VI Lenin and the influence of Kautsky

In the first of three talks given at the CPGB’s Communist University, historian Lars T Lih discussed the relationship between two great Marxists. This is an edited version of his speech dealing with the period 1894-1914

Picture the situation. It is Vladimir Ilych Lenin’s 50th birthday in April 1920. ... Lenin ... rather reluctantly comes out onto the stage and says that he would like to read out a long quotation by Karl Kautsky ... more

Letters
Respect; Flexible fascists; Playing with fire; PR party; Chile strike; Drop the charges; Prostitution

CWU prepares for national strike
Rank and file organisation is the need of the hour in the CWU, writes Jim Moody

You are what you eat
Crude attempts to introduce ‘market incentives’ in the NHS have led to a massive increase in bureaucratic waste, writes Eddie Ford

Battle of the Ballot Box
John Masters looks at the previous performance of left candidates and discusses the attitude communists should take in the 2010 general election

Loyal to the bureaucracy
AJ Byrne reviews Andrew Murray’s The T&G story: a history of the Transport and General Workers Union 1922-2007 Lawrence and Wishart, 2008, pp224, £14.99

Psycho-babble about Trots
Mike Macnair reviews Jan Willem Stutje’s Ernest Mandel: a rebel’s dream deferred Verso, 2009, pp600, £19.99

Oskar Lafontaine: ‘We want to govern’
The results for the German left party Die Linke in the August 30 regional elections are impressive, particularly the 21.3% achieved in the federal state of Saarland. But is this the beginning of the end for the “party of opposition”? Tina Becker takes a closer look

Lockerbie, Libya, and global control
James Turley asks who is the real threat to the world’s masses

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Fighting Fund

Keep you posted!

Robbie Rix welcomes another increase in our internet readership

The success of the last few months' fighting funds looks set to continue in November. I can announce a brilliant start, with no less than £387 already in the kitty.

Of course, a good slice of this takes the form of start-of-the-month standing order donations (17 of them, totalling £262, in fact). But there will be rather less of those for the next few weeks. In addition I've just received TR's usual monthly £60 cheque - it's so regular (even with the postal strikes) that it's as good as a standing order.

Finally, we got four handy contributions via our website - £20 each from JS and PJ, £15 added to his subscription to the paper from MZ, plus a tenner from MP. PJ tells me: I've been meaning to make this donation for a while, but have been at the mercy of the capitalists. I know the feeling, comrade. For his part, JS specifies that his is a donation towards the new hardware. I'll be down PC World over the weekend, comrade.

Further good news comes with another increase in our internet readership - we had 16,249 visitors last week. This figure has been increasing steadily since our old website was hit early in the year, but, with the new site gradually being filled out, more and more web readers are now returning.

Most of our archives will be back up hopefully within the next week or so, but unfortunately there is a period of about 18 months that will be missing at first. Their restoration will require a period of "grunt work" from a team of comrades.

Perhaps I shouldn't say this during the current CWU dispute, but I'll keep you posted!

Click here to download a standing order form - regular income is particular important in order to plan ahead. Even £5/month can help!
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