Blog

  • Uses and Abuses of Class Separatism

    Uses and Abuses of Class Separatism

    The past year has seen the continuation of the debates in the DSA around questions of class, identity and strategy. In this article, David I. Backer argues against a class separatism which would reduce questions of identity to those of class, and argues for a new perspective which is attentive to both the structures and the experience of capitalist society. 

  • Spycops in context: Why does the state infiltrate political organisations?

    Spycops in context: Why does the state infiltrate political organisations?

    Recent revelations show that at least 140 English and Welsh ‘spycops’, long-term undercover agents, infiltrated around 120 dissident political organisations between 1968 and 2011 - the vast majority of the these being organisations on the left. But why does the state infiltrate political organisations? And why does it disproportionately target those on the left, as opposed to the right? In this article Connor Woodman looks at the history of the British secret state and the role it plays in the maintenance of capitalism.

  • Barrier around an immigration detention centre. Hope Street, Larne, Northern Ireland. Credit: Emmet Thornton

    Northern Ireland's hidden borders

    There has been a resistance to Brexit causing 'hard borders' around Northern Ireland. But, as Luke Butterly argues, the reality for those who do not meet the criteria of 'Irishness' or 'Britishness' is that there has been a hard border on the island for many years.

  • In Memory’s Wake: Remembering A Sivanandan

    In Memory’s Wake: Remembering A Sivanandan

    Today marks the one year anniversary of the death of one of Britain's foremost black socialist intellectuals, A. Sivanandan, whose work changed the way we think about race. In this essay, Fathima Cader reads his work via his novel When Memory Dies, which charts the struggles of three generations of Sri Lankans.

  • Capitalism's Organic Crisis

    Capitalism's Organic Crisis

    Contemporary capitalism is faced with an organic crisis in the fullest possible sense of the term, one that encompasses not just the political and economic contradictions Gramsci described but also the biological terrain upon which social life ultimately depends.

  • What Is Trump?

    What Is Trump?

    Attempts to identify Trump with fascism have proliferated across the political spectrum. In the latest number of New Left Review, Dylan Riley argues that the comparison serves rather to illuminate the specificity of today’s political situation – and the incoherence of Trump’s form of rule.