Video: Fighting back and building power during the Covid crisis
Three separate activists draw lessons from fights to defend working-class lives and livelihoods inside and outside the workplace.
Eviction ban ends: how can renters fight back?
The government is trying to restart evictions just as a second wave of Covid-19 is arriving. We need to escalate our organising against evictions, rent debt and homelessness.
Class struggle against Covid
We are facing a second wave of Covid-19 due to the reckless drive for profit of the capitalist class. Mass action from below is the key to stopping the virus – and remaking society in the interests of the majority.
Not one more of us will be sacrificed
rs21 members argue that deaths and job losses are not inevitable and that as we can’t rely on government or employers, we will have to rely on each other to fight for our lives and our livelihoods.
Educators meet the challenge
Education workers have shown creativity and determination in embracing virtual organising methods to strengthen their opposition to the government’s wider reopening of schools.
Rent strike in the Covid conjuncture?
As the knock-on effects of the Covid-19 pandemic make it impossible for many workers to pay rent while meeting their own basic needs, Allan Struthers examines the prospects for large-scale rent strikes in Britain
revolutionary reflections | Which side are you on? Work, class and the 99%
Confusion is rife about what we mean by working class or middle class. Bob Carter argues that a focus on exploitative workplace relationships is far more illuminating than arbitrary hierarchies of inequality.
What the CWU ruling means for the movement
Rachel Eborall explains the implications of the recent Royal Mail injunction.
‘The hateful crowd’ – the gilets jaunes movement one year on
A gilet jaune protester shares his reflections on the movement one year on.
revolutionary reflections | Class struggles in the 1989 revolution
For the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, we publish a translation of Volkhard Mosler’s analysis of the class composition of the East German regime and the opposition movement to it.
What a way to make a living | The Royal Mail sorting office
In the latest instalment of our What a way to make a living series, Daniel Freeborn tells us about the daily grind at a Royal Mail sorting office.
Building movements and solidarity at Endgames? Capitalism and the climate emergency
On 26 October, rs21 hosted a day of discussions in London about capitalism and the climate emergency. This session heard from various activists in climate justice groups.
Lebanon’s ‘October Revolution’ must go on!
Lebanon has a golden opportunity for the formation of an alternative, we should not let the ruling class reproduce itself again. In this piece originally published on Open Democracy, Rima Majed reflects on the recent uprising.
Motion: Support the YouthStrike4Climate on 29 November
On 29 November 2019, pupils and students are going on strike for the climate again. We encourage all workers to stand in solidarity with them. The following motion outlines some practical ways to support the youth strikes in workplaces and trade union branches.
Royal Mail workers get ready for ‘the fight of their lives’
Ikenna Azụbụike Ọnwụnabọnze reports on the struggle of Royal Mail workers and the Communication Workers Union to protect the four pillars agreement.
16 August 1819
Rich Belbin reviews Mike Leigh’s film Peterloo. The film tells the story of a moment of British history that is too often forgotten.
Revolutionary organising in non-revolutionary periods #HM2018
Two sessions at Historical Materialism conference 2018 addressed questions of strategy for the left, each taking very different approaches.
Working-class strategy #HM2018
In the superb final session at the 2018 Historical Materialism Conference, Katy Fox-Hodess and Amanda Armstrong discussed how the left should relate to workers with different sorts of potential power and strengthen connections with struggles against oppression and imperialism: the structural power of workers such as dockers does not exist in isolation from the wider […]
How capital is reshaping the battleground of class war
Kim Moody’s new book seeks to rethink our understanding of capitalism today, and how workers can respond.
Grenfell and the instrumentalisation of suffering
The traumatised Grenfell community is being treated as a security problem
revolutionary reflections | The Upturn/Downturn Debate: An Introduction
Ian Allinson summarises a debate on the development of capitalism since 1968, and how this has impacted the working class and its struggles, in an attempt to address the question of what revolutionaries should do. This summary was written early in 2015 and is published here for the first time. While pre-dating the failure of […]
revolutionary reflections | Rank and File Organising – Lessons from America 1
The International Socialist tradition has always believed in socialism from below – which means that socialism can only come about by the self-activity of the working class. In this interview Rob Owen spoke to labour organiser Jane McAlevey about her experience of rank and file organising in the US since the 1960s, and their views […]
Miners Shot Down – remembering the Marikana Massacre
Miners Shot Down, an award-winning documentary, brilliantly reveals how government, police and big business work hand-in-glove to suppress class struggle, writes Colin Revolting.
Precarious Work, ‘Compression’ and Class Struggle ‘Leaps’
Kim Moody, author of In Solidarity, continues the discussion begun by Ian A and continued by Kevin Crane about the nature of work and workplace struggle today In his response to Ian A, Kevin Crane raises a number of serious issues concerning the work of socialists in trade unions and the workplace. The heart of his […]
What do we mean by… class?
Terry Wrigley takes a look at the Marxist concept of class, in the first of an rs21 series on the fundamentals of our political tradition.