Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century
 
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Struggling for trans rights

Struggling against recent attacks on trans people

Trans people with placards

On Counterfire and trans oppression

Socialists must stand with trans people.

Hundreds gathered to oppose abuse of psychiatric patients, celebrate Mad culture, and call for psychiatric abolition.

Why should socialists think about psychoanalysis?

Following a series of rs21 meetings this autumn, Marianne Kelly considers what we gained from our discussions of therapy, the mental health industry and psychoanalysis as a tool to critique capitalism.

Mad Pride campaigns for psychiatric abolition

Hundreds gathered to oppose abuse of psychiatric patients, celebrate Mad culture, and call for psychiatric abolition.

Graffiti is a flying bird in the colours of the Ukrainian flag

Inside the Ukrainian Resistance

Interview about the Ukrainian Resistance, the state of war, the dynamics of class struggle and popular consciousness, and the tasks of the international Left in building solidarity with Ukraine.

Inclusion and equality matter: Why are they missing from our approach to Covid?

Zero Covid Scotland activist Hannah Hassan outlines the many ways in which Covid policies discriminate against people with disabilities and intensifies existing inequalities.

The actuality of the revolution: exploitation and oppressions

In this extract from Revolutionary Rehearsals in the Neoliberal Age, Neil Davidson suggests ways to draw struggles against oppression and exploitation together.

cover of the novel 'Hummingbird Salamander' by Jeff Vandermeer

Hummingbird Salamander – An idea that won’t go away

Reviewing Jeff Vandermeer’s latest novel, Hummingbird Salamander, Jack Pickering finds not only a thrilling and unsettling work of climate fiction, but also a genre bending critique of modern capitalism and its destruction of nature.

Sketch of a raised fist.

Alba is a dead end

None of the main pro-independence parliamentary parties are capable of delivering an independent Scotland that puts the needs of working-class people first.

Image shows a woman holding up a placard reading Power to the People Not the Police with a backdrop of other women in the crowd.

We Will Not Be Divided – Statement from Sisters Uncut

Sisters Uncut’s statement against police and state violence and the Police Crime Sentencing and Courts Bill 2021, originally published on 23 March 2021. rs21 signed the statement alongside groups including Black Lives Matter UK, Jewish Solidarity Action and Docs Not Cops. 

Image shows an internal chamber of the Seimas, the seat of Lithuania's parliament in Vilnius, Lithuania.

Civil partnerships and reproductive rights in Eastern Europe: an interview with Laima Vaige

rs21’s Leslie Cunningham interviews Dr. Laima Vaige, a feminist and LGBTQ activist from Lithuania, on same-sex partnerships in Lithuania, abortion rights in Poland, and LGBTQ people’s experiences across Europe during the Covid crisis.

Bristol police officers moving to suppress an occupation in 2011.

A criminal record: 10 times Bristol police abused local people

Bristol’s police force – presented by the media as the victims of a ‘mob’ – are among the most violent, racist and abusive parts of Britain’s police state.

An image of a cop chasing a silhouetted figure, while a police van burns in the background. Keywords; Bristol riot protesters protest peaceful violent police cops

In defence of the mob

After protesters in Bristol dared to fight back police violence, respectable opinion is rushing to condemn ‘rioters’. But is it really true that riots ‘don’t achieve anything’?

What happened at Clapham Common

An eyewitness account of a powerful event marred by shocking and gratuitous acts of violence by the Metropolitan Police.

A photo of feminists in Chile marking International Women's Day.

IWD 2021: Five feminist fights for the year ahead

Reproductive justice, sexual violence and harassment, justice at work: on International Women’s Day, we look at key feminist fights for the year to come.

An empty classroom photographed from the front, in low grey light.

What a way to make a living | Teaching at the margins

A teacher in a non-mainstream secondary school gives her view on the daily life of teaching in a school which specialises in providing education for students whose needs are not met by mainstream institutions. 

Workers at a call centre in Poland.

What a way to make a living | Introduction

Meet our new article series, What a way to make a living, which will explore the lived realities of work and exploitation under modern capitalism

revolutionary reflections | Invisible threads: on value and valorization

Charlie Jarsve goes back to the theory of value and exploitation in Marx’s Capital to explore how exploitation relates to different forms of oppression.

#MeToo workers rights

Some reflections on #MeToo

While #MeToo has seen countless people speak out about sexual violence and harassment, it has also revealed difficulties in building the means of confronting them.

Refugees – remember them?

Mitch Mitchell writes on Refugee Lifeboat, a new organisation that aims to marry humanitarian aid for refugees with an uncompromising political stand against state racism

Ahed Tamimi trial concealment

Don’t let Israel hide Ahed’s trial

Israel’s apartheid regime is trying to hide its mistreatment of Ahed Tamimi, the teenage Palestinian political prisoner.

Capitalism’s life source: the domestic and social basis for exploitation

US-based socialist Tithi Bhattacharya responds to questions from rs21 on her new book about social reproduction theory.

What is Transgender Day of Remembrance, and why does it matter?

Charlie Powell and Taisie Tsikas write on the significance of Transgender Day of Remembrance in the ongoing struggle against the oppression of transgender people.

Reflections on ‘The Fall’

Colin Revolting gives his thoughts on The Fall, an extraordinary play about a protest movement in South African in 2015-16 which has had an enormous impact in the West.

Reflections of a reluctant transsexual

Evren Filgate gives their perspective on the reform of the Gender Recognition Act and the struggle that trans people face in their daily lives. We heard news a few weeks ago that the Gender Recognition Act is being reformed. Hooray! Surely that is a good thing. We have Made It; it is just like 2013, […]

Socialist views mental illness

The politics of mental health

Hazel Croft argues that, while reducing stigma is a good start, we also need a more radical approach to mental health

Rif protests July 20th

A ‘total’ movement: what next for Morocco’s Hirak after 20 July?

Morocco, and in particular the serially repressed and neglected Rif region, has been rocked since late last year by a series of enormous, and almost entirely non-violent, protests. rs21 offers its unqualified support to the adherents of the Hirak (Popular Movement), and has done since the protests broke out. We also endorse the efforts of […]

Dyke march accused of antisemitism

Solidarity with Chicago Dyke March: it’s not antisemitic to oppose Israel

In the last few weeks, controversy has erupted about events on the Chicago Dyke March, held on 24 June. Colin Wilson argues that we should stand in solidarity with the march’s organisers. The Dyke March has taken place annually for over twenty years as an alternative to a Pride Parade as its founders believed was […]

We burned the cop cars one by one: a review of ‘When We Rise’ by Cleve Jones

Colin Wilson reviews an inspiring memoir of decades of LGBT activism

revolutionary reflections | From the War on Drugs to Black Lives Matter: exposing the discourse on drugs in the history of US racism

 The war on drugs has played a significant part in the creation of the prison-industrial complex that has condemned the lives of millions of Black Americans. In this article for Black History Month Laura Clark explores the history of the discourse around drugs in the creation and maintenance of racism in the US. You can […]