Socialism today Issue 286 April 2025

Chinese company DeepSeek launched its generative AI ‘r1 model’ in January. Run and primarily funded by Liang Wenfeng, a billionaire and former trader, DeepSeek focuses on novel AI research. DeepSeek has published scientific papers detailing the technological advances used in its ‘Large Language Model’ (LLM) r1 and released the weights of the model open source.

The model uses less energy to run and process the large amounts of human-created data required to ‘train’ it. For what was at that point a relatively unknown company, having to work around the embargo on the export of the chips needed to produce LLMs, r1 performed at a level comparable to the massive LLMs made by tech giants such as Google, OpenAI and others; and at a much cheaper cost.

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In January 2024 a new party, the Bündnis Sahra Wagenknecht (BSW – the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance) emerged from a split from Die Linke (the Left Party) in Germany, and initially achieved a political success unprecedented in German post-war history.

A few months after it was founded, it won seats in the European parliament elections in the summer of 2024 and in three East German state parliaments in the autumn. In opinion polls it was ahead of Die Linke for months. But in the German general election on 23 February this year, it failed by a wafer-thin margin to cross the 5% hurdle to enter the national parliament. In contrast, Die Linke achieved almost 9% of the vote, with 64 seats.

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The Socialist Party’s national congress took place from 15-17 March, eight weeks after Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president for the second time. TONY SAUNOIS, general secretary of the Committee for a Workers International (CWI), introduced the discussion on world perspectives. The following article is based on his speech.

The explosive political and social situation in Britain is against the background of a new historic conjuncture internationally. In the world events we see unfolding in 2025 the decisive processes mean that there can be no isolated national perspectives or analysis. This has always been the case, yet it is even more so today.

If we say that the world is at an historic turning point how is the world situation characterised? The coming to power of the Trump regime brings with it a new world order. It signifies a sharp rupture from the previous post-second world war era. The ascendency of the Trump regime reflects a new dystopian, protracted death agony of capitalism.

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What does Donald Trump’s election to the US presidency for a second term signify? Is it the reflection of an inexorable rise of the populist and far right internationally? Is it a revival of fascism, as the former Scottish National Party (SNP) MP Mhairi Black argued recently? PHILIP STOTT replies.

Donald Trump’s return to power has shocked and angered millions in the US and internationally. Completely understandably, there is great concern about what this will mean for the working class including immigrants and undocumented workers facing bans and deportations. Additionally, women face possible further attacks on abortion rights, and LGBTQ+ people face even more obstacles in the continuing fight for equality.

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Fifty years ago this month US imperialism suffered its final ignominious defeat in Vietnam with the fall of its puppet regime in the south. It was a different era then with global, and domestic politics too, shaped by the system clash between Stalinism and the capitalist West. But, argues CHRISTINE THOMAS, Vietnam still has lessons for today’s world of multi-polar geopolitics and a revival of mass struggles.

The ‘Fall of Saigon’ on 30 April 1975 marked the final chapter in a decades-long fight of the Vietnamese people for national liberation. A courageous struggle by a predominantly peasant movement in a poverty-stricken country defeated first French imperialism and then the US – the richest and most powerful nation on the planet, armed to the teeth with the latest hi-tech bombs and military weaponry. With the capture of the south Vietnamese capital Saigon by the North Vietnamese forces, and the chaotic exodus of the remaining Americans on military helicopters, the country was finally united and the Vietnamese able to determine their own future, free from imperialist intervention.

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Taken As Red: How Labour Won Big and the Tories Crashed the Party

By Anushka Asthana

Published by Harper North, 2024, £22

Reviewed by Helen Pattison

Taken as Red was published in September 2024, chronicling the run up to the general election in July 2024, and the election itself. It gives readers the view of the deputy political editor of ITV, Anushka Asthana, a former journalist at The Guardian newspaper, as she watched it unfold from behind the scenes.

Perhaps the most revealing thing about this book is how it, unintentionally, exposes the incredibly rapid pace of events in British politics today. Just six months after its release and the book feels extremely out of date. It is brimming with enthusiasm for the “most seismic election in a generation”, which it puts down partly to the Tories’ destruction of their own party, and Starmer’s ‘bold fight’ to win power.

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James and John: A True Story of Prejudice and Murder

By Chris Bryant

Published by Bloomsbury, 2024, £10

Reviewed by Michael Johnson

On the 27 November 1835, the last two men executed for homosexuality in England, James Pratt and John Smith, were hanged. Their crime was described as “against the order of nature… abominable… to the great displeasure of Almighty God, to the great scandal of all human kind”.

The charge, buggery, was indeed felt to be so shocking to the public that it could not even be written down in newspaper, instead styled as “b-gg-ry”. What it actually involved for James and John was meeting privately behind a locked door and being spied on through a window and key hole.

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Resistance: How protest shaped Britain and photography shaped protest

Steve McQueen

Turner Contemporary, Margate

22 February to 1 June 2025

Reviewed by Jim Horton

In this excellent exhibition, Steve McQueen presents a stunning collection of over 200 photographs, documenting a history of protests over a turbulent one hundred-year period. Resistance, the culmination of a four-year research project, explores how photography recorded key moments of social and political change, acted as a catalyst for action, and actively shaped how we remember past events. Its central message is that resistance can achieve results, while, as Steve McQueen says, protest remains “especially urgent in today’s political climate”.

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