Marxist Voice

In this talk from last year's Revolution Festival, Ben Gliniecki looks at the current collapse of the liberal status quo, providing a Marxist analysis of liberalism's rise and fall.

In November 2016, American voters dispatched “the electoral equivalent of a suicide bomber to Washington”, according to the Financial Times.

Only months before, the British public had delivered a shocking blow to the European establishment by voting by a narrow majority to leave the European Union.

Today, nationalist parties across Europe are rising in the polls and a series of constitutional crises are opening up in Italy, Brazil and Britain (of course).

These are again highlighting the weakness of the liberal political and economic order that, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, had been considered by many to be indestructible.

But what exactly is liberalism? What does it represent? And why is it now in crisis everywhere? Ben Gliniecki considers these questions and discusses the possibility of a new world order based on the power of the working class.

Speaking at the recent Peterloo day school in Manchester, Mike Hogan of Liverpool Wavertree CLP discusses the lessons from the struggles waged in the 1980s by Liverpool city against Thatcher and the cuts.

With Marxist Labour councillors in the leadership, a mass movement involving the entire labour movement and working class communities was built up in Liverpool in the 80s, in order to oppose cuts and fight for socialist policies.

This was part of a national campaign, with anti-cuts councils springing up across the country. But unfortunately, rather than supporting this militant movement, the Labour leadership under Kinnock preferred to spend their time conducting a witch hunt against the Marxists in the Labour Party.

Without national support, councils gradually fell away and buckled one-by-one. In the end, Liverpool city council was left isolated and the movement was defeated.

Today, with a Tory government once again carrying out austerity and attacks on workers and youth, it is high time that Labour councillors organised a fightback against the cuts. The example of the Liverpool councillors shows the way forward.

In this talk from the 2018 Revolution Festival, Ben Curry of the Socialist Appeal editorial board discusses the life of James Connolly: the man, his ideas, and their relevance for Marxists today.

James Connolly was born in 1868 to Irish parents in Edinburgh’s Cowgate slum. He would grow to be the greatest Marxist ever produced by these islands; an iconic figure in the history of the Irish working class.

Executed by the British army in 1916 following his leading role in the Easter Rising, Connolly’s courage and sacrifice stand out as an inspiration to revolutionaries everywhere.

His ideas remain an important contribution to the Marxist understanding of national oppression and the struggle against it.

In this talk from the Revolution Festival 2018, Daniel Morley of the Socialist Appeal editorial board examines one of the most long-standing questions of philosophy: what is consciousness?This is a question that has become increasingly relevant with the rise of artificial intelligence.Modern technological advances have raised the idea of creating machines capable of thinking for themselves. This has generated hopes - and fears - that the next generation of robots will be able to display signs of consciousness. But is all this just the stuff of science fiction?Daniel attempts to answer these questions using the method of dialectical materialism - the philosophy of Marxism.In the process, Daniel explores the mysterious world of the human brain, examining what it is that separates our minds from machines.

In this talk from the 2018 Revolution Festival, Rob Sewell (editor of Socialist Appeal) explains the causes behind the 2008 crash and discusses the revolutionary way forward for society.September 2018 marked the 10th anniversary since the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the beginning of the deepest economic crisis in the history of capitalism.Now, over a decade on, none of the mainstream economists or establishment politicians can explain how we got here or offer a way out of the crisis.The economic ideas and analysis provided by Karl Marx, by contrast, provide a clear explanation of why crises occur under capitalism.Only by breaking with the profit system and establishing a socialist plan of production can we stop the slump and put an end to these crises once and for all.

To mark International Working Women's Day - 8th March - we publish a talk from the 2018 Revolution Festival, where Ellen Morton and Fiona Lali of the Marxist Student Federation discuss the modern struggles taking place internationally against women's oppression.

Ellen introduces the discussion by outlining how the crisis of capitalism has impacted upon working class women, who are doubly affected by austerity and the cuts to public services.

On the other side, as Ellen highlights, there has been a growing movement for liberation and equality across the world, with women and men uniting to fight on issues such as domestic violence, the gender pay gap, and abortion rights.

Fiona expands on the last of these questions, highlighting the inspiring campaign last year against restrictive abortion laws in the Republic of Ireland.

A big majority of Irish voters turned out in the #RepealTheEighth referendum, delivering a major blow to the establishment and the reactionary institution of the Catholic Church in the process.

Finally, Juana from Lucha de Clases (the Spanish section of the International Marxist Tendency) discusses the lessons of last year's 'feminist strike', when thousands took to the streets across Spain in a militant movement against women's oppression.

The task ahead is to build a global movement aimed at tackling the roots of sexism, misogyny, and prejudice. And this means overthrowing capitalism. In the final analysis, the fight for women's emancipation is a fight for socialist revolution.

Speaking at the 2018 Revolution Festival, Jack Halinski-Fitzpatrick of Socialist Appeal provides a Marxist analysis of what role morality plays within class society, and how revolutionaries should derive their ethical framework and decisions.Many critics of Marxism attempt to paint it as being a cold and inhumane philosophy, far more concerned with economics than ethics.But, in fact, Marxism has much to offer on the question of morality - not least to point out the outrageous hypocrisy of the scandal-ridden institutions that sanctimoniously preach to the rest of us about how we should live our lives.What separates Marxism as a philosophy, however, is how it arrives at its morals and principles from a class perspective: from an analysis of what raises consciousness and aids in the revolutionary emancipation of the working class.In this talk, Jack Halinski-Fitzpatrick looks at where our ethical codes and concepts come from under class society, and discusses what the socialist alternative is to the moral bankruptcy of the capitalist establishment.

In this video from the recent national conference of the Marxist Student Federation, Ian Hodson (president of the bakers' union) and Rob Sewell (editor of Socialist Appeal) discuss the turbulent political situation in Britain and the misery facing workers under capitalism.

Ian Hodson highlights the devastating impact of Tory austerity on working class communities, and emphasises how Brexit has divided workers and acted as a distraction from the cuts.

Ian also notes the enthusiasm that Corbyn and his left-wing policies have generated amongst workers and youth, in contrast to the disdain held towards the Blairite backstabbers.

In his contribution, Rob Sewell explains the history of Clause IV, Labour's original commitment to socialism, and outlines the role that Marxists have historically played in the development of the labour movement.

Above all, Rob stresses that the crisis in Britain today is a reflection of the world crisis of capitalism. This is why workers and students must unite and fight for a socialist Labour government.

In this video from the 2018 Revolution Festival, Alan Woods (editor of In Defence of Marxism) discusses the events of the English Civil War - England's revolution.The civil war in the 17th century saw the forces of Parliament battling against the monarchy of Charles I, fighting for power over England.In essence, this was a revolutionary struggle for domination by the rising bourgeois class of merchants and bankers - an attempt to usurp the old feudal institutions of the monarchy.Pivotal to the success of the 'Roundheads' (the supporters of Parliament) in the conflict against the Royalists was the role played by Oliver Cromwell, leader of the New Model Army.And within Cromwell's army were an even more radical wing - the Levellers - who wanted to go even further, anticipating the mass movements of the Chartists in the 19th century and their demands for universal democratic rights.The task today is to fight for a new revolution - one that throws both the monarchy and the capitalists into the dustbin of history where they belong.

In this talk from the 2018 Revolution Festival, Josh Holroyd discusses the origins of the capitalist system, the violent and contradictory revolution it carried out across the world, and the implications these hold for the fight against capitalism today.As Josh explains, the society in which we live is often presented as something eternal; a natural expression of human nature and common sense. But the reality could not be further from the truth.Capitalism - a system based on competition and production for profit - has in fact existed for only a few hundred years. It is only a brief and unique episode in the history of humanity.And far from being the organic product of human nature, the birth of the “free” market required the violent overthrow of the entire existing economic, social and political order. It brought with it the greatest wave of dispossession and enslavement the world has ever seen.True freedom, therefore, can only be brought about by breaking with the anarchy of the capitalist market and introducing a socialist plan of production based on needs, not profits.