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

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

History

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

Daniel Bensaïd's challenging survey comes at an appropriate moment. It is a gift to activists reaching for some historical perspective that may provide hints as to where we might go from here. Embracing and sharing the revolutionary socialist political tradition associated with Leon Trotsky, Bensaïd is not simply a thoughtful radical academic or perceptive left-wing intellectual - though he is certainly both - but also one of the foremost leaders of an impressive network of activists, many of them seasoned by innumerable struggles. Daniel Bensaïd emerged decades ago as a leader of the French section of the Fourth International, the Ligue Communiste Révolutionnaire (LCR). Coming from the 'generation of '68' - the layer of young revolutionary activists of the 1960s - he blends an impressive intellectual sophistication with a refreshing inclination for revolutionary audacity, and with activist commitments which have not faded over the decades. In the tradition of Ernest Mandel, Bensaïd has reached for the continuing relevance of revolutionary Marxism not only in the battlegrounds of academe (as a professor of philosophy and author of such works as Marx for Our Times), but even more in the battlegrounds of social and political struggles against the oppressive and lethal realities of capitalist 'globalization.' In this particular work - succinct, crackling with insights and fruitful provocations - Bensaïd surveys the history of his own political tradition. We are not presented with a catechism, but with a set of informative and critical-minded reflections and notes. We don't have to agree with all he says. I certainly question his taking issue with Trotsky over whether or not Lenin was essential for the triumph of the Russian Revolution (Trotsky says definitely yes, Bensaïd suggests maybe not). Nor am I satisfied when he gives more serious consideration to the dissident current in US Trotskyism of Max Shachtman and James Burnham (both of whom ended up supporting US imperialism in Vietnam) than to the tradition connected with James P. Cannon (which played a role in building a powerful movement that helped end the Vietnam war). On the other hand, Bensaïd makes no pretension of providing a rounded historical account of world Trotskyism, or even a scholarly account of the more limited issues that he does take up. He emphasizes that 'this essay is based on personal experience' and is focused on what he views as 'the major debates' within the movement. And one is especially struck by the excellent point he makes in his Introduction (page 14) regarding the necessity of understanding the varieties of Trotskyism around the world in their distinctive cultural and national specificities. Little sense can be made of Trotskyism if it is not related to the actual social movements and class struggles of various parts of the world, and to the left-wing labour sub-cultures, in which it has meaning. The fact remains that Bensaïd offers us a thoughtful, stimulating, valuable political intervention which leaves the reader with a sense of Trotskyism's history and ideas and diverse manifestations - and also a sense of their relevance for the struggles of today and tomorrow. For younger activists beginning to get their bearings, and for veterans of the struggle who are thinking through the questions of where we have been and where to go from here, this is an important contribution.

Strategies of Resistance & 'Who Are the Trotskyists?'

Bensaïd, Daniel

Military

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