Category: CU 2009

All videos from the Communist University 2009

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Capitalism’s crisis: How do we organise?

Capitalism is facing its greatest global crisis since the 1930s. It is quite clear that the ruling class currently has no strategy to deal with the crisis beyond ‘muddling through’.

But what about our side – the working class movement internationally? Clearly, we face a crisis of our own with the workers’ movement and the left are both in very weak positions globally.

What is to be done if we are to overcome this so that the working class can effectively fight back against the crisis and begin to re-articulate a serious international project to positively overcome a declining capitalist system synonymous with war, exploitation and ecological disaster?

This was the topic at the final session of the CPGB’s annual school – the Communist University – which was held in London from august 8-15. Four speakers took part in a panel discussion:

Ben Lewis (CPGB)
Hillel Tickin (Editor, Critique)
Moshe Machover (Israeli socialist and founder of Matzpen)
Chris Knight (Radical Anthropology Group)

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The Labour Party: still a bourgeois workers’ party?

There is much debate on today’s far left about the nature of the Labour Party.

Has the rise of New Labour and Tony Blair ensured that the party ceases to be a ‘bourgeois workers’ party? What does that term even mean?

Mike Macnair of the Communist Party of Great Britain tackles these questions by tracing the history of the Labour Party up to the present day.

To read more that Mike has to say on this question, check out two articles he wrote in the Weekly Worker:

Labour: Still a bourgeois workers’ party?

cpgb.org.uk/worker/779/labourparty.php

Making and unmaking Labour:

cpgb.org.uk/worker/780/making.php

This talk was given along with a series of others at the Communist Party of Great Britain’s annual Communist University, held in London from August 8-15.

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The British National Party and Popular Frontism

What is the nature of today’s BNP? Is its shift to right wing populism electoralism merely a facade for the continued fascist sympathies of leading cadre like Member of the European Parliament Nick Griffin?

Is ‘Unite Against Fascism’ an adequate response to the rise of the BNP or is it a project that has not learnt the lessons of history?

James Turley of the CPGB discusses these questions in talk he gave to the CPGB’s annual school – the Communist University.

For more reading on some of these questions, follow these links:

‘Be Sensible’ – James Turley: cpgb.org.uk/worker/780/letters.php

‘How not to stop the BNP’ – Ben Lewis: cpgb.org.uk/worker/779/hownotto.php

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The Israeli-Jewish working class

Moshé Machover addresses Communist University 2009 on the nature of the the Israeli-Jewish working class, looking in particular at the nature of Zionism, the effects of privatisation on the class structure of Israel and the role of ‘identity politics’.