The lead article in this issue focusses on the environmental crisis that became glaringly obvious this summer, with the repeated heatwaves that undoubtedly were the cause of much loss of life, record-breaking overall temperature globally and the unmistakeable fact that this is the product of anthropogenic climate change, which is above all the product of the capitalist mode of production. This ought to be, if the world was rational, the most pressing and urgent issue of all for humanity to deal with. But the cause of it is, as mentioned, the capitalist mode of production, and the struggle against other concrete manifestations of that, from imperialist war to the class struggle within the imperialist countries, also holds centre stage. What we as revolutionary Marxist have to do is to find a way to integrate this understanding of the existential nature of the environmental struggle into the class consciousness we are seeking to promote as the antithesis of capitalism in movements of workers and the oppressed more generally.
The other lead article in this issue is an analysis of the rise to the premiership of Andy Burnham, and why he in particular was chosen to replace Starmer when the reactionary and Zionist forces that promoted Starmer to destroy the Corbyn project, concluded that Starmer’s many vices were leading the Labour Party to destruction. There is also an article on the prominent role of Burnham and Starmer in the accelerating, and quite demented, drive of the West European imperialist bourgeoisies in seeking some kind of existential confrontation with Russia now that it is increasingly clear that Nazi-Maidan Ukraine is on the verge of collapse despite all the many billions that its imperialist sponsors have expended on it. And there is a brief commentary on the Holborn and St Pancras by-election, where the Green Party’s Zack Polanski is fighting to win Starmer’s former seat against Labour, but George Galloway has decided to stand also for the Workers Party (WP). This prompted the resignation of WP Deputy Leader Chris Williamson from the WP in disagreement with Galloway’s action.
The article proposed a possible way to place demands on Polanski, as the leader of a non-working class, petty-bourgeois radical party, to embrace key elements of working-class politics as a precondition for any kind of electoral support, as a possible tactic to bring to the fore the tens of thousands of socialist-minded militants who have joined the Greens because of the dramatic failure of the Corbyn-misled Your Party to give expression to their aspirations. Since this was written, Polanski has backed away from supporting the ‘Zionism is racism’ motion that the left-wing of the Greens were trying to get passed, aiming to make the Greens the only overtly anti-Zionist party contending in mainstream British politics (Your Party is hardly ‘contending’ at the moment). Polanski’s retreat on this has prompted criticism from Chris Williamson, among others, and may come to be seen as a significant moment among those seeking a new working class, socialist party.
Other significant material in this issue includes an account of the political degeneration of the Socialist Federation. This was originally conceived as the Members’ Charter, an initiative to try to force democratisation in Your Party, but has now, thanks to the influence of pro-NATO, Ziophile social imperialists like ‘Anti-Capitalist Resistance’, turned it into a strange heresy-hunting project. It had to postpone its own Founding Conference because its fratricidal warfare made such an event unfeasible. That takes some doing! Many of the remaining socialist activists in Your Party treat it with deep suspicion therefore.
There is also an account of the Founding Conference of the British Chapter of the Anti-Fascist International; the Consistent Democrats are one of its supporting groups. It is a campaigning anti-imperialist, anti-fascist body that was originally an initiative of the Maduro government in Venezuela, prior to his outrageous abduction by Trump. Included is the text of a speech by one of our comrades to this conference, on Zionism and the sinister, genocidal nature and purpose of the so-called “IHRA definition” of Anti-Semitism. And there is a brief statement of our position on the recent UNITE General Secretary election.
All in all, this issue has material that should be of interest to a wide range of socialists and working-class activists.
