was an invaluable learning experience for the working class and the Bolshevik Party, in preparation for leading a successful revolutionary overthrow of capitalism and feudalism twelve years later. The role of the working class; how consciousness changes; the relationship between mass workers’ organisations and the revolutionary party; how the workers’ movement should relate to other social forces; the art of insurrection – all were posed in this ‘prologue’ to 1917.

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Compiled by MARTIN POWELL DAVIES. Dates are given in the old-style Julian calendar used in Russia at the time. This was 13 days earlier than the Gregorian calendar (adopted in Russia in 1918).

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‘My name is Ozymandias, King of kings. Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!’ Faced with the works of twenty-first century capitalism, in particular the nightmare being suffered by the Palestinian masses, despair is an understandable reaction. This famous line by the 19th century poet Shelley, however, does not point towards despair, but to revolution. He describes it inscribed on the pedestal of a broken old statue, once erected to an Egyptian dictator, long since dethroned and his monument abandoned in the desert.

Thirteen years ago, in the ‘Arab Spring’ – the revolutionary movement which swept North Africa and parts of the Middle East – more than one modern day Ozymandias was overthrown. However, because the working class and poor masses did not succeed in taking and consolidating power, the old order came surging back. Current events show beyond all doubt how rotten that order is, and the necessity of bringing it to an end.

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The build-up to Labour’s first conference after the July general election saw excited commentary in some corners of the capitalist media about a ‘showdown’ over the early measures of Keir Starmer’s new government, in particular the withdrawal of the winter fuel allowance from more than ten million pensioners.

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France is in an unprecedented political crisis. President Emmanuel Macron’s political party, Ensemble, was beaten in the European election in June. It was an anti-Macron referendum, resulting in a victory for Marine Le Pen’s right-wing populist party Rassemblement National (RN), in an election with little participation and a divided left. Macron then dissolved the national assembly thinking he would be able to find a new majority with the right-wing Republicans and part of the Socialist Party (PS) and the Ecologists (EELV). He lost the parliamentary elections too because he is hated for his anti-social, pro-rich policies.

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