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Lenin at 150 – an appreciation
“There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.” – Lenin (born April 22, 1870) David McNally writes: I have long been allergic to the Lenin cult nurtured in many quarters. More than one radical group has been ruined by puffed up “generals” passing off their hectoring commands in place of real politics. But Lenin himself, that’s another story. Perry Anderson once observed that Lenin effectively created a Marxist “science of politics.” But there is more to it than that. It is true that Lenin was uniquely attentive to the concrete specificities of political struggle. The…
Dangerous Times
Susan Pashkoff writes This has been a rather impressive week even for Donald Trump. Whenever you think that he has reached the nadir of his Presidency, he always manages to continue the downward trend; it is like a sink-hole that appears in the middle of an area that simply sucks everything in its path downwards. The freezing of funding to the World Health Organization in the middle of a pandemic was jaw dropping; Richard Horton the Editor in Chief of The Lancet, Britain’s premier medical journal, rightly called his behaviour “a crime against humanity.” Thinking that this may be useful…
Coronavirus: Nothing is guaranteed, everything is possible
This is a text on the pandemic from Raoul Vaneigem. Vaneigem is a Belgian writer known for his 1967 book The Revolution of Everyday Life. He was born in Lessines and studied romance philology at the Free University of Brussels from 1952 to 1956. He was a member of the Situationist International from 1961 to 1970. Translated from the French by NOT BORED! 20 March 2020. Challenging the danger posed by the coronavirus is surely absurd. But, on the other hand, isn’t it just as absurd that a disturbance in the habitual course of illnesses has become the object of…
Foot Work – What your shoes are doing to the world
TRANSFORM interviews Tansy Hoskins about her new book: Foot Work – What Your Shoes Are Doing To The World. In Foot Work, you discuss the detrimental effects of the footwear industry on society and our planet. What would you say is the biggest issue in the book? The working title for the book was Foot Work – What Your Shoes Tell You About Globalisation. I wanted to write it because I am interested in the way certain objects tell us a bigger story – in this case shoes perfectly tell us the story of globalisation and out-of-control corporate power. Globalisation has meant…
Facing the COVID-19 Crisis in Poland
The Polish government has prioritised protecting the profits of the financial sector and large companies and placing the burden of the crisis on working people. Gavin Rae writes: The numbers of those infected or killed by the COVID-19 virus in Poland have remained low in comparison to many western European countries. This is because the virus spread relatively late to Poland and social distancing was then introduced comparatively early. The Law and Justice (PiS) government is particularly concerned to prevent these numbers escalating, as the country’s under-resourced health system would likely not be able to cope with the levels of…
COVID-19: marking the death knell of the old world and midwife to the new
In just two weeks the world has been educated as to the incompatibility of free market neoliberal nostrums and the political and geopolitical order they support with the needs of humanity and the planet. On a national and international level coronavirus is ravaging not only the lives of its victims and those affected by its social and economic consequences, it has taken a bludgeon to a status quo that is now lies broken and blooded on the ground. To watch Donald Trump and Boris Johnson address their respective nations to update them on the pandemic’s impact and their response is…
Has the government ordered 100,000 body bags as part of its Covid-19 preparations?
This article has been written by someone who needs to remain anonymous and who has information that the government has placed an order for 100,000 body bags. Is this true? And if it is true what does it tell us about how the government sees the disease spreading? It also raises another question which is why are non-essential workers still being forced into work often against their will? We live in a world obsessed with measuring, grading and assessing. Every action and thought can now be appraised and a numerical value assigned. This is how the algorithms that drive social…
The pandemic, the working class and the left
The Coronavirus pandemic is accelerating across the world. Every few days the scope and scale of the disease is increasing. Hundreds of thousands of people are being infected, many thousands have already died and many tens of thousands will die. In China where the outbreak was first identified, it has been brought under control but elsewhere it is spreading rapidly. In its wake the virus is transforming everyday life. The main way to fight it is self-isolation and social distancing. No longer can people socialise as they did. Grandparents cannot help look after their grandkids. The schools are shut. The…