A new Socialist Party publication, Introduction to Marxism is a collection that provides an introduction to the basic concepts of Marxism. The articles were first published in Socialism Today, the monthly magazine of the Socialist Parr#ty.

September 2020 issue

Includes articles on:
Back to the 1950s? Covid, Capitalism and Women's Double Burden
Will Covid break the EU?
Revisiting the Poll Tax
US elections 2020
A virtual TUC

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June 2020 issue

Lessons from the Corbyn Experience: The fight for working class political representation 2015 to 2020

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Much of the material broadcast or written to mark the 30th anniversary of the miners’ strike has portrayed their struggle as a brave but tragic attempt to save a dying industry.

No matter how sympathetically the miners, their families and their supporters are portrayed, that view of their battle against Thatcher’s government onslaught does a massive disservice to the momentous struggle they conducted.

It is absolutely vital for the struggles of future generations of trade unionists and socialist militants that a balance sheet of the strike is drawn. Millions of ordinary working-class people, the miners and their families carried out heroic endeavors during the strike. This book shows the miners were right to take the action they did. They could have won a victory which would have raised the sights and confidence of the whole working-class movement.

Articles from the Socialist written during the Sparks dispute in 2011-12
 

A speech by Marx to the First International Working Men's Association, June 1865.
Written: between end of May and June 27, 1865; First published: 1898; Edited: by Eleanor Marx Aveling

Although delivered as a speech, this paper remained unpublished until after Marx's death. It reads like a condensed version of Capital Volume 1, and contains Marx's essential arguments about the workings of capital. Although we highly recommend reading Capital Volume 1 for a thorough understanding of capitalist economics, this volume provides and excellent introduction to Marx's ideas.

"Socialism in the 21st Century was written with the aim of assisting workers and young people who were interested in socialist ideas to find out more. There is no doubt that this second edition has a potentially broader audience than the first.

"Today, in Britain, around 150 companies completely dominate the lives of 60 million people. Worldwide, the richest 356 people enjoy a combined wealth that is greater than the annual income of 40% of the human race. This book gives an outline of how a democratically planned socialist economy could harness the vast wealth of capitalism to meet the needs of humanity instead of lining the pockets of a few. At the same time, it raises some of the most important tasks that face socialists in this period – such as the need to lead struggles to defend workers’ living conditions against the rapacious greed of the multinationals and the need to build new mass workers’ parties which represent the interests of working-class people. It links these tasks to the struggle for ‘Socialism in the 21st Century’."

- From the introduction

Read the review of the first edition 'Brimming with optimism for socialism' in the Socialist 267

A million seller in the USA, Out of the Night was originally published in four English editions and five other languages. Acclaimed and attacked, it was outlawed in Germany, Italy and Russia. Valtin, who is both an heroic and a tragic figure, takes the reader to the upheavals of Germany 1918-23, then to the four corners of the globe following his travels as a revolutionary sailor.

Through his eyes, it is possible to re-live the hopes and the the agonies of a whole generation of German workers as fascism crushed them in its terrible vice. Valtin's description of the barbarous tortures of the Gestapo after his capture makes the blood run cold. Despite the persecution of the author at the hands of both the Gestapo and the Kremlin secret police, Out of the Night above all shows the power and self-sacrificing heroism possessed by workers in struggle. It is republished now in English for the first time since the 1940s.

In 1936 200 unemployed men from Jarrow marched 300 miles against joblessness, poverty and starvation. The road they took led them not only to London but into the history books. In October 2011, the Youth Fight for Jobs campaign (YFJ) took this road once again. The modern day ‘Jarrow March’ was no historical re-enactment. 2011’s marchers did not make the long Journey to the steps of Downing St out of a mere reverence for those forced to take the same route all those years ago. This was a march against the modern day blight: mass youth unemployment.

"If the trade union movement doesn’t stand by the young people in the frontline of the Con-Dem attack on jobs and services, we will witness a re-run of the Thatcher government’s cynical dumping of a whole generation onto the scrap heap.

"This ideological government of millionaires, backed by big business, could not care less for those who get trampled in their dash to drive a bulldozer through our communities.

"The betrayal of Bombardier shows in graphic terms what’s at stake – apprentices and a state-of-the-art training centre sacrificed in order to appease global finance capital and the EU. RMT’s fight for the future of manufacturing jobs in train building, and the apprenticeships that run alongside them, rages on.

"RMT is totally behind the Youth Fight for Jobs Jarrow march and will support it in the towns, villages and cities as it heads down from the North East. RMT will not be found wanting when it comes to solidarity with the youth, and any other sections of our community, in the frontline of the fight back."

Bob Crow, General Secretary of the RMT Union

"Three-quarters of a century on, the young people recreating this famous march are sending an important message that our communities must never again be abandoned to pay for an economic crisis they did not cause.

"Instead of cutting jobs, pay and working conditions – and hacking away at our public services and our welfare state – the government should be investing to provide work and clamping down on the wealthy tax dodgers who deprive our public finances of tens of billions of pounds a year.

"As we prepare for the largest public sector strike in decades as part of our fight against these cuts, on behalf of PCS, I send solidarity to the marchers and wish them well on their journey for justice."

Mark Serwotka, General Secretary of the PCS Union

" 'Lazy’ or ‘scrounger’ are two unfair labels used all too often of the unemployed. But as we write, around 30 unemployed youths are on a 330-mile Jarrow-to-London march. And lazy they certainly are not.

"As trade unionists we fully support these young marchers’ demands, including a massive government scheme to create socially useful jobs. They stand in the proud tradition, laid down by the 200 men who completed this same route in 1936, of fighting for the right to work.

"That’s why we will be joining the final leg of the Youth Fight for Jobs Jarrow March on 5 November in London, starting at noon at Temple Embankment."

Mark Serwotka PCS,

Sally Hunt UCU,

Bob Crow RMT,

Matt Wrack FBU