Stone Age stories

 by Ben Soton

Circle of Days by Ken Follett, Grand Central Publishing; 2025, hbk  608pp rrp £25. pbk rrp £10.99.

For years Ken Follett has long been a master of both contemporary and historical fiction.  His latest novel, Circle of Days, takes us back to ancient Britain – a time after the development of agriculture but before writing reached these shores. The building of Stonehenge is a major aspect of the book; a monument still standing just a few miles outside Salisbury in Wiltshire, the area referred to as the Great Plain. 
This is the first major novel set during the prehistoric era since Bernard Cornwell wrote Stonehenge in 2000. The two novels present very contrasting views of the period. Cornwell’s novel portrays a society with an existing hierarchy; Circle of Days is set in a more anarchic world with competing and sometimes conflicting communities – farmers, herders, ‘woodland folk’, flint miners and a caste of priestesses.  Follett paints a world of conflict. 
The farmers are the emerging and most powerful group with an element of the story focussing on the age-old rivalry between them and the herders – the basis of the Cain and Abel myth. Meanwhile the woodland folk, obviously the remnants of  the hunter-gatherer society, appear to be doomed. The novel shows the different attitudes and cultures of the rival groups.  Women within the farming community are seen as property of their men whilst the woodland folk practice a form of free-love. The priestesses are an overwhelmingly lesbian grouping; while being the only ones who can count.
 Follett, who is not a Marxist, is painting a picture of an emerging class society. It is widely known that farming triumphed over hunter-gathering and herding, eventually leading to class-society and the rest is history. The author, who has always favoured class compromise, predictably sides with those in the various communities who favour compromise and negotiation. As the story develops, we see tit-for-tat warfare between the rival groupings; which includes the burning of the forest by herders and attacks on grain stores by woodlanders. 
The building of the henge takes place in the later stages of the novel; its construction is the idea of Joia, a priestess who sees it as a means of uniting the rival groupings and bringing more people to the Great Plain. Its construction is opposed by Troon, the leader of the farmers with designs on domination over the region.  As Joia builds the Henge he builds an army.  However are these not two sides of the same coin?  Standing armies and megaliths are both features of a class society; with warriors and priests (in this case priestesses) becoming part of the new ruling-class. 
This is pure Follett; delving into the personal and often the sex lives of the key characters. It has a strong resemblance to his 1989 novel Pillars of the Earth, set around the building of a cathedral in 12th century England. Both novels are based on the premise of ‘Build it and They Will Come’.  As a novel set in pre-history much of the story is down to the author’s imagination; however it is a fitting tribute to those who built Stonehenge.       
  

Uneasy lies the head...

 Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is the first member of the Royal Family to be arrested since Charles Stuart was held by the New Model Army at the end of the First Civil War in 1646. Charles remained in custody before his trial and execution in 1649. The Republic of England, or Commonwealth as it was styled in English, was proclaimed soon after. Oliver Cromwell, the MP for Huntingdon who was the leading Parliamentary commander during the civil war,
later became head of state, the Lord Protector, a post he held until his death in 1658. 
Andrew’s arrest is not going to bring down the House of Windsor nor is he likely to share the fate of his loathsome predecessor. Nevertheless the high-life of the former prince that revolved around Jeffrey Epstein, a degenerate American brothel keeper who supplied young girls to prominent politicians and businessmen on both sides of the Atlantic, has brought the Royal Family into disrepute not seen since the Abdication crisis of 1936.
In those days the bourgeois parliament and the leaders of the Church of England believed that Edward V111’s morals and his sympathy for Nazi Germany made him unfit to head the Anglican church let alone an Empire that spanned a quarter of the entire world. These days Andrew’s antics have merely embarrassed our current king, who’s clearly washed his hands on his errant younger brother.
The monarchy, of course, is part and parcel of British bourgeois democracy. During Elizabeth 11’s long reign they built up a cult around the House of Windsor based on two powerful myths – the first being that the Royal Family are paragons of virtue and the second that they have no power at all in the modern British state. Neither is true.
The first is blatantly obvious. The second ignores the nature of the bourgeois state and the role of the ruling family that heads it. To be sure, the Westminster parliament is a sovereign assembly that can pick and chose monarchs – it got rid of James 11 in 1688. It forced Edward out in 1936. The monarch is, on the face of it, a figurehead, But at the end of the day it is absurd to think that the House of Windsor, one of the richest families in the world, has no power at all.
New voices are now questioning the role of the monarchy – a natural feature of the early days of British communism. There were also outspoken republicans in the social-democratic movement like Tony Benn and Ken Livingstone. Even some right-wing social-democrats like Willie Hamilton, the Fife MP who branded the royal family gold-plated scroungers joined in the calls for the monarchy to be scrapped. But republicanism was barely, if ever, mentioned during the post-war decline of the revisionist Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB). Calls for a democratic republic were said to be “divisive” given the supposed popularity of the monarchy amongst the working class and irrelevant in the forward march of labour that was conjured up in the British Road to Socialism.
Our position, from the day we were founded is clear. The New Communist Party calls for the abolition of the Crown, the House of Lords and all titles of nobility. They serves no democratic purpose whatsoever. 

A just decision

 The High Court has ruled the Palestine Action ban unlawful.Three judges led by Dame Victoria Sharp, president of the King’s Bench Division, concluded that the decision to ban the group was unlawful. However, the ban will remain temporarily in place to allow the government time to appeal.
On 5th July last year membership of or public support for the Palestine Action campaign became a criminal offence punishable by up to 14 years in prison. The pro-Palestinian direct action network was placed on the list of proscribed organisations, categorising it alongside internationally recognised ‘terrorist’ groups.
Over 2,700 people have been arrested since the ban took effect, most under section 13 of the Terrorism Act. More than 500 individuals, including members of the clergy, pensioners and military veterans, have been charged.
The court upheld the challenge on two of four grounds. Judges found that the proscription represented “a very significant interference” with the rights to freedom of speech, peaceful assembly, and association. They also ruled that the decision of the then Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, was inconsistent with her own stated policy.
Though Dame Victoria Sharp described Palestine Action as an organisation “that promotes its political cause through criminality and encouragement of criminality” she said that “the court considered that the proscription of Palestine Action was disproportionate. A very small number of Palestine Action’s activities amounted to acts of terrorism within the definition of section 1 of the 2000 Act.
“For these, and for Palestine Action’s other criminal activities, the general criminal law remains available. The nature and scale of Palestine Action’s activities falling within the definition of terrorism had not yet reached the level, scale, and persistence to warrant proscription” .
Or as Jeremy Corbyn put it: “we knew the proscription of Palestine Action was absurd and immoral. Now, we know it was unlawful too. Today’s ruling is a vindication for all those who had the courage to oppose genocide – and a day of shame for those in our government who enabled it”.
The judgement resolutely rebuffs the Starmer government’s attempts to criminalise political dissent and activism aimed at stopping material support for genocide. This is a historic ruling. For the first time an organisation banned under the Terrorism Act has successfully challenged its proscription in court.
Palestine Action co-founder Huda Ammori said this was a monumental victory.  “We were banned because Palestine Action’s disruption of Israel’s largest weapons manufacturer, Elbit Systems, cost the corporation millions of pounds in profits and to lose out on multibillion-pound contracts.
“We’ve used the same tactics as direct action organisations throughout history, including anti-war groups Keir Starmer defended in court, and the government acknowledged in these legal proceedings that this ban was based on property damage, not violence against people. Banning Palestine Action was always about appeasing pro-Israel lobby groups and weapons manufacturers, and nothing to do with terrorism”.
The ruling, and the court victories of the previous weeks in the Filton cases, show that the Government’s actions were not only immoral but unlawful.
We call for the dropping of all charges against those who have been linked to this unlawful proscription and other cases of protest against British complicity in Israel’s genocide, including the organisers of the national marches for Palestine facing criminal charges. 
We call for the resignation of police commissioner Mark Rowley, as well as former Home Secretary Yvette Cooper and current Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood. And above all, we call for the resignation of the head of the whole rotting edifice, Sir Keir Starmer. 

Stop the escalation of aggression against Cuba!

joint statement of communist & workers parties on Cuba

 We firmly condemn US imperialism’s new escalation of aggression against the sovereignty and

independence of Cuba and against the rights of the Cuban people.

The US President’s Executive Order calling Cuba an «unusual and extraordinary threat» against its

security is merely creating, based on a pack of falsehoods, a cynical pretext by US imperialism to

try and prevent the supply of fuel to Cuba and to step up the economic, financial and trade embargo

which it has imposed for over six decades, in an attempt to cause maximum harm to the Cuban

people’s living conditions.

This escalation of US aggression against Cuba, which is accompanied by the threat to impose

arbitrary coercive measures of an extra-territorial nature, represents yet another unacceptable and

blatant violation of the principles of the United Nations Charter and of international law, an affront

to the Proclamation of Latin America and the Caribbean as a Zone of Peace and a threat to world

peace and security.

The new threshold of US aggression and blackmail against Cuba is part and parcel of the broader

plan by US imperialism to impose its domination on Latin America and the Caribbean, in the spirit

of the Monroe Doctrine, a plan which also includes the recent military aggression against Venezuela

with the kidnapping of its President, Nicolás Maduro, and the threats against Colombia, Mexico and

other countries in the region.

Imperialism’s aggressive onslaught is a threat, not just to the sovereignty and rights of the Cuban

people, but also to other peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean and to all peoples of the

world. This onslaught represents the greatest threat to world peace and requires a firm and persistent

resistance and struggle by the workers and the peoples, for sovereignty, rights, peace and

internationalist solidarity.

In hailing the example of courage, determination, peace, cooperation and solidarity provided by

Cuba to the world, we demand an immediate end to all threats and hostile steps by the USA against

Cuba, including an end to the cruel, criminal and illegal blockade, thus fulfilling the demands of

numerous Resolutions of the UN General Assembly.

We express our solidarity with Socialist Cuba and call for the broadest international solidarity in

defense of its independence and sovereignty and of the rights of the Cuban people, including the

right to decide their future, in peace and free from foreign interference and pressure.

Cuba is not alone! Cuba will win!

Solidnet Parties

1. Communist Party of Albania
2. Algerian Party for Democracy and Socialism
3. Communist Party of Argentina
4. Communist Party of Armenia
5. Communist Party of Australia
6. Communist Party of Austria
7. Party of Labour of Austria
8. Communist Party of Azerbaijan
9. Democratic Tribune Bahrain
10. Communist Party of Bangladesh
11. Communist Party of Belarus
12. Workers Party of Belgium
13. Communist Party of Brazil
14. Brazilian Communist Party
15. Communist Party of Britain
16. New Communist Party of Britain
17. Communist Party of Canada
18. Communist Party of Chile
19. Colombian Communist Party
20. Socialist Workers' Party of Croatia
21. AKEL – Cyprus
22. Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia
23. Communist Party of Denmark
24. Egyptian Communist Party
25. Communist Party of Finland
26. French Communist Party
27. United Communist Party of Georgia
28. German Communist Party
29. Communist Party of Greece
30. Hungarian Workers' Party
31. Communist Party of India (Marxist)
32. Communist Party of India
33. Tudeh Party of Iran
34. Iraqi Communist Party
35. Kurdistan Communist Party -Iraq
36. Communist Party of Ireland
37. Workers' Party of Ireland (Official)
38. Workers' Party of Ireland
39. Communist Party of Israel
40. Communist Refoundation Party – Italy
41. Italian Communist Party
42. Communist Party (Italy)
43. Jordanian Communist Party
44. Communist Party of Kazakhstan
45. Kuwaiti Progressive Movement
46. Party of Communists of Kyrgyzstan
47. Lebanese Communist Party
48. Communist Party of Luxembourg
49. Communist Party of Malta
50. Communist Party of Mexico
51. Popular Socialist Party - National Popular Socialist Political Group – Mexico
52. Popular Socialist Party of Mexico
53. Party of Communists of the Republic of Moldova
54. New Communist Party of Netherlands
55. Communist Party of Norway
56. Communist Party of Pakistan 
57. Palestinian Communist Party
58. Palestinian People's Party
59. Paraguayan Communist Party
60. Communist Party of Peru – Patria Roja
61. Philippine Communist Party (PCP-1930)
62. Portuguese Communist Party
63. Romanian Socialist Party
64. Communist Party of the Russian Federation
65. Russian Communist Workers' Party
66. Communists of Serbia
67. South African Communist Party
68. Communist Party of Spain
69. Communist Party of Peoples of Spain
70. Communist Party of the Workers of Spain
71. Communists of Catalonia
72. Communist Party of Sri Lanka
73. Sudanese Communist  Party
74. Communist Party of Swaziland
75. Communist Party of Sweden
76. Communist Party (Switzerland)
77. Swiss Communist Party
78. Syrian Communist Party (Unified)
79. Syrian Communist Party
80. Communist Party of Turkey
81. Communist Party of Ukraine
82. Union of Communists of Ukraine
83. Communist Party of Uruguay
84. Communist Party USA
85. Communist Party of Venezuela

Other Parties

1. Argentinian Communist Party
2. Patriotic Union – Colombia
3. Political Movement Citizen Revolution Ecuador
4. Socialist Party of Egypt
5. Party of Popular Alliance Egypt
6. Nepali Communist Party
7. Workers Democratic Way – Morocco
8. Federation of Democratic Left – Morocco
9. Democratic Front for Liberation of Palestine
10. Palestinian Popular Struggle Front
11. Popular Front For The Liberation of Palestine
12. Galician Nationalist Bloc
13. Union of the Galician People
14. Swiss Party of Labour
15. Party of Popular Will Syria
16. Socialist Party of Yemen 

Motown: Lessons from 50 years of struggle

by Chris Mahin

Motown and the Making of Working-Class Revolutionaries: The Story of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers: Jerome Scott and Walda Katz-Fishman ,University of Georgia Press, September 2025, 216 pp; pbk: rrp £31.95, hbk rrp £124.95

This is a moving account of one of the most important organisations in the United States during the late 1960s written by Jerome Scott and Walda Katz-Fishman. Scott was a leader of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (LRBW) who helped organise a walk-out to protest unsafe conditions at Chrysler Corporation’s Detroit Forge plant. That wildcat strike at a strategic factory shut down Chrysler production throughout the entire world for one week. Walda Katz-Fishman is a revolutionary and scholar who received her Ph.D. in sociology from Wayne State University in Detroit. Since the late 1970s she has worked closely with veterans of the LRBW and she helped coordinate the League’s oral history project.  
Motown is  the product of 50 years of struggle and almost a decade of preparation. In December 2015, veterans of the LRBW began planning a history of the organisation. The need for such a history became increasingly urgent as some of the LRBW’s most important leaders began to die. In 2016 and 2017, the authors took part in videotaped interviews with more than 40 people.  Motown includes extensive excerpts from those interviews.
The result is both an extraordinary collective memoir and a detailed history of Detroit. This book recounts how the leaders of the Black workers’ insurgency in Detroit in the 1960s found their way to Marxism and how they used it as a guide to understand the profound changes which have swept the world since.  
In the interviews, former members of the LRBW recount the horrific conditions in the auto plants, the challenges the League faced, and the long struggle to build other revolutionary organisations after the LRBW split in 1971. To their credit, the people interviewed do not simply reminisce – they reflect deeply on what the hard-fought battles of the 1960s mean for today. They are frank and self-critical about mistakes that were made – particularly about the way women were treated in the LRBW. They are brutally realistic about how different the economic and political conditions are today,
the Motor City
Part One includes a detailed historical materialist analysis of the auto industry and Detroit. 
From the first quarter of the 20th century until the 1970s, Detroit was the leading producer of motor-cars in the entire world. The city earned its nickname – “The Motor City” – or simply “Motown”. Detroit’s diverse proletariat included Black workers whose families had fled the Jim Crow South; white workers who had travelled up the “Hillbilly Highway” from the Appalachian Mountains; workers from Mexico; Arab workers from Palestine, Yemen and other parts of the Middle East; and workers from many other parts of the world. 
In the 20th century, Black auto workers were concentrated in the most dangerous and difficult jobs, enduring racist mistreatment and unsafe conditions.  The car workers’ trade union in the United States – the United Auto Workers – was run by a clique of right-wing social-democrats who had conducted witch-hunts against communist trade unionists during the 1950s.  
In July 1967, police brutality against Black workers sparked the massive Detroit Rebellion. In 1968 Black workers walked out of Dodge Main – a factory of 10,000 workers. They created the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM). Soon, Black workers at other factories were forming Revolutionary Union Movement (RUM) groupings. Eventually, these formations combined into one umbrella organisation – the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. 
In mid-1971, the LRBW went into crisis. Some of its top leaders wanted to expand into other cities. Many LRBW members in the factories questioned that approach. They wanted to deepen the LRBW’s involvement in the day-to-day struggle in Detroit. 
On 12th June 1971, the LRBW split in two. After some of the most prominent leaders left, the members who remained – workers based in the factories -- discussed what to do next. Resolved to continue the struggle, they knew they needed to step back and assess – and study. In the LRBW, the top leaders had read some Marxism, but there had never been a full-fledged education programme for the entire membership. Determined to change that situation, the LRBW cadre who remained after the split reached out to revolutionaries in California. They ultimately established contact with veteran Marxist-Leninists who had taken part in the fight against revisionism within the Communist Party USA during the 1950s and were now part of the Communist League. 
What followed was a year of intense discussion and study. At first, some of those from the LRBW were wary of joining a multi-ethnic organisation. Detailed discussions of Lenin and Stalin’s writings on the national colonial question were extremely helpful. The revolutionaries from the LRBW ultimately joined the Communist League. That decision helped set the stage for a Congress of Marxist-Leninists which founded the Communist Labor Party of the United States of North America in 1974. Later, former LRBW leaders were also instrumental in creating the League of Revolutionaries for a New America in the 1990s.

Today...

...Detroit is no longer the epicentre of world auto production. Globalisation and automation have changed that. Today, former LRBW members are involved in the fight against homelessness and poverty and against the growth of fascism in the United States. 
Part Four of the book looks to the future. One key lesson is the dialectical relationship between theory and practice. Every person interviewed for this book spoke with great feeling and gratitude about the education they received in the LRBW and the organisations that succeeded it – Marxist political education. All stated emphatically that they would never have been able to continue as life-long revolutionaries without that education. 
Ultimately Motown is about how revolutionaries adapt without betraying their principles. It’s the story of how young people were forged into revolutionaries while working in the crucible of a very dangerous industry. At a moment of crisis, those revolutionaries had to step back to study and assess – in order to return to the practical movement and fight with greater clarity in a changed environment. 
Since its publication in September 2025 Motown has attracted considerable attention from young revolutionaries in the United States. Hopefully, the hard-won lessons in this collective memoir will help that new generation as it steps forward to continue the fight for a new world.

Motown is available on the Liverpool University Press website at https://www.liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/

Being Green is Not Enough

by John Maryon

One must applaud the principled stand taken by those caring and concerned people who are determined to defend the delicate balance of nature on our home world. People who recognise the importance of restricting carbon emissions, preventing pollution and the destruction of vital habitats.  Urgent action is necessary to preserve the rich eco-system of plant and animal life, including ourselves.  Sadly there are others, who through greed and ignorance, blindly carry on along a road that can only lead to the possible extinction of the human race leaving  a dead and toxic planet to drift in space. 
There are many important battles to be won, but in order to  achieve a lasting effectiveness it is necessary to understand the reasons for and deeper implications of any course of action.  Under a socialist system there is no reason or excuse to destroy the environment.  However with capitalism, where quick profits and market forces dominate, the well-being of the people is frequently of lower priority than the need to make more money.  Hence  the polluted rivers, deforestation, dumped rubbish, radioactive discharges and poor air quality in many places today.
Many energy systems still rely upon fossil fuel, presenting a difficult problem that will take time and investment to overcome.  In Britain and other countries we face particular challenges for both domestic heating and transport. To cut carbon dioxide emissions it is desirable to replace home heating boilers fired with natural gas with a green alternative which could be electricity, heat pumps or green hydrogen.  Essentially all three alternatives require green electricity as the primary energy source. Carbon free electricity can be produced by wind turbines, solar panels, hydro power, tidal power or nuclear. All come with their own challenges. Wind turbines won't work if there is no wind. Solar panels are unproductive during the night. Hydro and tidal opportunities are limited and nuclear power has its own risks.  A major question is could the national electricity grid cope with the new demands without enormous investment?
 So the solution is not simply a question of banning this or that.  It requires long term investment and planning as opposed to the operation of market forces. It requires socialism. 
Similar problems are encountered with transport. We are encouraged to buy electric cars, but preferably not the cheaper and technically advanced Chinese ones.  Again how will the national grid and local networks cope with the big new demand for electricity.  If you live in a house with room to charge the car on your driveway an electric car offers a good choice. If, however, you live in a flat or congested urban area you have to find a charging station which could be a more expensive option. The government dithers and has put the target date for fossil furled cars back again.  Contrast our situation with that of socialist China.  They have an integrated transport system with  over 50 km of high speed rail and are the largest producer of electric vehicles.  The infrastructure necessary to support their ambitious plans is being built now as an investment for the future and to meet their objective of hitting carbon neutrality before 2060. Clean energy, high-tech innovation including AI and committed leadership from the Communist Party of China will combine to achieve these goals. 
In Britain today the disastrous privatisation of the electricity industry has created serious challenges and  resulted in some extraordinary situations.  Drax power station near Selby was built to burn Yorkshire coal. Today a power company receives billions in subsidies for the burning of wood pellets sourced from the United States and Canada. The process is classified as a renewable one but documents show that some of the wood was obtained from old woods that were rich in wildlife habitats.  In another example of farce, wind turbines connected to the national grid are able to supply electricity when the wind  blows. The problem is that for approximately one third of the time that power is not required and the grid struggles to cope. It is estimated that £1.3 million was paid by the government to temporarily switch them off.  Such occurrences cost the taxpayer dearly and when taken alongside the imperialist sabotage of the Nord Stream pipelines contribute to making Britain's energy costs soar.
It is the policy of the New Communist Party of Britain (NCP) to take both the gas and electricity utilities back under full state ownership. To be owned and operated for the benefit of the people and also to expand their scope to cover the production of green hydrogen.  The  planning, construction, and operation of energy systems would be placed into the hands of engineers who could plan long term for future needs free from short term get rich quick scams. A return to sanity would soon see energy costs start to fall. Workers would be represented on the Energy Board and lots of apprenticeships created.
Energy cannot be considered in isolation.  A fully integrated public transport system fully owned by the people is essential along  with more investment into high speed railways. Only a state owned system can look ahead to balance needs with resources and avoid a short term approach that does not build for the future. It is also the aim of the NCP to restore water supply and storage to full public ownership. Jeremy Corbyn's proposals for free broadband to all homes and business by 2023 could be achieved with public ownership of essential parts of the Telecom industry.  Banking and financial services need a shake up. Whole communities are often left without a bank as local closures continue.  We need a secure state owned bank  to provide a full range of services, at competitive rates rates for domestic customers and small businesses.
There are many people in the green and conservation movements who see the problems that we all face today as single simple issues. The threats and challenges are appreciated but they may only have a vague idea of why things are going wrong and what can be achieved to move forward.  Only a socialist approach that tackles the root causes of a growing crisis can provide a lasting solution.  We have to rid society of greed, disrespect and an obsession with profits. The dreams of those who seek a sustainable future within a caring society are values that we share.  Their struggle requires a political element to enable society to move forward.  Come and join the NCP and help us in the class struggle to turn those visions of a beautiful new world into reality.

Epstein scandal an offspring of capitalism

 by Nikos Mottas
 
The Epstein scandal is persistently described as a “dark anomaly,” a moral rupture inside an otherwise functioning system. This description is false. What it conceals is more important than what it reveals. The affair did not expose a deviation from capitalism but one of its normal, if usually less visible, operations. By treating Epstein as an exception, bourgeois discourse shields the system that made him possible.
Jeffrey Epstein was not an outsider who infiltrated elite circles. He operated comfortably within them, because capitalism systematically produces both extreme vulnerability at one pole and extreme impunity at the other. Where wealth is concentrated, power follows; where power follows, accountability retreats. This is not corruption of the system. It is the system functioning according to its own laws.
Capitalism rests on exploitation presented as free exchange. The worker “chooses” to sell labour-power only because material conditions leave no alternative. Marx described this contradiction with precision when he noted that the sphere of exchange appears as “a very Eden of the innate rights of man” while in reality it conceals relations of domination. Formal equality masks material coercion. As Marx put it bluntly “between equal rights, force decides.” In capitalist society, that force is economic necessity, socially organised and legally protected.
This coercion extends far beyond the workplace. It penetrates education, housing, healthcare, and personal relationships. When higher education is transformed into an individual investment rather than a social right, capitalism does not merely abandon young people – it actively pushes them toward market solutions for survival. The outcome is not accidental. It is systemic.
In recent years, advertising campaigns in European cities (Paris, Brussels, Stockholm etc) openly promoted the idea that students could solve their financial problems by entering “relationships” with wealthy older men who would cover university costs. The message was explicit: financial relief in exchange for intimacy, presented as personal choice and empowerment. This was not criminal underground activity. It was publicly advertised, legally defended, and normalised. Here the ethics of capitalism reveal themselves not as abstract principles but as concrete practice: when social provision is dismantled, the market advances – even into the most intimate spheres of life.
This phenomenon is not separate from the Epstein affair. It is its everyday, legalised expression. In both cases, inequality produces dependence, and dependence is converted into access. What differs is scale and visibility, not substance. The student pushed toward transactional intimacy and the victim exploited by elite trafficking networks occupy different positions within the hierarchy, but both are shaped by the same social relation: vulnerability confronting power under conditions falsely described as choice.
Engels observed that bourgeois society dissolves human relations into cash relations. When everything becomes a commodity, the human body is not exempt. Capitalism does not invent predatory behaviour, but it organises society so that predation is facilitated by wealth and protected by impunity. The Epstein network did not endure because institutions were absent, but because class power neutralised them. Law, media, and politics operate selectively, disciplining the powerless while shielding the powerful through delay, silence, and controlled exposure.
For this reason, liberal outrage leads nowhere. By reducing the issue to individual depravity or ethical failure, it obscures the social relations that reproduce exploitation. Calls for better regulation, transparency, or moral accountability do not touch the core. Exploitation cannot be regulated away because it is structural. A system built on inequality cannot eliminate predation; it can only manage its visibility.
Epstein was not a glitch. He was a function. Those who insist on seeing an ‘aberration’ are not misunderstanding reality; they are actually defending it. The real scandal is not that such crimes happened – but that capitalism makes them possible, profitable, and repeatable.
IDoC

Goodbye Mandelson

Peter Mandelson has at last left the Labour Party. Brought down by the Epstein dossier, his reputation in tatters, his departure follows his earlier resignation as British ambassador in Washington and his more recent departure from the House of Lords.This week’s finale was an inevitable but grudging acceptance by Tony Blair’s chief henchman that his political career is over. No one cares.
No one is going to miss this venal schemer who wore his corruption as a badge of honour throughout the Blairite days when he was known as the “Prince of Darkness” by friend and foe alike.
His enemies, and they are legion, rejoice at his downfall. His “friends”, like Starmer who relied on Mandelson and the other ageing Blairites to keep him in office, now disown him. Mandelson was an icon for the right-wing social democrats that hounded Corbyn, Livingstone and thousands of others out of the Labour Party.
Now Starmer claims he didn’t know the extent of Mandelson’s dealings with Jeffrey Epstein, the convicted brothel keeper who supplied young girls to prominent politicians and businessmen on both sides of the Atlantic and died in unusual circumstances in a New York jail in 2019. 
Starmer thinks he can weather the storm if he can hold on to Gorton & Denton in the by-election this month. But he’s got the Faragists and the Greens snapping at his heels while the Tories clamour for a vote of no confidence in the House of Commons to bring down his floundering government. Starmer, of course, must go. And the sooner the better. But who will replace him?
Starmer’s cohorts, who dominate the Parliamentary Labour Party, is in a dilemna. They argue that the only alternative to a Labour government is one led by Nigel Farage – who is certainly no friend of the labour movement. They liken the Corbynistas and the Greens to the “lunatic fringe” and still believe in Blair’s “New Labour” mantras of “new world order” capitalism and crawling to American imperialism – even though capitalism doesn’t work except for the immensely rich and the Americans neither need nor want their “special relationship” these days.
Their chosen successor, Wes Streeting, was a protege of the digraced Mandelson. And none of  the others in Starmer’s faction are capable of holding the highest office in the land.
Angela Rayner and Andy Burnham wait in the wings to pick up the pieces when Starmer inevitably goes. But though they can campaign on the street – unlike the totally useless Starmer – their outlook differs little from the general right-wing Labour milieu they came from in the first place. They pay lip-service to the trade union bureaucrats who run the TUC and most of the unions in the country. But that’s as far as it goes – and as far as it will ever go as long as the careerists and time-servers remain in charge. That’s where the struggle for socialism must begin anew – and it must start now...

Burnham’s move

The Labour bureaucracy’s decision to block Andy Burnham’s bid to return to Parliament comes as no surprise – least of all to the Mayor of Greater Manchester who has done little in recent months to mask his leadership ambitions. Burnham knows the score. His star  rose with the help of the right-wing blocs that have long held sway in the unions and the Labour Party – factions that are still loyal to Starmer and the ageing gang of washed-up Blairites that advise him.
Though some 50 Labour backbenchers and peers are calling on Labour’s NEC to reverse the Burnham ban they don’t have the power or influence to force it through. But the decision to bar Greater Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham from contesting the Gorton & Denton by-election is a double-edged sword. It removes a potential challenger to Starmer or his chosen successor, Wes Streeting but at the same time it boosts the chances of the Faragists and the Greens – who are both making huge efforts to turf Labour out at the by-election in the Manchester constituency next month. And if Labour lose Starmer’s days are numbered.
Burnham will still be out of the running. He hasn’t got a seat in Parliament and he’s never going to get one as long as Starmer & Co are in charge,
Burnham’s hope however is that Starmer will fall on his sword if the Labour vote collapses in Gorton & Denton and the regional and local elections that will soon follow in the Spring. If the ‘Stop Streeting’ brigade can mount a successful challenge for the leadership – possibly through Angela Rayner – Burnham’s return to national politics and the high office he craves for is on the cards. The ‘King of the North’ has been checked. But he’s still in the game.
None of this, however, is of much benefit to the working class. At the end of the day there is little that really divides Starmer and Burnham. All we are seeing is a spat within right-wing social-democracy – a beauty contest between the third-rate bureaucrat who claims to lead us and a seasoned street-wise politician who knows how to woo the voters. 
Sadly the left response has been weak and divided. The Corbynistas are too busy locked in their own internal struggles to intervene. One of their prominente, Salma Yaqoob, is openly calling on her followers to support the Greens in the Gorton & Denton by-election.
Prominent Your Party member and former Respect party leader Salma Yaqoob has endorsed the Greens in the upcoming Gorton & Denton by-election. She is urging the left to “work together to support” the Greens who are now the bookies’ favourite to take the seat. 
Though essentially a liberal-bourgeois front the Greens like to pose as ‘eco-socialists’ when gunning for votes in traditional Labour areas. Zack Polanski, the Green leader, is a former Liberal-Democrat who has seen his platform grow on calls for a wealth tax, an end to arms sales to Israel, and the defence of immigrants, asylum seekers and civil liberties as a whole.
But this is still reformism – a rebrand of the left social-democracy we see time and time again within the European Union that the Greens much admire.
Though there is a time and place for a protest vote – and Starmer definitely must go – we must keep up the fight against the whole capitalist system in Britain and throughout the world.

Clean Energy for a Greener World

China's independently developed 30-megawatt pure hydrogen gas turbine

by John Maryon

Before the Industrial Revolution got underway the demand for energy was modest. Humans lived within the limits of nature to replenish what they had consumed.  Intrepid sailors were able to sail on their long journeys round the world, without consuming any fuel for propulsion by using the energy of wild and unpredictable winds. Windmills were a common sight grinding corn for their local communities and the new growing towns. Waterwheels had by 1500 become the principal source of motive power and were to make a significant contribution to the coming great era of factory expansion.
Two great inventions however were to lead unprecedented  changes. First the perfection of the steam engine in the 18th century followed by the internal combustion engine at the end of the 19th. The arrival of steam saw coal production rise by 500 per cent between 1750 and 1850. And so began an age of dark mills, blackened buildings, thick fog and congested lungs. With the arrival of petrol and diesel even greater pollution was placed into the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide levels began to climb and the planet slowly started to become warmer. The greenhouse effect has become a subject of great concern. It is very real and the evidence is there for all to see. However there are those who through ignorance deny reality and still others who know but keep quiet to appease the fossil fuel lobby. 
Today we do have many answers to the great challenge of the age. If greed, profiteering and selfish indulgence, all symptoms of acute capitalism by the way, can be overcome we may face the future with more confidence. People’s China with its 1.4 billion population and enormous industrial capacity has an urgent need to prioritise carbon reduction. Importantly it has responded with impressive actions in stark contrast to those who preach and condemn while achieving nothing.  China  is able to produce electric vehicles that are superbly innovative, of top quality and at a third of the cost of Western products.  Their impressive high speed rail network continues to expand rapidly and become technically more advanced. China produces solar panels and wind turbines on a vast scale. Impressive dams have tamed surging rivers to provide an abundance of cheap hydro-electric power. 
China is investing heavily in scientific research with the aim of providing practically unlimited amounts of low cost, carbon free electricity, safety and without pollution.  Two of those important areas are worthy of merit. The first is fusion in which energy is released when atoms are fused together, like a miniature sun. In 1958 the Soviet Union became the first country to build a small experimental Tokamak reactor using confinement technology.  The challenge is to contain very high temperature plasma using powerful magnetic fields and to sustain it for an extended period of time.  The fuels for the process are isotopes of hydrogen which occur in abundance and the waste products consist of the inert gas helium, plus tritium. The latter is radioactive but has a much shorter half life than the heavy elements resulting from fission. Compared to conventional fission processes fusion is much less hazardous to the environment and human health. Today China is building a prototype 20MW reactor and is closely collaborating with a number of European states. 
Secondly an intrinsically more safe type of fission device, the Thorium Based Molten Salt Reactor, is being developed.  With thousands of years of fuel supply the technology will be in great demand worldwide. Basically the process works on the Thorium cycle. The safe primary fuel, Thorium232, is bombarded with neutrons to transform it via two beta decays  into fissionable Uranium233. The system can breed more fission fuel than consumed. This fuel is contained in a  molten salt liquid which can be easily drained out in an emergency.  The liquid fuel mixture also  expands as it heats reducing the fission strength of the reactor fuel which reduces the heat output contributing to ensuring greater safety. The technology makes small and portable reactors possible. The United States has considerable technical experience but it is China that is putting the technology to good use. Currently a large container ship with such a power source is being constructed. It will be able to sail the seven seas for decades without refuelling, saving vast amounts of fossil fuel consumption. It would also be able to economically travel greater distances so avoiding sea areas that an adversary could easily block. 
Hydrogen is an excellent fuel that is green and clean at the point of use and can be used for domestic heating, internal combustion engines and industrial processes.  However up to now unless it was produced by electrolysis of water to make oxygen and hydrogen using green electricity most commercial output was achieved by the cheaper process of steam reforming of natural gas.  This method releases emissions of the greenhouse gas Carbon Dioxide.  A new technology plant built in China's Jilin province is hailed  as the world's largest integrated green, Hydrogen-Ammonia-Methonal project. The first phase of the state owned enterprise plant will produce 450,000 metric tons of green hydrogen each year representing 20 % of China's requirement in addition to other green chemicals.  It will save over 600,000 tons of coal annually. The plant makes excellent use solar and wind energy reinforcing an integrated approach that contributes to China's transition to a modern industrial structure.
People's China has shown the way forward towards a world of shared abundance that remains green, sustainable and affordable.  Without vested interests to lobby for denial or a short term approach that neglects essential infrastructure investment the country forges ahead.  In the Western economies people remain cold in fear of facing expensive heating costs while factories close when faced with prohibitive energy prices they become uncompetitive .  A lack of forward planning, years of neglect and under investment within a capitalist market driven by the obsession for maximum quick profits has been fatal.  Matters have been made much worse in Europe due to their sanctions on cheap Russian energy which has created the highest gas prices in the world.  And we should not forget, or forgive, the tragedy of imperialist wars and conflicts that leave desperate families huddled together cold and hungry in their tents while an uncaring elite pretend that they cannot hear the children cry. 
The world needs to wake up before it's too late. Before the rich diversity of plant and animal life is destroyed, crops fail, severe weather events increase and a run away greenhouse effect overheats our planet.  China has been able to demonstrate that socialism can provide both the technical means and  necessary conditions for overcoming the challenges that lie ahead.  We need socialism and we need it now.  So let's step up the class struggle, as we enter 2026, and work together for a better world!

Trump in Davos

In Roman days the Emperors surrounded themselves with flatterers who fawned over every word they said while the slaves and the overly ambitious were kept in their place through fear of the legions, the lash or crucifixion. But these “rulers of the world”, who were worshipped as gods, realised that terror was not enough. The generals and the patricians with their vast estates and hordes of slaves had to spread some of it about with free food, blood-soaked ‘games’ and the ferocious races of the arena to entertain the well-to-do and keep the poor and the slaves happy. These days the “leader of the free world” simply relies on brute force and economic blackmail to get his own way and gives little or nothing back in return.
Donald Trump, who seeks to “Make America Great Again” largely at the expense of his European allies, did little to mask his contempt for  them at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week. At Davos he tried to belittle and brow-beat them into handing Greenland over to the United States. He’s now settled for some sort of deal that will give the Americans more military bases in the Arctic territory as well as exclusive rights to the mineral wealth that supposedly lies under the ice-caps of the Danish territory. 
Trump is getting on. He’s frail and may well be losing his marbles. But the hard-headed industrialists, hi-tech tycoons and the leaders of the energy corporations who stand behind him are not. They are well aware of the fact that Starmer and his friends in France and Germany are clearly hoping to stand-still all the American president’s initiatives until Trump’s final term of office ends to prolong the proxy war against Russia that the Europeans fear is going to be settled over their heads in secret talks with Putin.
These people put Trump into the White House in the first place. When Trump goes they’ll find another to do their bidding. They don’t want the Democrats or the “new world order” though we can see that they certainly want some sort of oligarchal “new order” for the United States.
Starmer and the leaders of Franco-German imperialism seem to think that they pulled one over The Donald by making him lose face over Greenland and boycotting his rubbishy “Board of Peace” which the White House wants to supervise the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip. That, of course, remains to be seen.

Burnham’s call

The resignation of a Manchester MP has paved the way for a comeback for the Mayor of Greater Manchester at the by-election in a safe Labour seat which Andy Burnham needs if he is ever going to make his bid for the Labour leadership. Starmer’s gang and the ageing Blairites who surround him have already launched a whisper campaign against Burham who has done little to mask his political ambitions in recent days. But Starmer has been warned by backbenchers and union leaders that any stitch-up to prevent Burnham potentially returning to Westminster would split the party. If that happens the Greens and the Corbynistas are waiting to pick up the pieces...