Thatcher: not a bit of good
Thatcher is invariably presented as cruel but necessary. Her own phrase “there is no alternative” has become the truth in the popular imagination. But that does not reflect the true reality of the period…
read more
Overview of Lenin's imperialism
In this work, Lenin must’ve just re-read capital, because both in content and style, the work is very similar to that one. And this is not a compliment. In Capital, Marx endlessly repeats himself; not satisfied with one explanation of a proposition, he must have at least three and he’ll bring at least one of them up again when he goes back to that concept. Here, Lenin has done the same.
read more
Black Lives Matter
The spark On May 25, 2020, George Floyd, a 46-year-old black man, was killed in Minneapolis during an arrest for allegedly using a counterfeit bill. A white police officer knelt on Floyd’s neck for almost nine minutes while Floyd was handcuffed and lying face down in the street, begging for his life and repeatedly saying “I can’t breathe”. A second and third officer further restrained Floyd while a fourth prevented bystanders from intervening.
read more
The role of factionalism in the Labour Party
Now because Emilie Oldknow is a litigious waste of flesh, I should clarify that this is an summary which assumes the veracity of the report and no original claims about her will be made. Please mentally insert the word ‘allegedly’ before every assertion other than this one: that Emilie Oldknow is a litigious waste of flesh.
The report was written in conjunction with the EHRC report into antisemitism since the Governance and Legal Unit, called the GLU in this report, played a fairly major role in the continuation and publicity surrounding antisemitism in the labour party.
read more
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, apart from having a terribly clumsy name, is a pamphlet comprised mostly of excerpts from Anti-Dühring, which was itself a riposte to the work of Eugen Dühring, who was a socialist, but not a fan of Marxism. At the time, Dühring was forming a sect within the German Socialist party - so we can understand why Engels penned so many pages against his ideas. Of course, Engels is now the main reason anybody even remembers his name.
read more
The Marxist Prince
The Prince is a strong contender for the most misunderstood work of all time. You will not find a manual purely for villains, nor will you find the writings of a man with no regard for the common people.
read more
A brief history of law and its enforcement
First, a bit about the background of policing - of course you’ll know that police forces in their modern form didn’t emerge until the industrial revolution, but before we get to that, I thought it might be interesting to look at historical modes of law enforcement to see what their legal priorities were and to see how these were enforced.
Policing, in whatever form it has taken seems to largely have always been an urban phenomenon - as suggested by its name, with ‘Polis’ being the greek for city.
read more
The contradictions of Extinction Rebellion
Extinction Rebellion have been the primary actors in pushing the climate agenda recently. They’re by far the most prominent group doing this kind of work despite only having been created 11 months ago.
Their main achievement over this time has been to move climate change up the agenda as a political issue, with the main manifestation of this being the declaration of a climate emergency in May.
Their demands:
Government must tell the truth by declaring a climate and ecological emergency, working with other institutions to communicate the urgency for change.
read more
Destroy the Economy to Save the Planet
Everybody knows the world is heating up; everybody knows this is a bad thing.
But few people understand just how bad it is, what’s going to happen as a result and what we can do about it.
I’m not going to talk to you about how many degrees the planet is going to heat up by; I’m just going to tell you about the effects this heating is likely to have.
read more
On UBI
UBI is an idea that’s gained significant popularity over the last few years, but it’s certainly nothing particularly original. The idea is to pay every single person the same amount on a regular basis with the end goal of replacing the benefits system and thus eliminating that bureaucracy. The reason it’s particularly relevant at the moment is that Sheffield Council have voiced their support for a trial scheme in the city.
read more