Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism

'Historical materialism is the theory of the proletarian revolution.' Georg Lukács

Wednesday, January 25, 2012

The Egyptian Revolution One Year On

Photo by Hossam el-Hamalawy, who is speaking at Marxism 2012
See the live blogs from Tahrir Square here and here - long live the Egyptian Revolution!

Edited to add: For some of the solidarity rallies that took place in Britain, see here while there is a meeting in London with Gigi Ibrahim, an Egyptian Revolutionary Socialist who has, among other things debated the Egyptian Revolution with Henry Kissinger on Newsnight, on Wednesday 1 February

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Friday, January 13, 2012

International Socialism # 133


The new issue of International Socialism is now online - articles include Charlie Kimber on the 30 November mass strike in Britain, Megan Trudell on 'The Occupy movement and class politics in the US', an interview with Costas Lapavitsas on the Eurozone crisis, plus articles on 'China's capitalism and the crisis', 'The Egyptian workers’ movement and the 25 January Revolution', 'Libya at the crossroads'. The only things I have read so far include an article on 'the Beat Generation' by Through the Scary Door's Adam Marks and a piece by Roland Boer on 'Engels’s contradictions: a reply to Tristram Hunt'. As a blog, Histomat in general was rather overly harsh on Hunt's Engels biography before I had the time to actually read it, and having now read it I think I was a little bit unfair to Hunt - it is actually a good introduction to Engels's life - well as good as it was ever likely to be given it is written by someone who is not a Marxist themselves - so slight apologies to Tristram on that one. Boer's article does in a sophisticated manner address nonetheless some of the issues around the personal and political contradictions in Engels' life that were raised by Hunt but not satisfactorily resolved by him. While I am here, I might as well point people to an interesting recent post by Scott Hamilton on 'the future of blogging' that is not in International Socialism but of doubtless interest to bloggers and those who read blogs nonetheless - see also Scott's fine analysis of the late Christopher Hitchens ...

Wednesday, January 11, 2012

Restart the pensions fight

The class struggle in Britain may not be quite at the level of say Greece or Nigeria, but it is at a particularly critical stage just now - given the Tories attempts to divide up the public sector unions who united and came together in such an impressive fashion with the co-ordinated mass strike on 30 November with a measly new 'pensions offer' seems to be making some headway - those who can should get to London this Saturday for the following meeting:
Unite the Resistance emergency national meeting, 12 noon to 4pm, Saturday 14 January, Friends Meeting House, Euston Road, central London