Arguments are still raging over what happened as students’ seething rage at Tory plans to treble university fees and slash education budgets burst onto the streets of London last week.
Under a clear blue sky, over 50,000 students took over central London. The feeder marches from ULU, LSE and King’s universities helped to set the boisterous tone of the day as students surprised police and stopped traffic on main roads.
Those who want to defend class society, and some on the left who oppose revolution, argue that revolutions merely set up new hierarchies, not the freedom and equality their participants dream of.
In the middle of the Great Depression of the 1930s, revolutionaries sparked and led mass strikes and factory occupations in the US. In 1934, more than 1.5 million workers took part in over 2,000 strikes—and they often won.
The world faces two huge crises. There’s the economic crisis, which is being used as an excuse to make massive cuts, destroy jobs and services, and push privatisation.
The Russian revolutionary Vladimir Lenin wrote this book in the midst of the extreme violence of the First World War, and the revolutionary upheaval taking place in Russia in 1917.
Millions of people know there is something deeply wrong with the world. They are sick of poverty, inequality, war and racism and wish society was run differently. At the same time, many think it impossible to overthrow capitalism.
The government reacted with fury last week to accusations that its changes to housing benefit would lead to "social cleansing". But the words stung because they are true.
The housing crisis could be solved at a stroke by the reintroduction of rent controls. These used to exist to keep workers’ rents at an affordable "fair" rate. An "independent" local rent officer set rent levels and it was illegal to charge more.
On 7 November 1910, thousands of striking miners marched across the Rhondda valley in South Wales. At the front were two scabs they were driving out of the town. The crowd had dressed them in white shirts with notices pinned on, "Take a warning".
Thursday 21 October, 10pm. The road is dark. Few lights. Twenty five miles—border to Gaza City. Thousands—tens upon tens of thousands. Waving, cheering, running. Dense. Children run in front of the ambulance—frightening. It’s happening to all vehicles. Olive branches thrown in.
Press baron Rupert Murdoch congratulated the government on its spending review at the inaugural Baroness Thatcher lecture last week. Murdoch said, "Like the lady, the coalition must not be for turning." It was appropriate in many ways.
