Socialist Worker August 9th

This Socialist Worker (#2113 August 9th) leads on the massive energy price rises and calls for a windfall tax on profits as a first step towards nationalization, which is obviously connected to the People Before Profit Charter. And maybe a harbinger of the future is a story about Edinburgh council building houses.

Alex Callinicos's column is on 'What's behind the return of the Tories' starts with the big Observer Review piece, 'So are we all Tories now?' (it must be summer). Labour decline and Tory revival have happened before , but this is very different from the late '70s, in which Thather marked a sea-change - Cameron marks consistency. There isn't a tide of reaction, more 'weary contempt'. Callinicos sees two processes. The first is the familiar downturn in Labour fortunes as it betrays tradtional voters. The second is a steady decline in Labour roots, with membership down to 176,891. The impact according to Callinicos is ambiguous and I find Callinicos himself being ambiguous - pointing to reactionary pressues and a 'marked rise in worker combativity' - strikes 'mark an important step forward for workers after the defeats of the 1980s and 1990s' (still seems limited to me). 'Everything is still to play for' - but it's a long time that that hasn't been something like that

Vladimir Unkovski-Korica from a Serbian socialist organization Marks21 on 'Serbia's nationalist forces in disarray'. I don't know anything about this group, but its politics seem perfectly compatible with the International Socialist Tendency. The analysis says Karadzic's arrest marks a downturn for Serbian nationalist politics, especially with the small numbers who demonstrated in protest, even though there is massive anger about the hypocrisy of the West. The nationalists have been seen as the 'social' opponents of neo-liberalism, so now there is space for radical left politics - an anti-NATO campaign (with involvement of Macedonians and Greeks) to be launched in the autumn, building up the protests at the forthcoming NATO 60th anniversary in Strasbourg.

Simon Basketter & Simon Assaf have the centrespread on 'Oil there was and will be blood', with a nice map and graph in the print edition. Yes, the oil industry is important and nasty. Simon Assaf also writes on 'Multinationals' scramble fuel new conflicts' focussed on the econmoic and military impact on Africa.

Dalia Said Mostafa provides a good appreciation of the Egyptian filmmaker Youssef Chahine who died in July. There's also an interview with Harold Rosen about his time in the CP in the 1930s (originally published in 2004)

And to mark the Olympics there is also Chris Bambery writing about the politics of sport and it commodification in 'Race to the Bottom'.

Socialist Worker July 26th

Socialist Worker (#2111, July 26th) continues its focus on domestic political issues (rather than the international issues that dominated its front pages a short while ago) by taking up knife crime the personal story from a mother who feels her son was failed by the system.

International issues are taken up by Simon Assaf in 'US establishment is split on war strategy', which seeks to contextualise Obama's middle east policy (basically Afghanistan not Iraq and no way Iran) as reprsenting a section of the ruling class that wants to avoid military confrontation with Iran. Condoleeza Rice seems to be on this track, and Robert Gates. But poses question, yet again, whether 'section of the ruling class' actually means anything.

Alex Callinicos deals with the global economic crisis in 'Triple trouble at bursting bubble', which takes up Janet Yellen's Macbeth imagery (hey Ms Yellen's done the hard work here!) in pointing to the housing market, financial markets and commodity prices as driving the crisis in what Callinicos calls a 'postive feedback loop' - shouldn't that be 'negative' feedback loop - resulting in predictions of a W-shaped downturn. And this applies to Britain. Interestingly, on the basis of the lessons of the '30s, Callinicos allows that it sensible of the Treasury to allow more borrowing.

The Argos strike gets attention, and it looks like there could be a big strike on London buses. The People Before Profits Charter is apparently going great guns. Anne Alexander provides good background on the 1958 Uprising in Iraq (coming up to its 50th anniversary). Mike Sambo from the Zimbabwean ISO talks about the situation there.

Tucked away on p15 is an innocuous looking report from anti-fasist activities in Stoke, which has aroused the belated ire of a quality left blogger, posted here and here, with much repetitive and over-lapping blog-quarelling to follow.

Socialist Worker

Good on 'em. The regular Socialist Worker is postponed for a day and its place is a special for the public sector strikes today.

The lead is 'United we can beat Brown'. There's a piece with Mark Serwotka of the PCS. There's a message of solidarity from the NUT. There's a claim that private sector workers are fighting too. And there's background about the global food crisis from Esme Choonara.

Hope it sells well. For a sense that there are dificulties in co-ordinating action across so many unions it's worth being aware of the issues posed and debated on the Socialist Unity and Liam MacUaid blogs.

Socialist Worker #2108 July 5th

This Socialist Worker (July 5th) has a Brown in freefall cover.

Of particular interest: an interview with Alain Krivine focussed on the LCR's plans for an anti-capitalist party, Anindya Bhattacharya on migrant workers and John Molyneux on the myths of overpopulation.

The disastrous defection to Labour of all the Tower Hamlets councillors associated with the SWP (maybe two actually members, plus the rather sweet Oli Rahman) gets a short notice by Chris Bambery on p15.