International Women’s Day: Is “affirmative action” the answer to discrimination against women? The idea of guaranteed quotas for women on trade union and party committees has become fashionable. But there are no shortcut solutions to this problem. Inequality exists because of capitalism and will continue to exist as long as capitalism exists. This inequality can only be fought by a united struggle of the whole labour movement. Only when capitalism is abolished and a system of democratic planning introduced will we be able to create the material basis for all inequality and prejudice to whither away once and for all.
Georg Lukács, the ‘Dialectics of Nature’ and the ‘free creation of history’ Lukács was an important influence on what is called 'western Marxism'. This was seen as a 'humanist' alternative to the dominant stalinist orthodoxy of the inter-War period and later. One of Lukács' most significant arguments was that (contrary to Engels) there can be no dialectics of nature. Dan Morley examines the debate and goes into the contradictory relationship between Lukács' interpretation of Marxism and Stalinism.
Leon Sedov – 70 years since his murder Tomorrow marks the 70th anniversary of the murder of Trotsky's eldest son - Leon Sedov - by agents of the Stalinist secret police, the GPU. He was thirty-two years of age. This crime constituted part of the systematic hounding and murder of Trotsky's key supporters and family, whose only ‘crime' was to defend genuine Marxism against Stalin and the crimes of the Russian bureaucracy.
