Weekly Worker 651 Thursday November 30 2006

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Letters
Trainspotting; Bridge work; Half-baked; Here's hoping; Student class; Listening aid; Marx myth; No platform; No migrants; Typical boss; Taking sides; Labour power; Policies now

No resolutions, no democracy
Dave Isaacson reports on the forthcoming 'conference' of Student Respect

• Manchester warning
  The potential for Student Respect in alliance with the Federation of Student Islamic Societies to make a breakthrough in student politics - and the contradictory results this would have for political and social life on the campuses - has been illustrated by the spat on Manchester University’s Student Direct. Emily Bransom reports

Whatever happened to the CNWP?
Socialism 2006, the Socialist Party’s annual school, was held over the weekend of November 25-25 at the University of London Union. But the Campaign for a New Workers’ Party hardly featured, reports Tina Becker

• Dead ducks and Labour pains
  Entitled ‘New Labour after Blair - can it be shifted left or is a new workers’ party needed?’ this meeting illustrated that the Socialist Party has a deeply problematic stance in relation to the Labour Party. Lawrence Parker reports
• Islamists and infidels
  Seyyed Ferjani from the Muslim Association of Britain and SP member Jim Hensman debated the rather broad question, ‘Which way forward for Britain’s muslims?’ Not surprisingly, the meeting lacked a certain focus - but also highlighted the SP’s confused and inadequate position on democratic questions, says Helen Broadhurst
• Democracy east and west
  Leading SP member Paula Mitchell presented a scary vision of socialism in the session, ‘Why the Soviet Union wasn’t socialist and how democracy would work under socialism’. Tina Becker was there
• Red and green
  Do you have to be red to be green?’ was a debate between Pete Dickenson of the SP and the Green Party’s ‘male principal speaker’, Derek Wall. Simon Wells reports

Programming the Russian revolution
Like German social democracy, Bolshevism had a minimum-maximum party programme. It was their DNA. But, asks Jack Conrad, was their programme irretrievably flawed, as argued by Tony Cliff and the SWP?

Trotskyite economism?
Leon Trotsky’s Transitional programme is based on the communist method of Lenin and the Russian Bolsheviks, writes Gerry Downing

The transition to socialism
Hillel Ticktin, editor of Critique, examines some of the central elements of Marx’s theory about the future society

 

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