Issue 1519 - 12 December 2024
Slave to the gift economy
What is the meaning of Christmas? Who is Father Christmas? What is the political economy of his Christmas operation? Jack Conrad provides some answers, but, above all, welcomes elvish resistance
Letters
Our own choice; Final goodbye?; Action blockade; Out of steam; Digital flower; Anti-migrant
Changing balance of forces
The new regime in Damascus is being widely celebrated, but continued internal power struggles and regional rivalries are likely to unleash yet more conflict and suffering, says Esen Uslu
Deserted by friends of convenience
Iran and the Axis of Resistance have suffered yet another defeat. Yassamine Mather looks at the background and assesses the likely consequences of the fall of the House of Assad
Organisation, not assassination
Killing of UnitedHealth boss has been the cause of widespread celebration. However, Australian communist Martin Greenfield argues that CEOs should be made to fear not the bullet, but working class collective power
What sort of Partyism?
Ideas that party building can be skipped, that programmatic differences ought to be avoided, that there should be bureaucratic restrictions on polemics - all are roads to nowhere. In the second part of his discussion Mike Macnair focuses on a group of RS21 members and Joe Todd’s recent contributions
The festive utopia
A collision of two worlds: on the one side, the dingy, foggy London in cold midwinter, and on the other, a fantastical world peopled by spirits. Paul Demarty, in an unusually cheerful mood, revisits Charles Dickens’ A Christmas carol
Blowing in the wind
One poll has Reform UK ahead of Labour, writes Eddie Ford, with talk of Elon Musk giving $100 million to the party in a bid to make Nigel Farage Britain’s Trump