War, peace and class struggle: Marxism vs. pacifism The question of violence is often posed as an abstract theoretical one. Pacifists cordon off the concept of ‘violence’ and treat it apart from every other aspect of human relations. But as the military theorist Carl von Clausewitz said: “war is the continuation of politics by other means”. Declaring opposition to violence ‘in general’ is as meaningless and utopian as declaring opposition to politics ‘in general’. We must be concrete. What kind of violence are we opposed to? And how do we struggle against it?
[Reading Guide] History of Philosophy: a Marxist Perspective Alan Woods’ History of Philosophy: a Marxist Perspective is available to buy now from Wellred Books! It takes readers on a 2,000-year-long journey, starting with the towering thinkers of ancient Greece, through the radical bourgeois philosophers of the Enlightenment, to the dialectics of Hegel, and culminating with the scientific socialism of Marx and Engels. We hope the following guide will encourage comrades and supporters to form reading circles with radical workers and youth around the world!
Labour in 1950: betrayal is inherent in reformism The following article was published in 1981, shortly after the opening of the so-called Cabinet Papers for 1950. These documents revealed the extent to which the post-war Labour government, so-often heralded by reformists as ‘real socialism in action’, was obsessed with routing communists and radicals out of the party, and ultimately toeing the line of the capitalist establishment. These revelations are proof that even a radical reformist government will ultimately defend the interests of the capitalist system if it is unwilling to break with it.
