Party & Programme
End the cycle of splits
24 May 2012
If the left is to build a serious political organisation it will have to facilitate internal dissent, writes Mike Macnair. And that will require both majorities and minorities to act responsibly
Just so stories
23 Apr 2026
Members of the ISA in the US say they have been expelled for wanting to defend Iran and urging no support for Democrats. Here the comrades outline their political approach. The similarity with the Spartacists is striking, but, significantly, it goes completely unmentioned
Sloganeering on autopilot
23 Apr 2026
Marxism demands concrete analysis: it embraces complexity, it rejects trite formulations. With that in mind, Carl Collins takes issue with those who use the slogan, ‘No war but the class war’, to negate political struggle
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
Style is everything
23 Apr 2026
The CPB’s uniform ban, its craving for respectability, the purging of young rebels who object to its Zionism and its reactionary attacks on trans people - all are morbid symptoms of bureaucratic control-freakery. Eddie Ford tells the tale of two lives and two funerals
Agreeing the best model
16 Apr 2026
To stand or not to stand in elections has long divided the left. Marx argued for standing. But on what programme, around what issues? On April 11 the Netherlands Communistisch Platform held a day-school to discuss ‘Marxism and electoralism’. Mike Macnair and Rogier Specht provided introductions
Possibilities and perceptions
16 Apr 2026
Marking the centenary of the 1926 General Strike, Jack Conrad highlights the failure of the ‘official’ lefts both in the trade unions and the Labour Party. However, while there was betrayal, there were also objective limits to what could have been achieved
Funeral games
16 Apr 2026
Secret votes, gagging orders and hunting down whistleblowers. Yet, apart from rotten politics, there is nothing to hide. By imposing a needless bureaucratic dictatorship and purging the left, the Corbyn clique is killing what it imagines it is protecting. Carla Roberts reports
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
Ambitions and institutional limits
09 Apr 2026
Equipped with a long political pedigree and what counts nowadays as a radical social democratic platform, Avi Lewis has just been elected NDP leader. Siamak Mehr reports
A study in bureaucratic inertia
09 Apr 2026
Marking a hundred years since the 1926 General Strike, Jack Conrad shows that, while the Tory government urgently, assiduously, ruthlessly prepared, the TUC was content to pass left-sounding resolutions and then urge strikers to tend to their gardens
Thou shalt not criticise Karie
26 Mar 2026
CEC members may not ‘misrepresent’ or ‘publicly oppose or undermine a decision’. Nor may they pass on ‘confidential’ information or ‘personally attack’ officers. The CEC’s code of conduct is a bureaucrat’s dream. It is designed to silence all and every opposition. Carla Roberts reports
We need light and air
19 Mar 2026
Real power is being exercised behind the backs of the elected committee members. The aim is clear: a politically pliant membership which votes in the approved way in occasional referendums and does the donkey work in elections. Meanwhile demands for closed sessions, secrecy and codes of conduct are threatening to paralyse Grassroots Left, reports Carla Roberts
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
Black Friday betrayal
19 Mar 2026
Marking the centenary of the 1926 General Strike, Jack Conrad charts the delayed birth of the CPGB, the return of the Great Unrest, the collapse of the Triple Alliance and Lenin’s thoughts on the councils of action