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Kazakhstan’s turmoil

2 March, 2022Admin

The mass revolt in Kazakhstan at the beginning of this year is unprecedented in this vast Central Asian country. But the explosion of anger did not come out of a clear blue sky, argues CLARE DOYLE. In recent years, workers’ struggles and mass protests against falling living standards have become bolder and more frequent. Further explosions of anger against the oligarchic elite that rules this mineral-rich country are inevitable.

The current president of Kazakhstan, Kassym-Jomart Tokaev, was a grey figure appointed in 2019 by veteran dictator Nursultan Nazarbaev to succeed him. It was widely understood that Tokaev was little more than a puppet of ‘the old man’. But January’s events were to open up deep divisions at the top.

Confronted with a wave of mass protest against the doubling of fuel prices that swept the country, Tokaev moved rapidly to reverse the measure. When there was no sign of the mass movement abating, he switched tack. On 5 January, Tokaev declared a state of emergency. He removed the prime minister from office, suspended the government and arrested the head of security, accusing him of treason.

On the same day, Tokaev called on his erstwhile ‘comrade’, Vladimir Putin, to come to his aid with armed contingents of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organisation. Tokaev alleged that the uprising had been provoked by tens of thousands of ‘international terrorists’ (by implication linked with Islamic State) and issued the blood-curdling order to his forces to ‘shoot to kill’ without warning.

Introduction to Marxism: a new series in Socialism Today

2 March, 2022Admin

In coming issues, Socialism Today will be publishing the content of five new Introduction to Marxism pamphlets being produced by the Socialist Party. They are based on a series first printed in 2003, but take into account the context of the present period; and a fresh approach has been taken in some sections to the way the ideas are presented. Here we begin with the introduction to the new series, written by JUDY BEISHON.

The Marxist ideas contained in this series of short pamphlets are just as vital today as when they were first brilliantly put forward by Karl Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels in the nineteenth century.

Since then, their clear explanation of the failures of capitalism as a system and why it can’t deliver a decent future for humanity and the planet has stood the test of time. Recent decades have seen worsening economic crises, increased inequality, massive levels of displacement and the growing impact of climate change. More recently, the Covid-19 pandemic has shown the failure of capitalist governments to put sufficient resources into public health, whether for preventative measures or treatments.

None of the systemic fault lines that existed at the time of Marx and Engels have been solved. On the contrary, they have further developed and taken a sharper form in many respects. Today we live in a time of immense turmoil, rapidly moving events and great tensions between the world’s ruling classes.

A true crime story

2 March, 2022Admin

The Great Post Office Scandal
By Nick Wallis
Published by Bath Publishing Ltd, 2021, £25
Reviewed by Bill Mullins

Just before the start of the new millennium the post office, or to give it its full title, Post Office Limited (POL), introduced a new computer system for all its sub-post offices throughout the country. The system, known as the Horizon system, linked up 40,000 terminals at 18,000 sub-post offices with head office in London and the IT company Fujitsu in Bracknell.

As the book makes clear, despite all the lies, arrogance and bluster of the Post Office and Fujitsu bosses, the system was fatally flawed. As Nick Willis spells out in great detail, this led to a human tragedy of massive proportions for hundreds (if not thousands, as evidence continues to come out) of sub postmasters.

Black Friday and the 1921 miners’ lockout

2 March, 2022Admin

The Great Betrayal: Black Friday and the 1921 miners’ lockout
By Michael Borodin, translated by Pete Dickenson
Published by Mentmore Press, 2021, £10-99
Reviewed by Ross Saunders

Pete Dickenson has translated into English for the first time The Great Betrayal, written following the events of ‘Black Friday’ in 1921 when conservative trade union leaders betrayed the miners who were battling against a national lockout organised by the private owners of the coal mine industry.

Written shortly after the events which it describes, the book is an attempt by an active participant in the fight for socialism to understand and explain a workers’ struggle of world significance. As the introduction says, “many of the lessons drawn about revolutionary tactics and winning over the working class are very relevant for today’s generation of activists”.

Letter: Corbyn’s Labour and anti-Semitism

2 March, 2022Admin

Responding to the review of his book, Labour, Anti-Semitism, and the Destroying of an MP, in the December-January edition of Socialism Today (No.254), Lee Garratt disagrees with Judy Beishon’s insistence that what was needed was a broad fightback by Jeremy Corbyn and the Labour left leadership against the Blairites. Instead, he says, “a very simple step would have been for the left to call out blatant lies as lies. It is my opinion that, if the left leadership in the PLP had done this consistently, the whole issue would have never gained momentum… no organised ‘fightback’ would have been needed as it would have been a non-issue”. (Socialism Today No.255, February 2022)

I fully agree with Judy’s stance but rather than simply repeat it I will endeavour to add to it within the context of the book’s remit, namely, ‘the anti-Semitism crisis’.

Letter: The struggle for the NHS

2 March, 2022Admin

No one under retirement age can remember health in Britain before the NHS. Such as it was, the service consisted of a mishmash of provisions a little like that in the USA today.

People in salaried employment paid into health insurance. There were independent hospitals, funded by charity, including sending nurses out collecting on ‘flag days’. GPs charged for services and for prescriptions, as did dentists and oculists. The National Insurance Act of 1911 had provided for ‘panel patients’. Men and women in work could receive free medical treatment, but not their families and the service was often second class. Anyway, fewer than half the country’s medical practices had signed up to this system. This was the patchwork system that the Labour government of 1945 inherited.

Where is Britain heading?

17 February, 2022Admin

As Boris Johnson’s premiership teeters on the brink, the underlying weakness of British capitalism will leave little room for manoeuvre for whoever replaces him, whether from within the divided Tory party or Sir Keir Starmer. Taking the necessary steps towards a mass working class political vehicle is ever more vital. These are the themes of the draft British Perspectives document for the Socialist Party’s national congress in March, written by HANNAH SELL, from which we print edited extracts.

In every country the pandemic has thrown all aspects of society into flux. It has created enormous economic uncertainty and increased tensions between nation states, different sections of ruling elites and, above all, between classes. At the start of the pandemic, governments were generally able to temporarily increase their support under the banner of ‘national unity’ against the virus. But this has now turned into its opposite, nowhere more so than in Britain. The new period we are going into will be one of class conflict and growing instability, with the current turmoil in the Tory Party a signaler of the stormy events that lie ahead.

The end of Tommy Sheridan’s Solidarity party

17 February, 202215 October, 2025Admin

At its conference on 4 December, Solidarity – ‘Scotland’s Socialist Movement’ – voted to effectively dissolve as a party. This followed a recommendation from its national executive committee (NEC), which includes Tommy Sheridan. Solidarity is now deregistered and can no longer stand in elections. Instead, it is now a ‘network’ helping to build Alba – the populist, pro-capitalist nationalist party led by former Scottish National Party (SNP) first minister, Alex Salmond. This is just the latest step in the long-term nationalist trajectory by Tommy Sheridan, formerly a significant reference point for fighting socialist ideas in Scotland.

Solidarity’s current political outlook is underlined in the concluding points in the NEC statement which says their key aim is “pushing them [Alba] from left of centre towards our left and socialist vision… a socially just, fair and equal nuclear free independent Scotland”. The long-term political abandonment of a principled socialist position by Tommy Sheridan and Solidarity has, unfortunately, been taken to a new level.

The battle for higher education

17 February, 2022Admin

The rising discontent of students and university workers that has been brought to a head during the pandemic presages a broader questioning of the role of higher education in an era of globalised neo-liberal capitalism, argues BEA GARDNER.

University workers and students are concluding that a fundamental shift is needed in how universities are funded and organised, including ending the marketisation of higher education which has proliferated in the neo-liberal era that followed the end of the long post-war boom.

The neo-liberal agenda pioneered by Margaret Thatcher and the US president Ronald Reagan, and given added impetus by the ideological triumphalism of capitalism that followed the collapse of the Stalinist regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe from the late-1980s, included the deregulation of markets, cutting public expenditure, privatising state-run goods and services, and replacing the idea of collective or public goods with the notion of individual responsibility. This agenda has had multiple, interrelated impacts on universities, affecting the models on which the sector is organised as well as the character of those participating within it.

Firstly was the process of marketisation, leading to the emergence of a higher education marketplace in Britain and globally, based on universities directly competing for their share of students and research funding.

The history of humankind

17 February, 2022Admin

The Story of Work: A New History of Humankind
By Jan Lucassen
Published by Yale University Press, 2021, £25

The disruptive effect of the Covid pandemic has sparked a wide-ranging discussion about the nature of work in the ‘new normal’. Viewed in that context, Jan Lucassen’s recent book is very timely. However, while the main heading is ‘The Story of Work’, it is the subhead, ‘A New History of Humankind’, which really sums up the book’s subject matter. A well-researched and detailed work of enormous scope, it covers the rise of humanity to ‘late capitalism’, with work at its core. While its overall analysis is flawed from a Marxist point of view, it does nonetheless incorporate new discoveries and material, and covers in some detail those areas of the world that are often ignored or superficially skirted over in other books.

The rising discontent of students and university workers that has been brought to a head during the pandemic presages a broader questioning of the role of higher education in an era of globalised neo-liberal capitalism, argues BEA GARDNER.

CHRISTINE THOMAS reviews a new book which, despite the author’s reluctance to use Marxist terminology, vindicates the method of interpreting historical and social change that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels developed.