Party & Programme
End the cycle of splits
24 May 2012
If the left is to build a serious political organisation it will have to facilitate internal dissent, writes Mike Macnair. And that will require both majorities and minorities to act responsibly
Socialism requires democracy
07 May 2026
We on the left are a minority, we Marxists are a minority of that minority and we partyists are a minority of that minority. How do we change that? Not, argues Mike Macnair, by silencing ourselves through factional bans and speech controls
Considerations of defeat
07 May 2026
Making the Anglo-Russian Trade Union Committee pivotal has become a shibboleth. But the argument does not add up. Jack Conrad says we should stop repeating tired clichés about the 1926 General Strike and learn to think instead
New proscriptions for old
30 Apr 2026
Claudia Webbe, Tristan Colum and Duncan Chapel have all declared war on the curse of faction and division. In each case it amounts to using dead Marxists to silence living Marxists. Mike Macnair defends political democracy and the right to organise
America’s centrist assassins
30 Apr 2026
Why do young men keep trying to kill Donald Trump? Why do political ‘moderates’ turn to ‘extremist’ methods? Paul Demarty investigates a phenomenon with deep historical roots
Just so stories
23 Apr 2026
Members of the ISA in the US say they have been expelled for wanting to defend Iran and urging no support for Democrats. Here the comrades outline their political approach. The similarity with the Spartacists is striking, but, significantly, it goes completely unmentioned
Sloganeering on autopilot
23 Apr 2026
Marxism demands concrete analysis: it embraces complexity, it rejects trite formulations. With that in mind, Carl Collins takes issue with those who use the slogan, ‘No war but the class war’, to negate political struggle
The good, the bad and the party
23 Apr 2026
Confusion reigned over what attitude to take, when it came to the ‘official’ lefts in the trade unions and the Labour Party. Factional rights could conceivably have helped bring about clarity. Jack Conrad marks the centenary of the 1926 General Strike
Not so bold politics
23 Apr 2026
Tony Greenstein’s suspension from the Green Party exposes its current left posturing as a total sham. It also shows that investing hopes in the Green Party is completely misplaced. The Green Party is petty-bourgeois through and through, says Carla Roberts
Style is everything
23 Apr 2026
The CPB’s uniform ban, its craving for respectability, the purging of young rebels who object to its Zionism and its reactionary attacks on trans people - all are morbid symptoms of bureaucratic control-freakery. Eddie Ford tells the tale of two lives and two funerals
Agreeing the best model
16 Apr 2026
To stand or not to stand in elections has long divided the left. Marx argued for standing. But on what programme, around what issues? On April 11 the Netherlands Communistisch Platform held a day-school to discuss ‘Marxism and electoralism’. Mike Macnair and Rogier Specht provided introductions
Possibilities and perceptions
16 Apr 2026
Marking the centenary of the 1926 General Strike, Jack Conrad highlights the failure of the ‘official’ lefts both in the trade unions and the Labour Party. However, while there was betrayal, there were also objective limits to what could have been achieved
Funeral games
16 Apr 2026
Secret votes, gagging orders and hunting down whistleblowers. Yet, apart from rotten politics, there is nothing to hide. By imposing a needless bureaucratic dictatorship and purging the left, the Corbyn clique is killing what it imagines it is protecting. Carla Roberts reports
Not a clean, but a dirty split
09 Apr 2026
The standard left narrative of the 1914-21 schism in the Second International is misleading and nowadays too easily leads to irresponsible splits. Mike Macnair argues for historical complication
Ambitions and institutional limits
09 Apr 2026
Equipped with a long political pedigree and what counts nowadays as a radical social democratic platform, Avi Lewis has just been elected NDP leader. Siamak Mehr reports
A study in bureaucratic inertia
09 Apr 2026
Marking a hundred years since the 1926 General Strike, Jack Conrad shows that, while the Tory government urgently, assiduously, ruthlessly prepared, the TUC was content to pass left-sounding resolutions and then urge strikers to tend to their gardens