There’s a storm brewing
What the local elections foretell I am one of the large majority who did not vote in the recent mayoral and local elections in New Zealand – not because I […]
Category Archives: class struggle
Antony Beevor re-re-re-re-re-resurrects the old slanders against the Bolsheviks
First of two posts on the Russian Civil War of 1918-21 Antony Beevor is probably the world’s best-known contemporary writer on twentieth-century military history. His books have sold in excess […]
China’s extraordinary industrial hegemony
China in the age of American decrepitude – Part 1 The breath-taking rapidity of China’s economic development over the last three or four decades races ahead of our ability to […]
Why the “Israel – Apartheid State” analogy is misleading and dangerous
Why then are some supporters of the Palestinian struggle so keen to use the ‘Apartheid State’ designation for Israel? Because the word Apartheid confers on Israel the status of pariah state – to be boycotted, sanctioned etc in the same way that the actual apartheid state was.
Harry Holland, Leon Trotsky, and ‘Undesirable Immigrants’
The New Zealand Labour Party formed in 1916 encompassed a wide range of tendencies in the labour movement, from revolutionaries to obdurate class-collaborationists. But initially at least, it was led […]
Toppling statues, censorship, and erasing history
The first brass head has toppled in New Zealand. On 12 June the Hamilton City Council removed a statue of… Hamilton! British naval Captain John Fane Charles Hamilton, veteran of […]
Reflections on the George Floyd march in Auckland
Echoes of the June 1 march in Auckland in solidarity with the protests against the police murder of George Floyd continue to reverberate across New Zealand. The march was an […]
The devil’s trade-off: public health or ‘the economy’
The virus and capitalist society, Part 3 As the capitalist rulers around the world move towards lifting the lockdown conditions imposed to halt the spread of Covid-19 disease, they are […]
Essential workers
The virus and capitalist society – Part 2 Of all the capitalist governments attempting to emulate the Wuhan model of lockdown to combat the Covid-19 virus, New Zealand has fared […]
The virus and capitalist society
Is anything good likely to come of this pandemic? I have seen reports of reduction in air pollution over China, and less-than-truthful pictures of clear water and dolphins in the […]
A worker at large 