WW archive > Issue 1507 - 19 September 2024
Upping the ante
Vladimir Putin warns that we are on brink of nuclear war, writes Eddie Ford. Perhaps, not yet, but with the kabuki dance over Storm Shadows the evidence of ‘mission creep’ is unmistakable
Letters
Programme; Soft?; Pet experts; One-off ban; Stalinist
A hundred years is enough
Three books, all published in 1924, laid the ideological groundwork for a Lenin cult, which is still responsible for the confessional sects and academic historians alike getting the Bolsheviks and the Russian Revolution so wrong. Lars T Lih shows that there was no Hegel moment, no April theses break, no conversion to Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution. Lenin and the Bolsheviks consistently upheld revolutionary social democracy
Political organisation is key
Against the background of the escalation of the war in Ukraine, genocide in Gaza and a US election which may influence both, this month’s CPGB aggregate examined the drive to wider international conflict and the left’s political problems. Ian Spencer reports
Amy Leather vanishes
What lies behind the mid-term changes at the top? The central committee limits itself to a single gnomic pronouncement. Meanwhile, Paul Demarty investigates
Best laid plans go awry
People Before Profit’s long held commitment to supporting a ‘left government’ led by Sinn Féin is heading for the rocks. But, argues Anne McShane, aspirations of becoming junior ministers were always about the lure of careerism and narrow personal advantage
Missing a trick
Gaby Rubin reviews Paul du Toit (writer/director) The unlikely secret agent Marylebone Theatre
Corbyn’s maybe party
An eclectic mixture of soft lefts, reformist has-beens, committed localists, inveterate unity-mongers and the plain deluded have been secretly meeting. But, asks Carla Roberts, can we expect anything more than yet another Labour Party mark two?