Socialism Today – Page 4 – Socialist Party magazine

Struggle in Minneapolis – the first time round

3 March, 2026Admin

Back in 1934 Minneapolis was the scene of another bitter struggle, pitching sections of the city’s working class against local bosses and the capitalist state apparatus. ROB WILLIAMS recounts the momentous battles of that time and their lessons for the struggle today.

The tumultuous scenes in Minneapolis, as mass opposition grows to Trump’s anti-immigrant ICE agents, have brought home to US workers and millions across the world that a new period of volatility has opened up.

That this virtual uprising included actions called under the name ‘general strike’, with all its limitations and contradictions, has at least introduced the language of the trade union movement into this mass resistance to Trump’s brutal racist offensive. However, the need to fully put the stamp of the organised working-class on these events, both in Minnesota and across the US, is a fundamental task of socialists and trade unionists, in order to unite workers and young people and undermine the divide-and-rule tactics which the capitalist system has always employed and Trump has taken to extreme limits.

Over 90 years ago, on the very same streets that this furious opposition against ICE erupted, a mighty struggle between workers and bosses took place. Despite some clear differences, there were many features in this class battle that are relevant for the struggles today, not least the essential ingredient of leadership of the workers’ movement and the decisive role that Marxist revolutionaries can play.

A turning point in history

3 March, 2026Admin

Even though it was Stalinism that had failed not socialism, the collapse of the totalitarian regimes of Russia and Eastern Europe ideologically disarmed workers’ organisations, changing the world balance of class forces for a whole historical era. IAIN DALTON reviews an important new collection of Peter Taaffe’s writings.

The Collapse of Stalinism – its causes and consequences

By Peter Taaffe

Published by Mentmore Press, 2026, £12.99

The collapse of Stalinism was a major turning point in world history, alongside the victory of the October 1917 revolution and the outcome of the second world war the third most significant turning point in the 20th century in shaping the world balance of class forces. Whilst previous material produced by the Socialist Party, such as the Rise of Militant book, covered how the regimes in the Soviet Union and the Eastern Bloc collapsed from 1989 onwards, this new publication adds a richness to understanding how this process took place. It does so through articles written by the late former Socialist Party general secretary Peter Taaffe, stretching over a period of some 45 years.

The book splits into three sections, the first dealing with the character of the Stalinist states. The workers’ democracy of the early years of the Russian revolution under Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky is separated by a river of blood from the brutal, dictatorial regime that is depicted in Peter’s reviews of two books by Soviet dissidents and two by a historian about the rise of Stalinism.

When the bubble bursts

3 March, 20263 March, 2026Admin

1929: The Inside Story of the Greatest Crash

By Andrew Ross Sorkin

Published by Allen Lane, 2025 £30.00

Reviewed by Nick Hart

Shares traded on US stock markets at an all-time high. Companies dealing in the latest communication technology leading the way with huge paper valuations. The millionaire class enjoying a previously unimaginable explosion in their wealth, with cheap and readily available credit to allow the population to feel better off than they actually are.

All of these trends sound familiar in today’s world. But swapping AI and cloud computing for the then new innovations of television and telephone lines, they could equally be applied to the 1920s. With the ‘roaring twenties’ now as infamous for the economic boom in America as its abrupt end with the Wall Street crash, Andrew Ross Sorkin’s new book, 1929,aims to tell the story of how the bubble burst and gave way to the great depression of the 1930s.

Starmer’s Svengali

3 March, 20263 March, 2026Admin

Get In: The Inside Story of Labour Under Starmer

By Patrick Maguire and Gabriel Pogrund

Published by Bodley Head, 2025, £25

Reviewed by Dean Young

On the surface, Get In appears to be a snapshot of Starmer’s Labour leadership; from gaining the position through his ‘ten pledges’ deception in 2020 to winning the 2024 general election, mainly just because people were so sick and tired of the Tories. However, really the book’s main protagonist is the recently resigned Morgan McSweeney, who was Starmer’s right-hand man and served as Chief of Staff and Head of Political Strategy, and also led the Labour Together internal group. At times the book reads almost as a biography of him.

Inside Putin’s Russia

3 March, 20263 March, 2026Admin

Mr Nobody Against Putin

A film by David Borenstein and Pavel Talankin, 2025

The Good Russian

By Jana Bakunina

Published by The Bridge Street Press, 2025, £12-99

Reviewed by Clare Doyle

For anyone outside Russia struggling to understand the apparent quiescence of its population towards Vladimir Putin and his war-mongering machine, a new film, Mr Nobody Against Putin, and a new book, The Good Russian, go a long way in portraying – if not totally explaining – the phenomenon.

Severe punishment for the slightest dissent is one factor that has put a stop to nearly all street protests and public criticism in the media. But this film and the book dig deep into the way Putin’s propaganda is put over and assimilated by a population – young and old – who have no access to alternative ‘explanations’ of how things have come to the state they are in now.

Editorial: Behind Trump’s imperial delusions

2 February, 20262 February, 2026Admin

In November last year the Trump administration published its National Security Strategy of the United States of America. Hard on its heels, as 2026 dawned, the kidnapping of Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife by US forces were a graphic demonstration of Trump’s ‘security strategy’ in action. This has been swiftly followed by the ramping up of Trump’s demands for the US to take control of Greenland.

Publishing National Security Strategy documents is not peculiar to Trump. Almost a quarter of a century earlier, in September 2002, the administration of a previous Republican President, George W Bush, produced his version. Comparing the differences between the two shows the gulf between US imperialism and the geopolitical context within which it operates, then and now.

Local councils’ austerity squeeze is still on

2 February, 2026Admin

A previous article in Socialism Today, written after the first budget of the incoming Labour government, laid out the dire position facing local council services: “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”.(No.283, December 2024-January 2025)

How has the position changed, after a further budget and another Local Government Funding Settlement? The original figures were based on research by the Local Government Association (LGA) and the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) of council budgets up to 2022-23. However, over the past two years, the LGA projected a further funding gap of £6.2 billion. So, the cumulative, current ‘spending gap’ (the amount required to return to 2010 service standards) has now probably risen to over £30 billion.

Global Warning: Trump’s ‘new colonialism’ and the environment

2 February, 20262 February, 2026Admin

As well as seeking to dominate the world oil market, green issues are still playing an unacknowledged role in America’s strategic thinking, despite Trump calling global warming a ‘hoax’ and renewable energy a ‘scam’. Targets of the US administration, Canada and Greenland, are rich in minerals such as lithium that have a major role in green technology. China, US imperialism’s main rival, currently dominates lithium production. Its strategic importance was shown when the US was forced to back down in its tariff war when global supply chains were disrupted due to China’s ban on lithium exports.

Assessing the ‘fascist’ Meloni government

2 February, 2026Admin

Giorgia Meloni’s coalition government in Italy has been in power for over three years now. If she lasts to the end of her full term, in October 2027, she will be one of only two Italian prime ministers to do so since the second world war. But what exactly is the character of Meloni’s government? Is it fascist, or ‘pre-fascist’, as some left groups claim? What explains its stability relative to many other European governments? And in what direction is it heading, asks CHRISTINE THOMAS?

Giorgia Meloni became prime minister of Italy in October 2022, almost exactly 100 years after around 40,000 of Benito Mussolini’s blackshirts marched on Rome. The assembled march was a prelude to King Victor Emmanuel III making Mussolini prime minister, opening up the ‘ventennio’ – 20 years of totalitarian fascist rule. Given that Meloni was previously a member of the MSI – the post-war successor of Mussolini’s fascist party – it was inevitable that analogies would be drawn between the two events.

Revisiting Corbynism and its lessons

2 February, 2026Admin

The annual Socialism weekend in November included a discussion, led by CLIVE HEEMSKERK, on the lessons of Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party. With obvious relevance for current debates around Your Party and the fight for a new mass workers’ party, we are publishing what is a combined version of the introduction and reply.

The first thing to understand about Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party from 2015 to 2019 – ‘Corbynism Mark One’ – is that it was a product of economic and political factors that persist to this day. That those factors resulted in Corbyn’s election as Labour leader in September 2015 was an ‘accident of history’ which could have equally manifested themselves in the formation of a new party. And that is an important context for the debates around Your Party, launched by Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana in the summer. Whatever role Your Party may or may not play in the period ahead, the objective factors that are putting the question of a new mass workers’ party on the agenda will remain.