A happy new year to all
Welcome to the first bimonthly Workers – 24 pages in full colour, replacing a 16-page monthly in black and white.
Editorials
Editorials
Take housing off the market
Estimates put the value of Britain’s housing stock at more than £5 trillion – that’s five thousand billion. Yet the shortage of housing remains a pressing requirement for millions of workers.
The holy freedoms of capitalism
The EU is built on the “free movements” of capital, labour, goods and services, that is, on uncontrolled movements of all four. Capital needs these “freedoms” in order to maximise its profits, and for no other reason.
Hands off the Middle East
Parliament disgraced itself when it voted in October for another assault on stricken Iraq – “making the rubble bounce”, in the US Air Force’s unsavoury phrase.
Ebola: capitalist health exposed
Just about every aspect of the insanity of capitalism is exposed by the current outbreak of Ebola virus centred on west Africa.
We are changing
This journal is changing. In fact, the whole way the CPBML produces news is changing, starting with a free electronic newsletter.
The politics of Hong Kong protest
19 October 2014
The so-called “pro-democracy” demonstrators seeking to occupy central areas of Hong Kong are for the return of Hong Kong as an independent capitalist statelet, severed from mainland China.
Hands off Syria!
We are told that we have to attack Syria in order to defeat the Islamic State (IS). The peoples of the Middle East will have to deal with their own backward feudal despots.
What democracy really means
Now that the referendum is over, the focus of the media has leapfrogged the coming months and focused on the general election. Nothing else is held to be relevant.
A system set up for slavery
The government is sponsoring a series of television adverts against slavery in Britain. The domestic servant, the farm hands, the sweat shop labourers, the sex worker etc. The great unsaid, but obvious from the presentations, is that these modern-day slaves are migrant workers.
Pay: a step in the right direction
This October’s TUC national demo will have a single concrete demand: Britain Needs a Pay Rise. It's a welcome change from vague calls such as the March for the Alternative.
Once again, no intervention in Iraq
Once again the war drums are beating over Iraq. This time we are told we have to go into battle abroad in order to prevent ISIS waging war on the streets of Britain, or to save the Yazidis.
Genocide in Gaza
Yet again Israel’s military terrorises Gaza. Why does political progress remain so far out of reach in this pivotal part of the Middle East?
Dangerous manoeuvres
NATO military exercises including British troops are due to take place in Ukraine in July. This is a dangerous move that will inevitably escalate an already tense situation.
Positive thinking
Sometimes it seems as if opposition to capitalism remains just that – opposition. Are we so mired in the trenches that we cannot lift our sights and think not about opposing their plans but proposing our own?
Iraq: tragedy and farce
Karl Marx famously wrote that history repeats itself – the first time as tragedy, then as farce. That sums up the contortions that the US is twisting itself into over Iraq, shabbily abetted by Cameron.
Time to be ungrateful
This year will see a host of elections. Can the working class could use them to advance our interests? Or is there a better way?