"National liberation is a trap" (2026)

Blogger's Note:

The following text is from the SPGB discussion forum, and is in connection to the SPGB contesting the local elections in Lambeth.

"The campaign group, Vote Palestine 2026 "asked candidates if they would sign a pledge, the first point of which was to: “Uphold the inalienable rights of the Palestinian people.”  [The BrixtonBuzz website has published a list of those who agreed to sign the whole pledge.] 

Our candidate added a published comment explaining why he couldn’t:

“I did request a better wording of the pledge at the campaign launch but those running the campaign didn’t take my advice so this, regrettably, must be my answer.

I can’t help but feel those who have a vested interest in passing off national liberation wars as somehow socialist had a hand in this."

“I did request a better wording of the pledge at the campaign launch but those running the campaign didn’t take my advice so this, regrettably, must be my answer.

I can’t help but feel those who have a vested interest in passing off national liberation wars as somehow socialist had a hand in this.

Reply from Anya Krycek

Dear Vote Palestine 2026,

Thank you for your email. I must respectfully decline to sign.

As an anti Zionist Jew and socialist standing in Brixton North, I share your horror at the suffering in Gaza and the West Bank. But I cannot endorse a pledge framed around national self determination.

The nation state, whether Israeli or Palestinian, is a prison house of nationalities. It tells workers to wave flags and forget they have no motherland to defend. Israeli and Palestinian workers alike are exploited by the same global system of wage labour and capital.

National liberation is a trap. A new state means new masters under a new flag, while wage labour, property rights, and class rule stay intact. Council divestment treats symptoms, not the disease.

My goal is not another state but the abolition of the state itself: a classless, stateless, wageless, moneyless world community where people cooperate freely. Real self determination means workers recognising their shared enemy across all borders.

I stand with working people everywhere. I cannot sign a pledge that reinforces the nationalism keeping them divided.

Yours sincerely,

Anya Krycek

Socialist Party Candidate for Brixton North, Lambeth”

Another candidate, Eduardo Salgado, who is standing for Shake it Up in the same ward, also commented, expressing a “Marxist-Leninist” (Maoist) point of view:

“I think historically, things happen in stages. According to Marxism-Leninism (ML), national liberation often must precede, or be strategically aligned with, workers’ liberation because imperialism makes national independence a necessary first step to create the conditions for a successful socialist revolution. Lenin viewed the national struggle in colonized or oppressed countries as a key component of the overall world socialist revolution. The core reasoning is that national liberation acts as a necessary step to “clear the decks” for direct class struggle, as it removes the foreign oppressor and allows the working class to battle its local bourgeoisie. Lenin says on this issue:

* Support the national liberation struggle against imperialism unconditionally.

* Maintain independent working-class organization and leadership within that movement.

* Use the liberation struggle to raise demands for socialist transformation (land reform, workers’ rights).”

There is also a Trotskyist candidate standing in Brixton North but he has not intervened yet.

Here is our candidate’s reply to Eduardo Salgado:

The stageist model, national liberation as a necessary prelude to socialist transformation, is not merely strategically mistaken but theoretically incompatible with the abolition of capitalism. The historical record of national liberation movements demonstrates a consistent pattern: the “stage” of national liberation does not clear the decks for proletarian revolution it institutionalizes a new form of capitalist state. The foreign colonizer is replaced by a national bourgeoisie that maintains wage labour, commodity production, and extraction. The nation is not a proto political reality waiting to be liberated, but a category produced by capital itself a way of organising populations into manageable units. To prioritise national liberation is to reinforce the very abstractions; nation, citizenship, the state that capital requires to function.

“The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got.” The Communist Manifesto (1848)

The Socialist Party (GB) position is that the proletariat has no stake in which bourgeoisie administers its exploitation. Anti-imperialism that stops at the nation state leaves exploitation intact. The state form itself prevents the direct social relations that would constitute a break with capital. Socialism cannot proceed through stages it must begin immediately in the content of struggle, as the practical activity of breaking with wage labour, money, and the state. National liberation changes the flag and people in government, it does not interrupt the reproduction of capital. To make it a “necessary step” is to permanently defer the only act that could end exploitation: the immediate social transformation of society by and for the working class. We don’t seek the people’s commodity production we seek abolition of the proletariat.

Anya Brixton North SPGB candidate

What happened at the Brixton Hustings at St Mathews Community Centre – Mon 27th April (2026)

Blogger's Note:

Another piece from Brixton Buzz website, in connection to the SPGB contesting the local election in Lambeth. This light-hearted 'sketch' of a local hustings actually dates from the 28th April.

LAMBETH COUNCIL / NEWS

What happened at the Brixton Hustings at St Mathews Community Centre – Mon 27th April

Tue 28th April, 2026 - by Contributor - 6 Comments.

Yesterday, a Brixton Hustings was held at St Mathews Community Centre, and local writer The Back Row sent Brixton Buzz his report:

“No-one there from Lib Dems (surprisingly – they’ve got a load of ‘real’ candidates in the Brixton wards), Conservatives or Reform. Loads of current Labour councillors from across the wards in the audience.

Some dispute over there being 2 independents under the ‘shake it up’ alliance on the panel. “We’re not a party, but we’re working together”.

Didn’t really make it a lot clearer. (Issue for me is they don’t have any policies – you literally don’t know what you’re voting for. What they support will come down to their assemblies on every issue, but how are they going to run those? )

The Socialist woman was great value. Under the socialists housing will be free for all, you’ll be able to shoplift food again, and we’ll solve deaths on the roads by scrapping salaried jobs so eliminating commute traffic.

She absolutely passed the ‘would you go for few pints with this candidate’ test. A few drinks would turn into an all nighter in no time.

The Trade Union & Socialist candidate was straight out of central casting. 1980s Liverpool will be the model for Lambeth apparently (he disputed the shout from the audience that “they’re all in prison”).

Of all the topics discussed the Christian Alliance guy got most animated denying there was a genocide in Gaza and espousing just how pro-Israel he was (to the extent of getting into some back and forth with the (Kiwi/Jewish) Socialist candidate who was rightly pointing out that you could be proudly jewish without being Zionist).

Unsurprisingly the CA view was not especially popular with the audience. He’d also scrap all the LTNs and decision making would be led by the churches.

Other than incumbent Labour Councillor David Bridson they were all weak on the questions about specific local issues – the stuff that they’d actually be dealing with and have some influence over. Which was disappointing.

Green candidate (ex Labour, Corbynite) was a dramatic speaker but tried to ‘both sides’ questions on both LTNs/Road safety (whereas Green policy is pretty clear) and Brockwell Park Festivals which doesn’t really work whichever side you stand on these issues.

The ‘shake it up’ independents just want to have a citizens assembly on every issue.

Which is both expensive to do properly (DB pointed out Lambeth have done a Climate Assembly) and is going to make any sort of decision making incredibly slow. It’s also not going to lead to ‘consensus’ – you get a view but it’s not one that everyone is going to agree with (the councils current climate/transport/etc policies came out of that assembly).

There was a question about councillors being kicked out for racist/otherwise unacceptable behaviour/statements where most of the candidates were saying they should be kicked out as councillors not just their party.

(Scarlet O’Hara pointed out from audience that there was no way of legally doing that – would require a national change in law but that didn’t stop most on the panel just repeating the same point).

Someone turned up to be shouty and angry about LTNs. That she came from Streatham rather than any of the Brixton wards is probably a strong sign that the anti LTN crew really are shouting into the void now.

And her idea that it’s not safe to walk home from the bus stop without rat running traffic has never made any sense and is counter to all evidence.

The Chair did a good job of keeping people in line, to time, and staying neutral.”

Additional blogger's note:

A link to this report of the hustings was posted on the SPGB's discussion forum with the additional comments by 'ALB':

"We went to the hustings yesterday evening organised by the Brixton Neighbourhood Forum for parties standing candidates in Brixton. Represented were us, the Greens, Labour, Christian People’s Alliance, TUSC and Shake It Up (two — they pulled a fast one as both are technically “Independents”). The Tories, Reform and the LibDems sent no one (the last perhaps because of some deal with the Greens not to try hard in this part of the borough in return for the Greens not trying in another).

There were about 120 present.

The debate was organised fairly which each candidate being given exactly the same opportunity and time to answer questions. From a conventional party political point of view the main contest here is between Labour (representing by an outgoing councillor seeking reelection in Brixton Acre Ward) and one of the Greens standing in the same ward — Michael Chessum, leftwing journalist and activist, who switched from Corbyn to the Green Party. He claims to be a socialist (and confided to our candidate, who was sitting next to him, that he was a “Marxist”). Here is his arguments as to why “revolutionaries” should join the Green Party . . . "

Meet the Candidates: Socialist Party of Great Britain – abolishing capitalism since 1904 (2026)

Blogger's Note:

The Socialist Party is contesting three seats in Lambeth, South London, in the 2026 Local Elections. The following article appeared on the Brixton Buzz website, which is "Brixton’s biggest and most comprehensive news, features and listings site."

LAMBETH COUNCIL / NEWS

Meet the Candidates: Socialist Party of Great Britain – abolishing capitalism since 1904

Wed 6th May, 2026 - by Phil Ross

Founded in 1904, the Socialist Party of Great Britain (SPGB) is one of Britain’s oldest socialist parties, and one of its most uncompromising. Unlike Labour or the Greens, the party does not seek to reform capitalism – it seeks to abolish it, along with the state and money itself.

The SPGB is standing three candidates in Lambeth’s 7 May council elections – Anya Krycek in Brixton North, Jacqueline Shodeke in Clapham Common & Abbeville, and Cesar Sotillo in Stockwell West & Larkhall.

Brixton Buzz put four questions to the candidates, and in keeping with the party’s non-hierarchical principles, they answered collectively:

What does the SPGB offer a resident of your ward right now, today?

We do not offer false promises that Lambeth Council can abolish poverty, solve the housing crisis, or fix underfunded public services under capitalism.

Other parties will tell you that with the right policies, the right leadership, or the right ‘progressive coalition,’ things can be made tolerable. We say: capitalism cannot be reformed into a humane system. It is a system of production for profit, and profit will always come before human need.

What we offer immediately is a vote for socialist consciousness.

Every Socialist Party (GB) vote is a declaration that you recognise the present system has failed and must be replaced. It is a signal to other workers that they are not alone in wanting something fundamentally different.

We do not promise to manage capitalism better than Labour. We promise to use any position gained to expose its limits and advocate for revolutionary change.

That said, if elected, we would vote for any measure that genuinely improves working class conditions – since we are not opposed to reforms as such.

[Jacqueline Shodeke]

The SPGB vision is a moneyless, stateless society of common ownership.

Brixton has a thriving culture of independent businesses, market traders and community enterprises.

In that world, what happens to them?

They become part of the common ownership of the means of production. Not state-owned, there will be no state. Not privately owned, there will be no money, no buying and selling.

But democratically controlled by the community of producers and consumers.

Market traders are workers. Independent business owners are typically small scale exploiters of their own labour, often struggling under the same pressures as wage workers.

In socialism, they would contribute their skills and labour directly to meeting social needs, without the constraint of profitability, rent, or competition.

Brixton Market would not disappear, it would transition to a place of free distribution, where the produce of collective labour is available to all without exchange.

The ‘thriving culture’ that people value is not dependent on capitalism and in fact is stifled by both alienation and homogenisation.

Capital constantly undermines through gentrification, rising rents, and the displacement of working-class residents. Socialism would preserve and extend that culture by removing the economic pressures that destroy it.

[Cesar Sortillo]

Where does the SPGB fit in a broader left coalition?

Nowhere. We do not join coalitions with reformist parties, including the Greens or any ‘progressive’ alliance.

Our position is not sectarianism for its own sake, it is a recognition that these organisations operate on fundamentally different principles.

The Greens, like Labour, seek to administer capitalism more humanely. They believe that with better regulation, greener technology, and more ethical consumption, the system can be made sustainable. We disagree.

Capitalism is inherently destructive, of the environment, of human wellbeing, and of any possibility of a rational society. No amount of green washing changes its basic drive for accumulation.

As for ‘working alongside’ others on specific local issues: we support any group of workers in struggle, regardless of political affiliation, for immediate defensive gains.

But we do not enter electoral pacts, shared platforms, or coalitions that imply common political objectives. Our objective is the abolition of capitalism. Theirs is its reform. These are incompatible.

[Anya Krycek]

What is your assessment of Labour’s record in Lambeth, and what would genuinely left representation look like in its place?

Labour has administered capitalism in Lambeth for decades, and the results are visible: gentrification, displacement, privatisation of housing, underfunded services, and a council that acts as a local manager for central government austerity.

They are not a failed alternative to the Tories. They are a reliable partner in managing the same system. ‘Genuinely left representation’ would not mean a more radical Labour council.

It would mean representatives who use their position to tell the truth: that local government under capitalism has no real power to change the fundamental conditions of working class life.

It would be refusing to implement cuts, refusing to collaborate with property developers, and using every platform to argue for the common ownership of the means of production.

That is what Socialist Party (GB) representation would look like.

Not better management of decline, but a clear voice for revolutionary change, starting with the recognition that the working class must organise politically, democratically, and consciously for socialism.

Anya Krycek, Brixton North Jacqueline Shodeke, Clapham Common & Abbeville Cesar Sotillo, Stockwell West & Larkhall

More Info

Socialist Party of Great Britain

SPGB Snippets: Tough times ahead (2026)

From the Socialist Party of Great Britain website

May 6, 2026

The 2026 Global Report on Food Crises presents an alarming picture. 226 million people experienced ‘acute food insecurity’ in 2025, and there were two famines, in Gaza and Sudan, the first time that two famines had been declared in the same year. Over 35 million children were acutely malnourished in countries with nutrition crises.

For 2026 there is a risk of famine in South Sudan as well. And the conflict in the Middle East may well increase disruptions to global food markets.

The main reasons given for food insecurity were conflicts, insecurity and weather extremes. Behind this is a world based on profits, wars and environmental damage, where producing enough food for all is in reality perfectly feasible.

April's "Done & Dusted"

I started last month all guns blazing. I thought it was going to be a bumper month for finished Socialist Standard but, alas, life intervened. I can only seek to do better in May.

Usual schtick . . . click on the months for the full issues.

April's "Done & Dusted"

March 1911

April 1932

April 1952

February 1957

January 1962

November 1994

April 2026

Socialist Sonnet No. 230: Malevolence (2026)

From the Socialism or Your Money Back blog

Malevolence

                                              

By what malevolent mechanism

Does someone become so self-promoting

As to seduce voters into voting

In favour of division and schism?

For all such Herodians, innocence

Of those being killed and buried in their homes

Is easily dismissed. Victory forms

Its own rationale, though it makes nonsense

Of any claims to civilisation,

Which surely should be a society

Of the commonweal, where people are free

From obligation to any nation

And its capital. Power’s the sly drug

That so intoxicates the demagogue.

 

D. A.

Work: Paid and unpaid (part 2) (2026)

From the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Part 1 of this article last month considered how people react to work according to whether it is paid or unpaid and how hierarchised and authoritarian work structures are increasingly affecting their lives. This second part looks at the feasibility of attempts to ‘humanise’ work under the current system of production for profit and points to how such humanisation is only truly feasible in the context of a different social system.

Together with the intensification of the employment process previously discussed, in recent years there has also been considerable discussion about whether there might be more effective and efficient, and at the same time more humane, ways of organising work – even within the existing system of production for profit.

Hierarchy challenged

There are examples of companies instituting freer, less rigid work structures and even more ‘equal’ pay. One of the most striking instances has been the American ‘Valve’ video game company where the owner decided to establish a ‘flat’ non-directive structure based on the conviction that people work better and more efficiently when they’re relaxed and don’t feel they’re being surveilled and constantly judged. Another example is the financial services company Gravity Payments. Here the CEO decided to pay all his staff a minimum wage of $70,000, that being the amount he decided was necessary to live what he called ‘a normal life’. This compared with the previous average salary of $48,000. At the same time, he slashed his own salary of $1.1m to the same $70,000. Then a recent programme in the ‘Analysis’ series on BBC Radio 4 asking the question ‘Does Work Have To Be Miserable?’, included the boss of the Howorth Air Tech company in Salford explaining how he had moved strongly in the direction of putting resources into helping to bring out his employees’ latent talents and not simply regarding them as ‘factors of production’.

Other reactions to hierarchy and authoritarian work practices in capitalism have included a beneath-the-radar move among some workers away from the conventional jobs market – a rejection, partial at least, of the normally life-sapping existence of wage and salary work to lead what has been called ‘a low-desire life without gruelling competition’. Those who choose this path still do of course need to carry out some paid work and to participate in the buying and selling system, but what they are seeking is an existence that offers them more freedom and less stress. This kind of choice was recently highlighted in the BBC radio series ‘The Digital Human’ where the presenter, Aleks Krotosky, talked about how, unexpectedly, in China, a country she referred to as ‘the most competitive society on earth’, a good number of young people were managing to ‘opt out’ from full-time paid work and attempt to lead that ‘low-desire life’.

Reorganising capitalism?

The more radical view, such as espoused by the Socialist Party, that the nature of work can only be fundamentally altered by a new social system, also has advocates in a significant number of quarters. In a ‘Ted Talk’ from the University of Edinburgh given by Jade Saab in 2018 and called ‘A World Without Money’, the speaker includes a section entitled ‘Why and how we work will be different’. On social media too there are groups hosting similar discussions with names that speak for themselves, for example ‘Moneyless Society’, ‘World of Free Access’, and ‘A group around the world where we are all anti-capitalist’. This is matched in book publication by more than just a few writers proposing various different kinds of non-hierarchical work organisation.

Some of these proposals, when closely scrutinised, amount to suggestions for reorganising capitalism, which we would regard as utopian, since it would be impossible in reality for the capitalist system, given its profit-seeking basis, to implement them. We would agree with Anitra Nelson, in her book Beyond Money. A Post-Capitalist Strategy, that ‘modified forms of money and markets … are bound to fail’ with the vast majority being ‘unable to enjoy the full benefits of their everyday work and have little say in how they live or work’. Her conclusion is that we cannot ‘tweak the system to overcome its weaknesses’.

Such flaws as pointed to by that writer are also to be found in otherwise perceptive books about work such as Daniel Susskind’s A World Without Work. Technology, Automation and How We Should Respond (2020) and Michael D. Yates’s Work, Work, Work. Labour, Alienation and Class Struggle (2022). But even if the conclusions of those writers fall short of advocating a completely different social order or of being convinced that this may be possible in the foreseeable future, they can still have a lot of powerfully relevant things to say about work and its meaning in human society. Susskind, for example, while in the end not venturing beyond the idea of buying and selling, describes work as ‘a source of meaning, purpose and direction in life with community recognition of that work rather than wages fulfilling the human longing for personal fulfilment and social interaction’. Yates, for his part, states: ‘Regarding work (…) we should strive for a society in which this word is no longer used except to describe the past. What we are, as human beings, is a species that can thoughtfully produce what is needed for survival and enjoyment (…) only cooperative and beneficial production, with substantive equality in all aspects of life’.

Work in a non-market society

But others go further in seeing as a practical possibility a society where work in exchange for payment would not need to take place at all – and this within the framework of a completely different social system than the one that dominates the world at present. Recent examples of this outlook are to be found in Matthew Holten’s book, Moneyless Society. The Next Economic Evolution, in Aaron Benanav’s Automation and the Future of Work, and in Half-Earth Socialism: a Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics by Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass. These writers stress the downsides of employment for money with its imposition of a daily stretch of work, lack of variety, hierarchical organisation, and the potential precariousness of keeping your job. And they are generally keen to point to the fact that, in a future post-capitalist, non-market society, non-socially productive activity (e.g armaments, insurance, banking, sales promotion, taxation, legal contracts, etc) will disappear and all the work that takes place will have a useful and necessary function with no stigma attached to any of it.

As to specific details of how work could be organised in a non-monetary society and the nature it would take, it is probably Benanav who puts his finger on it most tellingly. In his final chapter, entitled ‘Necessity and Freedom’, he argues for ‘the abolition of private property and monetary exchange in favor of planned cooperation’, and ‘a world of fully capacitated individuals … in which every single person could look forward to developing their interests and abilities with full social support’ and which will be ‘the first time in their lives that they could enter truly voluntary agreements – without the gun to their heads of a pervasive material insecurity’. He goes on to say that ‘we would divide up responsibilities while taking into account individual aptitudes and proclivities’ with some tasks needing to be performed locally, but many capable of being ‘planned on a regional or global scale, using advanced computer technologies’. And finally: ‘The realm of freedom would be the one giving rise to all manner of dynamism: that is where human beings would invent new tools, instruments, and methods of accounting, as well as new games and gadgets, rapidly reallocating resources over time and space to suit changing human tastes (…). The world would then be composed of overlapping partial plans, with interrelated necessary and free activities, rather than a single central plan’.

Commentators such as these are clearly not talking here about strategies within capitalism for dealing with problems thrown up by that system, for example climate change or environmental degradation. They are not looking for more ‘sustainable’ ways for production, consumption and work to continue much as before, for ‘green deals’ or for ways of finding replacement work for those who lose their jobs through automation. They are talking rather about a society in which people will no longer have to do jobs they do not necessarily like (or may even hate) just for the money but will be able to do work they want to do and ideally enjoy doing. And for any ‘less popular’ jobs, there would be a focus on automation and the use of robotics to give assistance.

Above all one of the first things that will end in the kind of society being envisaged, which we would call socialism, is the link between work and consumption: what people will consume will not depend on the amount of work they do. Above all people will cooperate to do the work that makes society function and they will make decisions democratically – in workplaces, in their local communities, in their regions and, in some overarching cases, no doubt even globally. Above all there will no longer be top-down control by leaders, governments and bosses and no more money controlling people’s lives, wasting so much of our time and energy. There will be no useless toil, only useful work.

Howard Moss

Blogger's Note:

The following books that were mentioned in the article have been previously reviewed in the pages of the Socialist Standard:

• Mar 2020: A World Without Work. Technology, Automation and How We Should Respond by Daniel Susskind
• Feb 2021: Automation and the Future of Work by Aaron Benanav
• Oct 2022: Beyond Money. A Post-Capitalist Strategy by Anitra Nelson
• Jan 2023: Moneyless Society: the Next Economic Evolution by Matthew Holten
• Mar 2023: Half-Earth Socialism: a Plan to Save the Future from Extinction, Climate Change and Pandemics by Troy Vettese and Drew Pendergrass
• Oct 2023: Work Work Work. Labor, Alienation and Class Struggle. By Michael D. Yates

Exhibition review: On The Line: 100 years of strikes & solidarity (2026)

Exhibition Review from the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

A hundred years on the line – People’s History Museum, Manchester

This month is the centenary of the General Strike, which took place from 4 to 12 May 1926. An exhibition ‘On the Line’ is being held at the People’s History Museum in Manchester until November. It consists of banners, photos, pamphlets and leaflets relating to strikes and other workers’ struggles over the last hundred years.

The earliest item on display is a banner ‘Union and Victory’ from the Great London Dock Strike of 1899. There is relatively little on the General Strike itself, but there are photos of soup kitchens, military convoys, and polo players enrolled as special constables policing the streets on horseback. Also, a copy of a pamphlet, written by a barrister, on what to do when arrested.

Among the other disputes covered are the UCS work-in in Glasgow in 1971, Grunwick in 1977, Orgreave in 1984, the ambulance workers’ strike in 1989, and the Liverpool dockers’ strike in 1996. As would be expected, there is a lot of material relating to the miners’ strike of 1984-5. This includes Women Against Pit Closures, with a photo of women in Barnsley supporting the miners, and a T-shirt from Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners (‘Pits and Perverts’ is the slogan). A strike at an Amazon warehouse in Coventry from 2023 is recalled with a robot costume: workers felt they were being treated like robots. There is documentation of recent strikes, such as those by couriers and delivery workers, and last year’s strike by resident doctors. From 1972 there is a poster about four workers arrested on a picket line, a reminder of the possible consequences of workers defending their pay and conditions. A 1986 poster ‘Murdoch is bad news’ captures the role of the capitalist media in undermining workers’ struggles.

As noted in the exhibition, Stanley Baldwin, PM at the time, described the General Strike as ‘the road to anarchy and ruin’. The 1927 Trade Disputes and Trades Unions Act, passed in response to the strike, prohibited mass picketing among other forms of resistance. The TUC ended the strike without an agreement; the miners stayed out for another seven months before being forced to return to work.

The June 1926 Socialist Standard responded to the ending of the strike by commenting, ‘The greatest Trade Union action that was ever taken in any country was closed by the most gigantic swindle in the whole history of Trade Unionism.’ It then went on to criticise other organisations’ reaction, such as the ‘Communist’ Party. There was no point, the article argued, in preferring left-wing over right-wing leaders: the very idea of leaders and leadership should be rejected. Trust in leaders was not a good idea: ‘Trust and ye shall be betrayed’. The strike itself was seen as ‘a sham fight’.

The exhibition as a whole is well worth visiting, and gives a good, if necessarily only partial, idea of industrial actions over the last century. Of course, such struggles are still needed, as workers do their best to resist the exploitation and oppression of capitalism.

Paul Bennett

Halo Halo (2026)

The Halo Halo Column from the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Recent speculation is that an individual who is nominally in charge of one of the most powerful capitalistic entities on the planet and ‘has his finger on the nuclear button’, may be the ‘Antichrist’. Karl Marx noted that recourse to the ‘mist-enveloped regions of the religious world’ show that ‘in that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race.’ The Antichrist is, along with other made-up things, a product of the human mind so we’re not taking it seriously.

Pope Leo XIV has incurred the wrath of the megalomaniac currently spreading death, destruction and mayhem everywhere. On his social media the egoist said, ‘he’s WEAK on Crime, and terrible for Foreign Policy. I don’t want a Pope who thinks it’s OK for Iran to have a Nuclear Weapon.  I don’t want a Pope who criticises the President of the United States.’ It’s not known if he’s asked how many divisions the Pope has yet.

The ‘leader’ of the ‘most powerful nation’ on earth, one comprising a hell (sic) of a lot of Christians who look forward to the ‘end times’, also posted an AI-generated image of himself as a Jewish soothsayer. One of his previous gung-ho supporters said it’s ‘more than blasphemy’ and ‘it’s an Antichrist spirit.’ Given how ‘his’ adherents proclaim the sanctity of life and love for your neighbour, their continuing support for someone who threatened to blast a civilisation back to the stone age ain’t very Christian at all.

Is the Islamic Republic of Iran still fighting with the Great Satan and the Little Satan? Back in 1979 when Iran’s monarchy was replaced by an Islamic theocracy a ‘leader’ coined the Satan expressions including the Lesser Satan (the Soviet Union). In July 2014 the Socialist Standard noted that Pope Francis blamed Satan for the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians saying ‘More than once we have been on the verge of peace, but the evil one has succeeded in blocking it’.

Quoted in the Mail Online from an original podcast run by an American Christian ex-Navy SEAL, a Catholic priest suggested that the time of the Antichrist may be near. He said that the AC would rule the world through ‘economies’ and that ‘modern financial systems and emerging digital technologies could potentially create the kind of centralised economic control described in biblical prophecy’. Revelation 13;16-17: ‘And he causeth all, both small and great, rich and poor, free and bond, to receive a mark in their right hand, or in their foreheads; And that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark, or the name of the beast, or the number of his name’.

Sounding more like an anti-globalist, he opined, ‘one of the ways how he’s going to control people is through digital currencies, and he’s going to just shut people off, and that’s how they’ll be able to basically starve people out…’

DC

Proper Gander: Theroux the keyhole (2026)

The Proper Gander column from the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Louis Theroux has built up his career as a documentary-maker since the 1990s, with his trademark approach being to patiently spend time among society’s stranger subcultures to learn about what motivates the people within. The subjects of his latest film are prominent figures in the ‘manosphere’, a loose online network which upholds hard-line versions of masculinity. Netflix’s Inside The Manosphere follows Theroux as he meets influencers who have amassed millions of young male fans through their social media platforms, livestreams and podcasts. Their content extols their values of conspicuous wealth, sexism and conspiracy theories, with the influencers all living extravagant lifestyles and exuding confidence, giving their views plausibility among their impressionable followers.

In Marbella, Theroux visits Harrison Sullivan (aka HSTikkyTokky) and Ed Matthews, whose online content includes videos of macho fitness tips and ‘predator stings’ confronting alleged paedophiles. Sullivan becomes suspicious that Theroux is trying to catch him out and cuts short the time he agreed to spend being interviewed, although he later backtracks after his videos about their first meeting attract more clicks. While Sullivan and Matthews represent the ‘laddish’ style of influencer, Justin Waller from Louisiana is more measured, wearing tailored suits as he drives Theroux around in his Lamborghini. Waller’s material combines business advice with a disdain for feminism, saying women tend to prefer traditional family roles. He and his wife are in a ‘one-sided monogamous’ relationship, and it’s not him who’s monogamous. This arrangement is also a preference of the Miami-based influencer known as Myron Gaines, who claims women ‘want a guy that can lead them and dominate them’. Theroux sits in during Gaines’ Fresh & Fit podcast in which his female guests get objectified, belittled and embarrassed. As Theroux later comments, many of the influencers ‘advocate for traditional values while at the same time wanting to be seen with scantily-clad models’.

The confidence which influencers have in their derisory beliefs about women’s roles comes from their ‘red pill’ ideology. This is a reference to the 1999 film The Matrix, which we’re told in this context means seeing through the mainstream media’s discrimination against men, although ‘redpilling’ is usually shorthand for adopting a far-right viewpoint. New Yorker Sneako is among the more politicised of the influencers Theroux meets. Alongside being a Muslim Trump-supporter, he claims satanists run the world, leaving clues in pictures of celebrities using ‘one eye’ symbolism and telling people such as singer Sam Smith to become transgender. Predictably, he adds that the aim of this satanic cabal is to establish a single global government. While Sneako denies this is Jewish, other influencers share the conviction that a small group of Jews are behind a plan to promote degeneracy through manipulating culture, especially gender politics.

The outlook spun by the influencers is really a convoluted way of enticing people to buy the financial products they have a stake in. Theroux tests one of Sullivan’s investment opportunities and loses most of the £500 he paid in. Sullivan is at least honest in admitting that what drives his material is what makes money for him rather than what is considered right or wrong. An example is when he says he was ‘clip-farming’ by including antisemitic content while not believing it, as he knew this would generate attention. Getting exposure in order to gain more supporters and therefore customers is the priority. The notion that ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity’ would apparently be confirmed after Inside The Manosphere was released, with Sullivan accruing more followers because of the coverage it has given him, according to an article in the Metro (7 April), which itself represents more promotion.

As the focus of the show is Theroux meeting people, not much time is spent analysing the manosphere’s place in society. This approach either admirably allows the viewer to reach their own conclusions or disappointingly makes the programme feel shallow. Theroux posits how the upbringing of the influencers may have contributed to their mindset in that many of them lacked a supportive father figure, perhaps affecting their attitudes to relationships, such as ‘one-sided monogamy’. More widely, he says they are ‘products of a culture – growing up online in a world that’s changing at dizzying speed’ with long-established male roles challenged. He adds that they now project their trauma by ‘spewing hate’ to an audience of young men looking for something to feel they belong to, preferably with money to buy financial products. The fans of the influencers we see in the documentary clearly feel empowered by what their heroes advocate. Theroux recognises that while the influencers offer hope to troubled men, it comes with a belief that they are living in ‘a matrix purposely designed to make men fail’. He suggests ‘the matrix they rail against more accurately describes the algorithmic prison they’ve created for their followers, an illusion of endless wealth and power that actually only enriches a few at the top’.

The personal traumas which shaped the mindsets of each influencer and follower happened in a world which is ‘designed to make men fail’ (and women too, often in different ways). This is the divisive world of capitalism, driven by aspirations of wealth amid poverty and power amid powerlessness. They have misinterpreted this, though, and don’t identify the economic system itself as structurally creating (nearly all) people’s disadvantaged position, but instead blame the ‘matrix’ of feminism and a supposed Jewish cabal. This poisonous stance has proved lucrative for the influencers because it attracts attention online among vulnerable men, reinforcing a worrying association between wealth and bigotry. The confidence with which this mentality is promoted disguises its errors and contradictions, such as its ridiculous ‘evidence’ for a Jewish / satanic conspiracy and the hypocrisy of its attitudes to women. For an ideology apparently based on dogged independence it relies heavily on fan worship of the influencers. The ‘manosphere’ is both an expression of the alienation which comes with living in capitalist society and a dangerously misguided attempt at compensating for that alienation.

Mike Foster

Thought and Contradiction (2026)

Book Review from the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Mao: Power and Contradiction. By Kerry Brown. Reaktion Books £20.

This year is the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Mao Zedong, and for over a quarter of a century before then he had been the ruler of China. Here Kerry Brown presents an account of his life, with a great deal of background information on developments in China, including since his death.

Born in 1893, Mao was one of fifteen people who attended the founding meeting of the Chinese ‘Communist’ Party (CCP) in 1921. This was a time when few of Marx’s writings were available in Chinese. The CCP’s first manifesto stated that one of its aims was to eradicate the capitalist system, even though the vast majority of China’s inhabitants were peasants, and capitalism was just getting off the ground. Mao argued that the peasantry would play a crucial role in bringing the CCP to power, though he also accepted the Leninist idea of a centralist, vanguard party. He had very little understanding of capitalism, and sometimes saw class as something that was inherited.

Mao gradually rose to the top of the CCP during its and the Red Army’s fight against the Nationalists, but his life at this time was not easy. In 1927 he narrowly avoided being executed by the Nationalists, and in 1930 his second wife Yang Kaihui was tortured and executed by the provincial government. On the Long March of 1934–5 his two children by his third wife were given up soon after birth to local families, but could not be traced later.

The CCP took power in 1949, after driving out the Nationalists. Brown points out that Chinese society at that time was in a dire condition, after two decades of civil war and Japanese occupation. Average life expectancy was just 35, and the country was worse off economically than it had been in 1820. Land reform and the expansion of state-owned enterprises led over time to much-improved living conditions, but movements such as the Great Leap Forward were the cause of maybe as many as fifty million deaths, by famine and persecution (it is not clear how much Mao knew about the consequences of his policies, or how hard he tried to find out). The Cultural Revolution from 1966 was a power struggle within the ruling class, with Mao turning on anyone he saw as an enemy.

Since Mao’s death China has become the world’s second largest economy, rivalling the US, and a major manufacturing base, also now a hub of technological development. There has been nothing in China like de-Stalinisation in Russia, and Mao is officially viewed in China as a great man who made mistakes. The term Mao Zedong Thought is used, rather than Maoism, and Brown seems to see his ideas as some odd mix of Marxism and Daoism, though this may mean little more than a supposed emphasis on contradiction. There is no recognition here that Mao’s views had little to do with those of Marx, and that he contributed to the spread of capitalism in China: not abolishing the wages system but forcing it on far more of the country’s population.

Paul Bennett

Cooking the Books: Who does capitalism work for? (2026)

The Cooking The Books column from the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

‘AI risks widening inequality, warns Fink’ was the headline in the Times (24 March) reporting on the annual letter from billionaire Larry Fink to the shareholders of his asset management company BlackRock. The caption under a photo of Fink read:

‘Larry Fink said that most people who work for an income would be left behind by those enjoying returns on investment.’

These weren’t Fink’s exact words but they expressed his meaning. They also point to the two classes of capitalist society — the working class (those who work for an income) and the capitalist class (those who enjoy returns on investment).

More accurately, the working class is composed of all those who have to work for an income to survive, and the capitalist class of those who have sufficient returns on investment to survive without having to work.

What Fink wrote was that over recent decades:

‘… the vast majority of wealth has flowed to people who owned assets, not to people who earned most of their money by working. Since 1989, a dollar in the U.S. stock market has grown more than 15 times the value of a dollar tied to median wages. Now AI threatens to repeat that pattern at an even larger scale—concentrating wealth among the companies and investors positioned to capture it. This is where much of today’s economic anxiety comes from: a deeper feeling that capitalism is working—just not for enough people.’

He may be exaggerating — he himself later pointed out that when there is some technological innovation the companies producing and adopting it benefit and that this is ‘not unusual’ nor ‘inherently problematic’ — but he has an axe to grind. He argues that widening inequality could be avoided if more people owned stocks and shares; if they owned shares in these companies they would benefit from the rise in their stock market capitalisation. And of course BlackRock will be there to manage their share portfolio, for a fee.

It’s the old fraud of a ‘people’s capitalism’ that the Tories and the Liberals over here used to propose — making capitalism work for more people by giving them a share in profits.

Quite a few workers do own shares, though not enough to bring them an income to allow them to live without having to work, like capitalists. Fink quoted figures showing that in the US more than half of households own shares and that this is ‘a distinctive feature of American capitalism’ compared with Europe where only a third of households do.

This doesn’t mean that workers in the US are better off than those in Europe. It simply means that more workers there hold their savings as shares compared to Europe where more hold theirs as savings in a bank. The source of both the dividends on shares and the interest on savings accounts is profits made in capitalist industry, only in the case of interest on bank savings in a roundabout way.

Banks and assets management companies are in competition for the savings that workers might have. In Britain the asset management companies are currently running an aggressive advertising campaign to persuade workers to entrust their savings to them. Workers can make up their own minds on this. Savings in a bank are secure but, as they say, shares can go down as well as up.

One thing, however, is clear: workers will never have enough savings, whether in shares or in a bank, to allow them to live without having to work for wages. After all, if they did, who would produce the profits? Or the wealth society needs to continue to exist?

Your Party hits the rocks (2026)

From the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Last month the Central Executive Committee, the ‘collective leadership’ of the (ridiculously named) Your Party, decided to enforce the condition for joining that you should not be a member of any other political party. Up to then such ‘dual membership’ had been tolerated and the condition was only applied to some of the top leaders of the SWP and to candidates seeking election to the CEC. Members of Trotskyist groups, including the SWP, continued to be active and hold office in YP’s ‘proto-branches’.

Actually, the resolution passed at YP’s founding conference in November did not completely ban being a member of another political party as it allowed this subject to CEC approval. What the CEC decided on 12 April was that members of a certain type of political organisation can no longer be YP members or join, the type which it said ‘operates as a democratic centralist party or organisation, maintains its own national political membership structure, and requires political discipline and accountability to an external leadership or programme’.

Clearly what they had in mind were Leninist would-be vanguard parties. In fact a list circulating ahead of the CEC meeting named as examples ‘the SWP, Alliance for Workers’ Liberty, Socialist Party, Communist Party of Great Britain (Provisional Central Committee), Scottish Socialist Party, Socialist Equality Party and Revolutionary Communist Party’.

The ‘Socialist Party’ is not a reference to us but to a section of the old ‘Militant Tendency’ which since 1997 has been trying to usurp our name. The full name they have given themselves is ‘Socialist Party of England and Wales’, or, appropriately enough, SPEW. The list wouldn’t have needed to include us of course since we are opposed to Your Party as we are to all other political parties that support capitalism in one form or another. The inclusion of the SEP (one of the fragments of the once premier Trotskyist organisation in Britain, the Workers Revolutionary Party) seems unnecessary as it opposed YP from the start, denouncing it as a joint Corbyn/SWP plot to divert the working class from revolutionary action (ie following the lead of the SEP).

The two biggest Trotskyist ‘entryist’ groups, the SWP and SPEW, took the ban graciously and instructed their members to withdraw from YP. Some of the smaller ones may decide to practise ‘deep entryism’ by remaining secret members of their vanguardist group.

So, where does this leave YP and the groups that have been excluded? For the latter, it’s back to what they used to do (and what they would have continued to do had they been allowed to stay in) — exploiting any discontent to try to build up a following for their particular, vanguard proto-party, through taking over existing protest groups or setting up their own front organisations such as Stand Up to Racism, Stop the War and ‘Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition’. In fact, the last, which is a front organisation for SPEW, nominated candidates for this month’s local elections even before the ban was enforced.

YP’s attempt to be a strong left-of-Labour electoral force hasn’t taken off and it looks like it never will. It was bad luck for them that, as they were preparing to launch themselves as such a party, the Greens elected an eco-populist as leader who stole the clothes they were about to put on    — tax the rich, renationalise the utilities, improve social services, rally to beat the Reform party. It is clear that most of the 800,000 who expressed an interest in the idea of forming a new leftwing party have come to see the Greens as this. Since the Green Party does not even claim to be a socialist party, this shows that most of the 800,000 didn’t want a new system to replace capitalism but merely the implementation of ‘progressive’ reforms and policies within it.

If it had taken off, YP would only have been a Labour Party 2.0. Now, it won’t even be that but a party whose MPs will mainly be pro-Gaza local Muslim dignitaries (denounced by the Trotskyist ex-entryists as ‘landlords’) and whose councillors will be representatives of localist ‘independents’ engaged in pot-hole politics.

Had Sultana’s ‘Grassroots Left’ rather than Corbyn’s ‘For the Many’ won a majority on the CEC, the Leninists would have been allowed to stay in as ‘factions’ and the party would have been advocating policies without much electoral appeal, such as ‘Smash Israel’, ‘Leave NATO’ and ‘Abolish the Monarchy’. In other words, a small party similar to previous attempts to unite ‘the Left’ including the Trotskyists in a single electoral party such as ‘Socialist Alliance’, Respect and Left Unity and which are now just history and where YP is heading too.

What is required is a mass working-class party dedicated to the establishment of a genuine socialist society based on the common ownership and democratic control of the means of production so that production directly to meet people’s needs can replace production for sale on a market with a view to profit. A party that avoids advocating reforms to capitalism in order to avoid attracting the support of those who only want that; a democratically organised party in which vanguardist factions would not be welcome.

Adam Buick

SPGB May Events (2026)

Party News from the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our general discussion meetings are held on Zoom. To connect to a meeting, enter https://zoom.us/wc/join/7421974305 in your browser. Then follow instructions on screen and wait to be admitted to the meeting.

Blogger's Note:

Harald Sandø's book, Waking Up, was reviewed in the August 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard.

Action Replay: War in the Way (2026)

The Action Replay column from the May 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Sportcity in Manchester is a venue for a number of sports facilities, most notably the Manchester City football stadium, but also the Velodrome and National Squash Centre. This idea of hosting various amenities in one area can of course be applied on a national or international level too, and the Middle East is a prime example.

The Persian Gulf in particular has seen a lot of state and private investment in sport, part of a programme aiming to attract increased tourist and leisure visitors more generally. We have previously examined the role of sportswashing in this (see Action Replay for October 2023 and December 2024). The 2022 football World Cup in Qatar was one of the first instances. Saudi Arabia then took the lead, winning the bid to stage the 2034 World Cup, as part of a Vision 2030, supposedly aiming to ‘diversify the economy and invest locally and internationally’ (pif.gov.sa). The Middle East Sports Investment Forum (mesifglobal.com) holds regular conferences to discuss future opportunities, with a meeting in London scheduled for June; a standard delegate ticket costs just £1500.

But a very big ‘but’ has materialised, the US-Israeli attack on Iran and Lebanon, and the Iranian attacks on neighbouring countries. Bombs and drones have made travel to and from the region difficult and unpredictable, and simply being there became unacceptable for some. The motor racing grands prix due to be held in April in Bahrain and Saudi were called off, as was the MotoGP grand prix in Qatar. Perhaps a hundred events of all kinds had been cancelled or postponed since the start of the war (Guardian 21 March). Sports such as football and motor racing are likely to better protected than tennis and golf, for instance.

The same source quoted a professor of Eurasian sport industry (!) as saying that the Gulf states had placed too much emphasis on events, without diversifying sufficiently. Manufacturing equipment and clothing would have been a good idea too, but it may well be too late to get into that market.

The war shows the unpredictability of capitalism as far as business ventures are concerned. Capitalists don’t take possible wars into account when planning new businesses or expanding existing ones. It remains to be seen what effect the ‘cease-fire’ in operation at the time of writing will have. But that just reinforces the uncertainty surrounding the fighting and its consequences.

‘The war has come at the wrong time,’ the professor mentioned above said, though he presumably wasn’t saying that there is a good time for wars.

Paul Bennett