Lenin’s Pamphlet: What Is to Be Done?
Lenin’s famous pamphlet What Is to Be Done? (WITBD) was published in 1902. Although called a pamphlet, it is a lengthy one; my 1973 Beijing edition runs to 236 pages, excluding notes. It belongs to its time; that is, the fractious period between the foundation of the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party in 1898 and […]
How We Counter Fascism
Whether scrolling through a news website or a social media feed, you’re likely to encounter a variety of little windows into far-right and fascist activity, and of individual and collective efforts to counter them. It can be pretty confusing seeing this range. What’s effective? What’s inadvertently enabling? How can you contribute your time and energy […]
Leon Trotsky’s Fight Against Fascism
We are in challenging political times. Wins for workers have been few and far between, disillusionment in bourgeois politics is high, and we are seeing growing support for far-right and even fascist organisations. It is important in these moments to look to the past, when we have seen similar conditions, and draw lessons from history. […]
Students Against Fees – Lessons from the Education Action Groups of the ‘90s
The story starts back in the 1980s. Up until 1979, tertiary education had been virtually free for all – overseas students and domestic students alike – with everyone paying the same “administration fee” of around $100 a year. In 1979, a $1,500 tuition fee was introduced for overseas students. The government said that this would help to fund more places for domestic students, and promised that domestic students would never have to pay. In reality, as per usual, attacks on migrants were the opening shots of a war on everyone.
O for Organisation
It is not the best or most popular ideas that hold the most sway in society, but rather the ideas of those who have the most power. We know the state machinery of capitalist nations is built to serve the ruling capitalist class and perpetuate their ideas. This doesn’t mean that there is no room […]
Why Students? ISO Campus Strategy
We, the International Socialist Organisation of Aotearoa (ISO), do not believe students are inherently radical or agitational, or that their education automatically makes them critical of capitalist society and therefore open to socialism. Academic institutions are generally closed off from the people who have the most to gain and the least to lose from a […]
Rising Fees, Declining Allowances, Climbing Debt: Aotearoa Student Struggles in the 1990s
We can learn much of value from the student struggles of the 1990s for the student struggles in the second half of the 2020s against high fees, inadequate provision of student allowances, and rising student debt. General Context – Rapid and Comprehensive Implementation of Neoliberalism The background to the big student struggles of the 1990s […]
Social Reproduction Theory: The Working Class Against Oppression
How should the Left understand racism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, and ableism? And how do these categories relate to class? Some view the problem as ideological: the ruling class uses bigotry as a distraction to divide the working class. If our anger is misdirected towards marginalised groups, those in power escape our notice, and therefore accountability. […]
Rival Ideas: Technofeudalism
It’s frustrating to take stock of the 2020s and see that capitalism is alive and well. Tempting, certainly, to wish capitalism dead, and then to pen that wish as a declaration as if the wish were real. But wanting something, or even claiming something, does not magically make it so. Capitalism has turned out to […]
The Case for a Revolutionary Socialist Party
Today, the working class stands divided. Contemporary democratic politics has failed. So has any union movement with a genuine interest in going beyond tinkering at the edges of a broken capitalist system. There is a desperate need for a leftist force with the capacity to threaten capitalist hegemony and provide a legitimate way to fight […]
