Governments of the most industrialised countries have dramatically increased their public debt to bail out the private banks after the most disastrous economic and financial meltdown in capitalist history since the 1930s. Paying debts and reducing fiscal deficits have become the perfect pretexts to enforce austerity measures everywhere. The Troika (European Commission, ECB and IMF) and all EU governments have launched an unprecedented attack on people's social and economic rights. This book will enable the reader to understand how the crisis developed: the consequences of deregulating the banking system, the logic underpinning private banks' responses, and the crimes they perpetrate on a daily basis with the collusion of governments and central banks. It argues for socialisation, rather than 'nationalisation', of the banking sector so that it becomes a proper public service under citizen control and monitoring. It argues for the cancellation of illegitimate public debt that largely results from bank bail-outs. It uses simple straightforward language to make it possible for anyone to understand the current crisis and see coherent alternatives to the current policies.

Bankocracy

Business & Money

Toussaint, Éric

Economics

IMG Publications

Between 1960 and 1988 Barry Sheppard worked at the heart of the Socialist Workers Party. The SWP played a crucial role in progressive struggles in the USA and the world socialist organization, the Fourth International. The first volume of this work covered the period 1960 to 1973, "The Sixties." That was a period of mass radicalization in the USA and much of the world. Walking picket lines for Black civil rights, helping to organize the anti-Vietnam War movement, interviewing Malcolm X, meeting with US soldiers in Vietnam, defending the Cuban Revolution, collaborating with socialists worldwide including in Australia, Belgium, Britain, France, India and Japan - Barry Sheppard was immersed in these turbulent times. This second volume of his political memoir covers 1973 to 1988. These years saw the retreat of the radicalization of "The Sixties." However, the SWP continued to grow and be involved in mass struggles in the US and internationally, and grew into a 3,000-strong movement in the mid-1970s. Sheppard was deeply involved in the SWP's work as a central leader in these years. He and his companion Caroline Lund also were part of the leadership of the Fourth International in Paris in the latter years of the 1970s. By 1980 the SWP, under the leadership of Jack Barnes, began to chart a course away from its historical program and practice. This new orientation marked a sharp break from the SWP as it developed in "The Sixties." In fact, it turned into the opposite of the SWP covered in his first volume. By 1988, when Sheppard and Caroline Lund resigned, the party had shriveled into a cult, and had withdrawn from both the Fourth International and involvement in the mass movement in the United States. Sheppard chronicles this tragic development. Together, the two volumes of his political memoir represent a unique and important contribution to the history of the socialist movement in the United States.

The Party: The Socialist Workers Party 1960-1988. Volume 2: Interregnum, Decline and Collapse, 1973-1988

Biographies & Memoirs

Sheppard, Barry

Leaders & Notable People

Ernest Tate's memoir is an important contribution to the history of the left in Britain and Canada during a unique period. This is the story of a socialist activist during the fifteen-year period from 1955 to 1970. Volume I covers the political engagement of a working-class immigrant to Canada from Northern Ireland, and his involvement in the Socialist Educational League. Volume II documents Ernest Tate's participation in British radical politics from 1965-1970.

Revolutionary Activism in the 1950s & 60s. Volume 2. Britain 1965 - 1970

Tate, Ernest

Historical

Ernest Tate's memoir is an important contribution to the history of the left in Britain and Canada during a unique period. It's a political life of Ernest tate's life as a socialist during the fifteen year period from 1955 to 1970. In volume one, he tells us about his arrival from Toronto in 1955 as a working-class immigrant from Northern Ireland and about how he quickly became engaged in radical politics.

Revolutionary Activism in the 1950s & 60s. Volume 1, Canada 1955-1965. Expanded Edition

More than a left foot

Politics & Social Sciences

Williams-Findlay, Bob

Sociology

This book is a unique account of trade union and political struggles in the Morris Motors (later British Leyland) car assembly plant in Cowley, where Alan Thornett began work in 1959. He became a shop steward for the lorry drivers, deputy TGWU convener for the plant, and chair of the Joint Shop Stewards Committee and of the TGWU branch. The plant was rarely out of the headlines in the 1960s and 1970s, which was the high point of trade union militancy in Britain in the 20th century. After a successful struggle for unionisation, the Morris plant was by the end of the 1960s amongst the most militant in the industry, averaging over 300 strikes a year. Working conditions were transformed and a vibrant shop floor movement built. The plant was involved in the strikes against In Place of Strife, Harold Wilson's attempt at anti-union laws, and against Heath's Industrial Relations Act, which led to the jailing of the Pentonville Five. This rise of militant trade unionism, however, was bitterly opposed by TGWU officials who worked tirelessly with management to destroy it. The battles this involved, both within the union and in the plant, are vividly described. The book traces how these actions of the trade union establishments reflected institutionalised class compromise, which directly threatened the gains of the 60s and 70s, and which opened the door to the Tory onslaught of the 1980s. It led directly to the betrayal of the NGA by the TUC at Warrington in 1983 and its collapse under Tebbit's anti-union laws. It also led to the isolation and defeat of the miners in 1985, which has been so destructive to the trade union movement, and from which the unions have not even started to recover.

Militant Years: Car Workers' Struggles in Britain in the 60s and 70s

Thornett, Alan

The Russian revolution in October 1917 gave the workers', soldiers' and peasants' soviets full state power. It swept away the bourgeois state. Subsequent successful seizures of power in the name of the workers have involved either peasant armies led by working class political nuclei or, disastrously, the occupation of countries by the forces of the Russian workers' state. The bureaucratic leaders of European workers thwarted the spread of the revolution. The isolated Stalinist bureaucracy produced a consolatory myth: that Russia did not need such foreign victories because it would achieve 'Socialism in one Country'. To defy this myth, this book brings together documents by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky illustrating the real history of the strategy that won the Russian revolution and can win future working class seizures of power. Inside, readers will find Marx and Engels' "Address to the Communist League", Lenin's "April Theses" and "The Tasks of the Proletariat in the Present Revolution", Trotsky's "The Character of the Russian Revolution" and Mandel's "What is Trotskyism?"

October Readings: the development of the concept of Permanent Revolution

History

Lenin, Vladimir Ilyich

Trotsky, Leon Davidovich

Military

In 2007, French fascist Le Pen won almost four million votes. In 2009 the British National Party won almost a million votes while Germany's fascist NPD won over 750,000. In 2010, fascist-led organisations like the Engish Defence League and Italy's Future and Freedom party emerged. To help activists understand this twenty-first century wave of fascism, this book gathers together the most important analyses from the 20th century. In "Building unity against fascism" you can read: * German socialist Clara Zetkin, Bolshevik leader Karl Radek and Italian communist Antonio Gramsci on the birth on fascism in the early 1920s * Leon Trotsky's article, including "Fascism: What It Is and How To Fight It", explaining why neither capitalist nor Stalinist parties were able to stop fascism in Italy, Germany and Spain in the 1930s. * Maurice Spector's detailed analysis of German fascism in power * Daniel Guérin's 1939 "Fascism and Big Business" and his 1945 preface to its French edition * Ted Grant's booklet, "The Menace of Fascism", which discussed British fascism, the second World War and the Jewish community in Britain * Analysis by Felix Morrow, James P Cannon and Farrell Dobbs of the rise and fall of fascist organisations in the USA in the 20th century.

Building Unity Against Fascism: Classic Marxist Writings

Trotsky, Léon

Guérin, Daniel

Grant, Ted

World

Critique Of Modern Barbarism

Traverso, Enzo

Historical Study & Educational Resources

These memoirs of Leonard Nikani give a graphic portrayal of a black man growing up in racist South Africa.  Leonard began to question the racist system while still at school. As a student at Fort Hare University he became involved in the political struggle, joining the Society of Young Africa, the youth organisation of the Unity Movement of South Africa. He remained committed to the political struggle for the rest of his life.  He exposes the policies of the ANC and the South African Communist Party in the liberation struggle, which led to their failure in government to meet the demands of the masses.  Like so many other political activists he was hounded by the racists and forced into exile. He gives a dramatic account of a secret mission to South Africa for his organisation, and his subsequent escape to and imprisonment in Swaziland.  Following his release from prison he lived in Sweden, where he remarried and had two children. He died in 1999 in Sweden.

My Life Under White Supremacy and in Exile

Nikani, Leonard

Community & Culture

See the best price to sell, buy or rent books by the IMG Publications publisher. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by IMG Publications