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Germany’s new Chicago Boys

7 October, 201911 November, 2019Admin

The deep crises in the world economy and political establishments are not only reflected in attempts to resurrect Keynesian-style policies. Other capitalist economists are proposing that an even harsher neoliberal model should be applied – looking back to the 1970s and 80s. That is the subject of a book by German economist, Rainer Zitelmann, reviewed here by PETER TAAFFE.

The Power of Capitalism: a journey through recent history across four continents
By Rainer Zitelmann
Published by LID, 2018, £19.99

This book by Rainer Zitelmann is quite clearly written as a justification for a further shift towards the right in German capitalism’s economic policies, a process already underway and reinforced by the growing crisis of the economy. It can also be used on a much wider scale by bourgeois economists in other countries. It is likely that Germany will tip into recession in the third quarter of this year, the country’s central bank has warned. It has gone from the powerhouse of Europe to an economic laggard, weighed down by turmoil in the automotive industry, the US-China trade war, and the prospects of a chaotic UK exit from the European Union.

The alt-right threat

7 October, 201911 November, 2019Admin

Across Europe we have seen a resurgent right making electoral gains. In the US, white supremacists have grown increasingly confident after the election of the right-populist Donald Trump. A new book aims to explain this phenomenon but, PAULA MITCHELL argues, a materialist approach is necessary to understand the alt-right, its roots, limits and perspectives.

The Alt-Right: what everyone needs to know
By George Hawley
Published by Oxford University Press, 2019, £10.99

The US alt-right came to prominence during Donald Trump’s 2016 election campaign. Steve Bannon, former editor of alt-right website Breitbart, was chief executive of Trump’s presidential campaign and, latterly, White House chief strategist. Bannon and others linked up with the organisers of the Football Lads Alliance in Britain, pledging money to build a new street movement.

A challenge to homeless stereotypes

6 October, 201911 November, 2019Admin

The Salt Path
By Raynor Winn
Published by Penguin Books, 2019, £9.99
Reviewed by Heather Rawling

At one level, this is just simply a delightful book, a good read, a love story beautifully written. In addition, though, it is an inspiring true story about a middle-aged couple’s experience of austerity Britain shipwrecked by the treacherous rocks of finance capital. It manages to be a travel book and a page turner. It is Raynor Winn’s first book and was shortlisted for the Wainwright Golden Beer Book Prize in 2018.

Editorial: The ‘national unity’ threat to Corbynism

14 September, 201920 July, 2022Admin

A rising sense of panic is gripping the strategists of British capitalism as the 31 October Brexit deadline draws ever closer. “Britain’s exit from the European Union without a withdrawal deal would be an unequivocal national calamity”, the Guardian newspaper editorialised (16 August). The usually more soberly-toned Financial Times has also used similar phrases.

Comparisons have been made with Winston Churchill’s decision in 1925 to return to the gold standard at pre-world war exchange rates, an effective 10% appreciation of sterling. This move was famously excoriated by John Maynard Keynes in his pamphlet, The Economic Consequences of Mr Churchill, as a self-inflicted wound on the UK economy – although, as with the no deal, ‘soft Brexit’ or no Brexit debate today, there were no policies within the framework of capitalism that could have resolved the fundamental contradictions of a crisis-inherent system. Meanwhile, a leaked paper from inside Angela Merkel’s German government, reporting that the EU’s preparations for a no deal are “largely complete” in so far as they can be, assesses that Brexit with no withdrawal treaty is now a “high probability”.

Imperialism past and present

13 September, 201911 November, 2019Admin

US-China trade tensions, Germany’s slide into recession, EU crisis and regional conflicts all bear witness to increasing rivalry between the major powers and trading blocs. They also mean that an understanding of the imperialist stage of capitalism is more relevant than ever. ROBIN CLAPP writes.

When Jeremy Corbyn wrote the foreword to a 2011 edition of John A Hobson’s classic work, Imperialism: A Study, a Guardian reviewer called it a “perfectly decent introductory essay”. Yet in May of this year, Corbyn’s endorsement of this 1902 book was weaponised by a Times journalist, who claimed that Hobson was anti-Semitic and, by extension, the Labour leader must be so too.

Capitalism: a scorched-earth system

13 September, 201911 November, 2019Admin

Tackling global warming is, to state the obvious, a global problem. The environment and climate are everywhere. It is also inextricably linked to the global political economy: the way the world is run.

A consequence of greenhouse gas emissions, human-induced global warming is, by definition, a systemic crisis, a crisis of capitalism. Even the measurements for the amount of carbon in the atmosphere are comparisons with pre-industrial levels – the dawn of the 18th century industrial revolution and mass production driven by fossil fuels.

Report after report has detailed the interconnectedness of the environment and human activity, and the need for far-reaching action on this existential threat. Summit after summit claims success. In reality, however, the progress has been glacial.

Marxism and the second world war

13 September, 201911 November, 2019Admin

Eighty years ago, the major powers plunged humanity into the horror of world war. Despite the contending claims this was, at root, a struggle for markets, and economic and political dominance. In a shortened version of an article first published in Socialism Today No.131, PETER TAAFFE looks at the background to the war and the responsibility of socialists in wartime.

The total number of victims of the second world war dwarfed even the carnage of the first. Estimates of the number of casualties suggest some 60 million died, 20 million soldiers and 40 million civilians. Many civilians died of disease, starvation, massacres, bombing and deliberate genocide. The now-disappeared ‘Soviet Union’ lost around 27 million, just under half of all the casualties in the war.

Learning from Southampton school victory

12 September, 201919 March, 2020Admin

At a time of a growing school funding crisis the recent victory at Southampton’s Valentine Primary, which won a two-year freeze on budget cuts through an injection of £1.6 million by Southampton council, is an important example of what can be achieved.

Socialist Party reaffirms support for CWI’s historic ideas

12 September, 201919 March, 2020Admin

On Sunday 21 July over 200 delegates at a special conference of the Socialist Party in England and Wales voted overwhelmingly, 83.2% to 16.8%, (173-35), to sponsor an international conference to reconstitute the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI – the international organisation of which the Socialist Party is part).

A graphic depiction of Peterloo

12 September, 20198 November, 2022Admin

Peterloo: witnesses to a massacre

By Polyp, Eva Schlunke and Robert Poole

Published by New Internationalist, 2019, £11.99

Reviewed by Kevin Parslow

When peaceful protesters were slain in St Peter’s Fields, Manchester, on 16 August 1819, the first media reports were articles in The Times and then the radical Manchester Observer, which gave the massacre its name, ‘Peter-loo’ – to echo the battle of Waterloo. Major Dyneley of the 15th Hussars Regiment dubbed it the ‘battle of Manchester’. Later accounts were accompanied by illustrations, notably those of cartoonist George Cruikshank. He illustrated The Political House that Jack Built, by satirist William Hone, and depicted the Manchester and Salford Yeomanry’s brutal assault on the crowd.