Party & Programme > Class and consciousness
Wide open for the class
19 Apr 2012
What is class-consciousness? Paul B Smith discusses the possibility of a political revival
What could have been done?
14 May 2026
People, their accumulated class traditions, their militant organisations, their ability to produce and sustain a whole body of strong, capable, far-sighted leaders - that is what makes history. Jack Conrad concludes his series of articles on the 1926 General Strike
Considerations of defeat
07 May 2026
Making the Anglo-Russian Trade Union Committee pivotal has become a shibboleth. But the argument does not add up. Jack Conrad says we should stop repeating tired clichés about the 1926 General Strike and learn to think instead
America’s centrist assassins
30 Apr 2026
Why do young men keep trying to kill Donald Trump? Why do political ‘moderates’ turn to ‘extremist’ methods? Paul Demarty investigates a phenomenon with deep historical roots
The good, the bad and the party
23 Apr 2026
Confusion reigned over what attitude to take, when it came to the ‘official’ lefts in the trade unions and the Labour Party. Factional rights could conceivably have helped bring about clarity. Jack Conrad marks the centenary of the 1926 General Strike
Not so bold politics
23 Apr 2026
Tony Greenstein’s suspension from the Green Party exposes its current left posturing as a total sham. It also shows that investing hopes in the Green Party is completely misplaced. The Green Party is petty-bourgeois through and through, says Carla Roberts
Not a clean, but a dirty split
09 Apr 2026
The standard left narrative of the 1914-21 schism in the Second International is misleading and nowadays too easily leads to irresponsible splits. Mike Macnair argues for historical complication
Syndicalist quackery
19 Mar 2026
Their understanding of who constitutes the working class is radically false. So is their strategy of industrial colonisation. Mike Macnair thinks that the Spartacists are trapped in a dumb orthodoxy
Beware of Sparts bearing gifts
26 Feb 2026
We have a common view that open polemics, as sharp as may be necessary, are essential to any lasting, any worthwhile unity. However, there are those who object. Mike Macnair replies to Vincent David of the Spartacist League
Against action programmes
18 Dec 2025
We need to build a mass party and we need to fight for democracy in the state and in the workers’ movement too. Mike Macnair rejects the standard ‘left Trotskyist’ arguments
The road needs illumination
24 Jul 2025
Minimum demands and clear principles are vital. Mike Macnair responds to those who think that the working class can dispense with the minimum programme
Cold war economism
17 Jul 2025
Members of TAS have fielded all sorts of arguments - some serious, most spurious. Mike Macnair cuts through the thicket to show why we need a minimum programme and a period of transition between capitalism and the highest phase of communism
Rising middle classes?
03 Jul 2025
Mike Macnair reviews Dan Evans A nation of shopkeepers: the unstoppable rise of the petty bourgeoisie Repeater Books, 325pp, £10.99
Capitalism as a star fort
05 Jun 2025
The system might be in decline, but it has a whole complex of defence works available to it. Mike Macnair completes his three-part series on the transition from capitalism to communism
Squaring the circle
10 Apr 2025
SWP tops flip-flop between left syndicalism and electoral opportunism, says Paul Demarty - sometimes too quickly for hapless editors to keep up
A very English possibilist
06 Mar 2025
Steve Freeman of the Republican Labour Education Forum dismisses the idea of a mass Communist Party as utterly utopian. Instead he proposes a Commonwealth Party