Socialism

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“No weak men in the books at home The strong men who have made the world History lives on the books at home The books at home It’s not made by great men (x4) The past lives on in your front room The poor still weak the rich still rule History lives in the...
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Marx begins his examination of capitalism in Capital with the analysis of the commodity; and he succinctly explains the reason for his starting point in the first paragraph: “The wealth of societies in which the capitalist mode of production prevails appears as an ‘immense collection of commodities’; the individual commodity appears as its ...
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This series of short articles will examine the first volume of Marx’s Capital from a “socialist perspective,” which is to say, with an eye to how an understanding of capitalism can contribute to our understanding of socialism. I should recognize the obvious fact, right away, that a worker hardly needs to read Capital to...
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(A review of First as Tragedy, Then as Farce by Slavoj Žižek) Has Slavoj Žižek (the superstar Slovenian “theorist”)  signed a piece-work contract with Verso Books? One can’t help wondering because this slim volume brings his tally with that publisher alone to around 21 titles. This Stakhanovite output would be more impressive were it not...
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Too good to be true We are conditioned to accept the absurdities and contradictions that capitalism throws up. It is possible now to build a world where every single human being is adequately provided with the material means of a full and happy life in a truly meaningful democratic society; where there is no...
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Is any word more over-used and misunderstood today than “socialism”? In the United States, the “S-word” appears in almost every other sentence uttered by Republicans, who depict the Democratic Party as marching – or at least creeping – towards socialism. “Socialist” has replaced “liberal” in their vocabulary as an insult to hurl at political...
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Whose president is Barack Obama? He would have us believe that he is president of “all Americans.” But how is that possible when there are such sharp conflicts of interest in American society? Does the business owner have the same interests as the workers he hires at or below the minimum wage? Or consider...
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Editorial from the November 2009 issue of the Socialist Standard Twenty years ago this month the Berlin Wall came down, symbolising the end of the division of Europe into Western and Russian spheres of influence. Russia had lost the Cold War and its rulers under Gorbachev had decided they would no longer prop up...
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