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The class struggle arises from the conditions of life of human beings.
It's a struggle of living forces; there are complicated and
complicating factors. Different industries have different conditions;
there are different traditions of struggle, different forms of
organisation, different political conditions over time and different
leaders.
Arms spending is vast. In 2008 global arms spending will be a record
£561 billion. This is seventeen times as much as the world spends on famine
relief (£32 billion). Obviously spending so much money has its effect on the
world economy. A central plank of the theory of the Socialist Workers’ Party is
the theory of the permanent arms economy. Mick Brooks looks at the view of
classical Marxism on arms spending and assesses the SWP’s theory.
Forty years ago the world was experiencing upheaval on a world scale that hadn't been seen for a generation. In the US opposition to the war in Vietnam gathered momentum, as it did in Britain. In Pakistan revolution was on the order of the day, and in Czechoslovakia we saw the Prague spring and Soviet Invasion. In May there was the glorious rising of the French working class, that saw 10 million workers down tools in a general strike.
A name etched into the collective consciousness of the labour and trade
union movement is that of the 'Tolpuddle Martyrs', a case which clearly demonstrated that the State is
not a neutral instrument, but the means by which the ruling class will
use peaceful means by preference and violence if necessary in order to
maintain its power. So who were the Tolpuddle Martyrs,
what did they do and what lessons do they have for socialists in the
twenty-first century?
