Letters: Can you donate to provide a space for radical ideas?

Marxism is a not for profit festival of revolutionary ideas (Photo: Dave Gilchrist)

Marxism Festival 2025 brought together thousands of revolutionaries, activists and campaigners from around the world.

They discussed the crises facing working class people and the planet and our collective response.

Marxism is a not‑for‑profit event. But organising the biggest socialist event in Britain costs money.

Organisers had to use new, more expensive venues to host principled pro-Palestinian speakers.

Here are some of the reasons why hundreds of people have already donated to help us cover the costs of organising Marxism 2025.

Can you help us raise £10,000? Go to socialistworker.co.uk/marxism-donate/

We mustn’t let this amazing festival of socialist ideas and education disappear.

David, donated £200

I’m a professor emerita at a central London university. I was always very pleased and honoured when the festival was held there.

I am very sad that university institutions no longer support the Marxism Festival due to its excellent support for Palestine.

Priscilla, donated £30

Thank you for showing me that a different society and way of living is possible.

I’ve been breathing in and out the core values of solidarity, openness, support and community throughout the festival.

Thank you genuinely—the revolution is possible, and needed more than ever.

Sara, donated £50

I am making a small donation to show my support for the festival. I look forward to next year.

Jane, donated £5

A key socialist international conference.

Rosemarie, donated £50

At an event in my school, Windsor’s Tory MP Jack Rankin responded to a discussion about the war in Gaza. He spoke at length about Israel’s right to defend itself.

But when it came to addressing the scale of Palestinian suffering—the tens of thousands dead, the widespread destruction, the humanitarian collapse—he became noticeably vague.

When I asked him about the International Criminal Court’s charges against Binyamin Netanyahu and Yoav Gallant, he dismissed it as “a kangaroo court”.

Experts are warning that what is happening in Gaza is more than just a conflict. It is ethnic cleansing. And Rankin knows this—yet he still failed to use the word genocide.

This isn’t just avoidance. It was erasure.

Rankin’s position reflects a broader political pattern. Sympathy for Israeli victims is clearly and publicly expressed. Palestinian lives are mentioned—if at all—in distant or clinical terms.

It wasn’t just the content of what he said—it was the way he said it.

In the face of mass civilian death, neutrality is not impartiality. It is a choice.

Name withheld, Windsor

Despite record-breaking earnings, companies such as Microsoft are shedding thousands of jobs and stripping away benefits.

The true problem lies not with the technology itself, but with the economic system under which it is deployed.

AI, like all tools, could be used to ease workloads, improve work-life balance and create opportunities.

Instead, it is wielded as a cost-cutting weapon, enabling companies to extract more value from fewer workers, eliminate what they call “redundancies” and centralise power at the top.

Changing this requires more than demanding fair treatment from individual companies.

It requires systemic transformation of the system, a fair distribution of technological gains and a definition of who retains control of the technology itself.

As long as capitalism remains the dominant framework, technology will continue to be used to erode job security rather than enhance human flourishing.

Geraldine Mirabile, east London

My Unite union branch meeting (with 74 attendees) voted unanimously to donate £1,200 to support Stand Up To Racism’s counter demonstration to Tommy Robinson on 13 September.

I reminded members of Robinson’s demonstration in July 2024. That march, and his spreading of racist lies about the Southport murders, led directly to the racist pogroms of that summer.

Anti-racism can win support if we fight for it. See you at the demo.

Richard Milner, Unite EM/NN14 branch member, Coventry