Other sections of this issue, editorial Workers' plan for workers' rights | Shorter hours in France and Australia | Priorities in East Timor and Communism in Indonesia

On this page - Preparing for the third wave, campaign against uni fees in Britain, Russian left against war in Chechnya, billionaires dogfight on Internet, AWL meets in Britain, health campaign, Trotskyist literature

Stop mandatory sentencing!

By Chris Reynolds

In the centre of London stands a building which for a century and more was the world centre of capitalism, and today is still one of its world centres — the Bank of England. It is a fine piece of architecture, by John Soane, with one obvious oddity: no windows on the ground floor. Why not? In the late 18th century, when it was erected, its builders found those blank walls necessary to protect the site, and the completed building, from the London "mob" — the vast mass of half-starved, dispossessed people who roamed the streets of the big city, getting bits of work when they could, begging or stealing when they couldn’t.

The English middle class of that day was terrified of the "mob", so terrified that they slammed people in prison for the slightest offence, if they could catch them. When the prisons became too full, they were still desperate to get rid of the people of the streets — so they sent them to Australia.

In Australia, those same convicts whom the English middle class saw as no more than human refuse, to be swept away as far as possible, found a different environment. Over time they built a society and a civilisation.

Now the same terror of the "mob" is eating away at Australia. The lesson that crime comes from an environment of insecurity, taunting inequalities, poverty and desperation, not from some people just being "naturally" criminals, is being forgotten here too.

In the Northern Territory, since 1997, "mandatory sentencing" has compelled courts to jail people for the smallest property offences. Any offence of theft (except shoplifting), criminal damage, unlawful entry, receiving stolen property, or unlawful use of a vehicle brings a minimum of 14 days’ jail for the first conviction, 90 days for the second, and 12 months for the third. Someone aged 15 or 16 found guilty of such offences gets 28 days detention for the second offence. Another wall without windows is being built — this time, shutting in a whole generation of dispossessed young men, mostly Aboriginals. According to a report prepared for the North Australian Aboriginal Legal Aid Service: "Some Aboriginal communities, like Port Keats and Groote Eylandt, are being systematically emptied of boys aged 15 and 16 years old. It is not uncommon to see between five and ten young offenders sentenced to detention per day at these courts".

One 15 year old boy killed himself in a detention centre after being sent there for 28 days for stealing a few felt-tip pens and paints. 16 year olds have been shut up for 28 days for such offences as receiving a stolen bottle of spring water, stealing a small amount of petrol for sniffing, breaking a window, and taking and riding an abandoned bicycle.

Older people have been sentenced to 12 months for stealing a towel off a clothes line, or taking some biscuits and cordial from an open office.

Of those subject to mandatory sentences, 79% are under 24, 68% are people who do not speak English as a first language, 76% are people from remote communities, and 90% are unemployed or students. Aboriginal people are 25% of the Northern Territory’s population, and 73% of the numbers in its prisons. Between late 1996 and early 1999, the daily average numbers in the Northern Territory’s prisoners increased from 450 to 629, which means the NT jails two and a half times as many people, in proportion to population, as Queensland, and far more than other States.

Meanwhile, Alan Bond has walked free after stealing $1 billion, and spending just three years in jail. "White-collar" property crimes, like fraudulent disposal of trust property, false statements by officers of corporations, and so on, do not carry mandatory sentences in the Northern Territory.

The Coalition government has blocked attempts in the federal parliament — including by conservative Liberal backbenchers — to overrule the Northern Territory mandatory sentencing law (as the NT’s euthanasia law was overruled). Howard struck the same as the NT’s champions of war by the well-off against the dispossessed, desperate and disoriented when he called on Australians to "dob in" neighbours they suspected of cheating on welfare benefit rules.

Mandatory sentencing has not made anyone more secure, and it has made thousands of young Aboriginal men very much less secure. It signifies racism, and a capitalist society shedding its restraints of civilisation and resorting to blind rage against those whom it impoverishes, taunts and discards.

Queensland is going down a similar road to the Northern Territory, with its prison population doubling between 1993 and 1998, and nearly half of all prison admissions being of people who have been unable, or failed, to pay fines. Even further along the same road is the most advanced, richest society in the world, the United States. There, large numbers of the well-off live in walled compounds not much different from Soane’s windowless walls, and there are about 1.9 million people in jail — three times as many, in proportion to population, as the Northern Territory, and six times as many as Queensland. Add in those on probation or parole, and 5.5 million people in the USA, at any one time, are in the clutches of the "correctional" system.

To end petty crime, end the great crimes of capitalism — the wasting and despoiling of human life for the sake of the profits of a few.

Workers Liberty Australia Front Page    |   Workers Liberty Australia site contents and index |  Workers Liberty Britain
Your comments to the editor or author? E-mail to wlaus@ozemail.com.au

Preparing for the third wave

By Colin Foster

After several months of trade union campaigning, Peter Reith withdrew his "second wave" anti-union legislation last December. That was proof that union campaigning can win victories. Unfortunately, what made the difference was not that the union campaign was exceptionally vigorous. Despite efforts to ginger it up by the ACT Trades and Labour Council, the Victoria Trades Hall Council, and the unofficial Community Action Group in Sydney and Defend Our Unions Committee in Brisbane, it was mostly a routine campaign. Decisive seems to have been the Democrats reckoning that after arousing so much resentment by their support for the GST and for the "first wave" of anti-union laws, they could not afford to be seen helping the Coalition ram through another high-profile hardline policy, not for the time being anyway. Peter Reith had nothing sufficient to offer the Democrats in return for cooperation, and preferred to withdraw the legislation altogether rather than cajole and wheedle to push bits of it through the Senate. It's a certainty that he ( or some replacement ) will be back, at a time when they think the unions are weaker, the Senate balance is more favourable, or the Democrats are more pliant. The time gained must be used as time to build up trade union strength and the sort of rank-and-file links that can push ACTU and union leaders into more than routine campaigning.

Workers Liberty Australia Front Page    |   Workers Liberty Australia site contents and index |  Workers Liberty Britain
Your comments to the editor or author? E-mail to wlaus@ozemail.com.au

Uni Fees in Britain: Non-payment can win!

From Action for Solidarity (Britain)

Last year, when New Labour began to legislate for fees and for the abolition of the maintenance grant, the broad organisation of the British student left, the Campaign for Free Education (CfE), began promoting the idea of a fees non-payment campaign.

CfE believes that a fee non-payment campaign, similar to the anti-Poll Tax campaign of the late '80s which defeated the hated Poll Tax and the Tory government which introduced it, can make the new fees system unworkable. Much of the student left was initially sceptical. However a small group of Oxford University students, faced with expulsion for fees non-payment, hit the national headlines at Xmas '98. These students refused to pay — on principle, believing education should be free.

In January 2,000 students marched in Oxford in solidarity with the Oxford non-payers. Activists began to consider the idea; more first year students (the first group to face fees) fell behind with fees payments, or refused to pay.

Around Easter non-payers at London Guildhall, Goldsmiths, Sussex University and University College London occupied to defend non-payers threatened with victimisation and expulsion. The occupations all won: all non-payers were readmitted to their courses. This was the first time for five years students — in their hundreds — had taken such action.

This year political non payment campaigns exists at Oxford, Sussex, Reading, SOAS UCL, Leeds and Queens Universities already both Oxford and SOAS have occupied to defend non payers and as fee deadlines approach across the country it is very likely non payment will once again become the focus of opposition against the Government's policies.

Nationally co-ordinated non-payment to beat fees was becoming a real possibility. In Bristol, at UWE, 300 did not to pay fees; at Sheffield Hallam 600 refused to pay. Many, many thousands of pounds is still owed to the college in unpaid fees.

The new intake — the second year to face fees, and the first year since 1964 to find themselves completely dependent on loans for maintenance support — began courses facing poverty and debt. These are the material conditions which can sustain a non-payment campaign.

Moreover students have been encouraged by the situation in Scotland where a majority of the new Scottish MPs were elected on platforms of abolishing fees. Labour, the biggest party in Scotland, have been desperate to avoid the possibility of being defeated on the issue, squirming around, attempting to strike an agreement with the Liberals to avoid defeat on the issue. Despite the backtracking of the Lib-Dems, the decision to withdraw up-front fees in Scotland is a victory we can build on and the continuing discussion and campaigning in Scotland will encourage students all over the UK, and help our grass roots campaign.

The AWL has been central to the British student left since 1985.

Our aim in 1999-2000 is to help organise a mass, political campaign that is capable of making the entire system of fees unworkable and, as a result, defeating reactionary government policy.

Moreover such a policy will have to be fought for against the current majority of the leadership of the British National Union of Students who are hostile to the campaign. The prosecution of this non-payment policy is also bound up with transforming our national union into a union which fights militantly for its membership.

There is a minority which wants to fight. At the last two NUS National conferences — conferences attended by delegates representing over well over two million students — Kate Buckell, an AWL member and a prominent member of the CfE, came very close to defeating New Labour in the election for NUS President.

And Student Unions have begun to organise the campaign on the ground (last year the main work was done by individual activists). Leeds Uni, Bradford Uni, SOAS, Sheffield College, Reading Uni, Coventry Uni, Sussex, Wolves, Bangor and Manchester Uni Student Unions are all running official local campaigns. To co-ordinate the national campaign a new organisation, the Non-Payment Collective has been set up.

Workers Liberty Australia Front Page    |   Workers Liberty Australia site contents and index |  Workers Liberty Britain
Your comments to the editor or author? E-mail to wlaus@ozemail.com.au

All fees must go!

By Helen Russell (Women’s Officer, National Union of Students UK)

The British Government has announced that from September 2000 up-front tuition fees will be abolished in Scotland and some means-tested grants will be reinstated across the UK. This is a tremendous U-turn for New Labour just 18 months after fees were first introduced. It is also a tremendous victory for the activists both north and south of the border who kept up the fight for free education despite the capitulation of the official NUS leadership.

The Scottish package falls far short of the ideal: the grants will be small, a maximum of £2,000, and fees will be replaced by a contribution of £2,000 once a graduate's income exceeds £10,000. But it nevertheless cracks open wide the whole issue of student funding and makes things possible in the fight for free education that were simply not on the agenda before.

It is now essential that students keep up the action and seize the initiative. Immediately we must organise mass action to demand a levelling up for students in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, for the abolition of fees everywhere! Campaign for Free Education members of the NUS Executive will be arguing for a national demonstration around this slogan. And if the NUS leadership won't take the action needed to take the campaign forward then you can be sure the CFE will. We know we need to win this fight. It has been reported that university applications are down this year across all age groups. People can't afford to go to college.

Meanwhile, the last non-payers at Oxford University have been given less than two weeks to pay up or get out. If they do not pay soon the students will become ineligible to sit their exams and thus gain their degrees. The signs are that a number of the students will hold out past this date: if so Oxford could once again be the hub of a high profile national campaign. What is important now is that the students have the support and solidarity of the rest of the student movement. Every activist should send messages of support to spiritof68@hotmail.com. More info from the Campaign for Free Education, cfe@gn.apc.org.

Workers Liberty Australia Front Page    |   Workers Liberty Australia site contents and index |  Workers Liberty Britain
Your comments to the editor or author? E-mail to wlaus@ozemail.com.au

Russian left opposes war in Chechnya

Two hundred people gathered on Saturday 19 February at Theatre Square, opposite the Bolshoi Theatre in Moscow, to protest against the war in Chechnya. It was the largest demonstration so far against the current war. The rally was organised by an anti-war alliance that embraced right-wing liberals and human rights organisations. A leaflet from these groups stated that, once Russian forces had crossed the River Terek, the war became impermissible, and peace talks should have been started with the Chechen government of Aslan Maskhadov. There was also representation from socialist, anarchist, pacifist and environmentalist groups who rejected the war out of hand as an act of military barbarism. A number of placards said: Putin, Where Is Andrei Babitsky?, referring to a journalist employed by the US-funded Radio Free Europe, who was arrested by the military in the middle of January and whose whereabouts are still unknown.

This joint declaration by Chelovechnost (an anti-fascist newspaper) and the Praksis Centre (a socialist publishing centre linked to the Victor Serge library, some Trotskyists, anarchists and some independent socialists) is now being circulated as widely as possible in Russia.

Solidarity Against War! As we enter the 21st century, Russian society is confronted with the shameful fact of the bloody colonial war in the north Caucasus. The whole might of the 'democratic' Russian state has been thrown into subjugating a small people that volunteered to join neither the tsarist or Stalinist empires nor Yeltsin's 'federation'. Tens of thousands killed or physically or spiritually maimed; masses impoverished or turned into refugees with no rights; towns and villages reduced to ruins — this is the price paid to satisfy the political ambitions of a Russian ruling class bent on reinforcing and redoubling its dominance. This war, cynically presented as an 'anti-terrorist operation', is in fact an act of state terror on a grand scale by Russia's rulers, which, in its turn, will lead to armed revenge by desperate Chechen people who have been deprived of everything they had and lost relatives and friends. The federal armed forces, ravaging and burning everything in their way, are not 'rooting out fundamentalism' but plunging Chechnya socially and economically into the middle ages — and thus creating the conditions for reactionary radical-Islamic political forces to gain influence. The aggression mounted against Chechnya, the genocide against its people, brings to the people of Russia itself the threat of military-police dictatorship, the repression of civil rights and the prospect of living in something like Lukashenko's Byelarus or a Latin American dictatorship. 'A people that suppresses another people can never itself be free': these words of Friedrich Engels take on real meaning today. This war is fraught with no less catastrophic consequences socially and economically. Waging war and installing a regime of occupation requires vast resources — and these can only be taken from the working people, who even without this have been condemned to crushing poverty. While many millions live in want, tens of billions of rubles are spent on murder and destruction. Truly the cynicism of the ruling class and its political representatives — all the Putins, Chubaises and Ziuganovs, competing with each other to play the hangman — knows no bounds! The crimes of Russian imperialism against all the peoples who have been drawn into its military adventure must be stopped, before it is too late. We call for: — An immediate end to military operations and the withdrawal of occupying forces from Chechen territory; — For the Chechen people's right to decide independently its future; the status of Chechnya must be freely decided by its own population, observed by international human rights organisations; — The payment of sufficient compensation to all victims of the war, regardless of their nationality, out of the money set aside to fund the war; — The punishment of war criminals at all levels. We can not count on Russian politicians' good will. And it would be equally naive to rely on the ruling circles in the west — who condemn the Russian military machine's actions in words only, and have never upset their own plans or their partnership with the Russian establishment for the sake of defending the lives, and rights, of those who are suffering. Military barbarism can be stopped only by the growth of a social movement of protest in Russia itself. A democratic solution to the conflict in north Caucasus will be achieved only by means of popular action from below. To start such action, and do everything to help it develop, is the duty of all democratic and anti-totalitarian left-wingers, who take a principled stand — in pursuit of the ideals of freedom, social equality and respect for every human being — against the exploitative and great-power interests who are running this war. We call on all people of progressive convictions, good will and common sense to do all that they can to give help, including material help, to the victims of the imperialist adventure in the Caucasus, and to take part in a campaign of practical solidarity with the Chechen people — a campaign against the war. The alternatives for our future are simple: either humanitarian civil society declares itself in Russia, or we will be left with a great-power police state, ready to make new wars and capable of the most monstrous crimes. It's time to make a choice! Those who wish to join our campaign are asked to write to us. Fax (095) 292 6511, Box 385. Postal address: 127434 Moscow, a/ya 32.

Workers Liberty Australia Front Page    |   Workers Liberty Australia site contents and index |  Workers Liberty Britain
Your comments to the editor or author? E-mail to wlaus@ozemail.com.au

AWL meets in Britain

By Martin Thomas

The Alliance for Workers' Liberty in Britain met for its yearly conference on 4-5 March 2000, in London. Fraternal delegations attended from two French revolutionary organisations, Voix des Travailleurs and L'Etincelle; there were observers from the Communist Party of Great Britain (Weekly Worker, a splinter from the old Communist Party which has evolved to a fairly thoroughgoing rejection of Stalinism); and greetings were also received from Lalit in Mauritius and Solidarity in the USA.

Mark Osborn, presenting the organisation report, told the conference that as regards number of members and circulation of its press the AWL is almost exactly at the same mark as it was a year ago. Though we could certainly have done more ( in youth work, for example, though the production of the new AWL youth bulletin Bolshy has been a step forward ) the general conditions have not been favourable to rapid growth for the revolutionary left. Mark Sandell's trade-union report noted that the latest strike figures for the UK are the lowest on record, and Kate Buckell's student report indicated that, despite encouraging signs here and there, the college campuses are still not lively.

We know that the general conditions of class struggle will inevitably turn round in time, but we have no guarantees that it will be soon. Much emphasis is therefore needed on painstaking detail work ( Marxist education, public meetings, political discussion, literature sales, and so on. In a report on "The AWL and the Left", Sean Matgamna argued that the collapse of much of the British (and international) far left, at the time of the Kosova war, into catchpenny anti-NATO agitation of a sort which implicitly (or, for the British SWP, explicitly) downgraded the national rights of the Kosovar Albanians as secondary and unimportant, was indicative of a general decay of intellectual culture in the anti-Stalinist and post-Stalinist left. We have to devote much energy to self-clarification and self-education.

Although there was no major disagreement within the conference on Kosova, much time was spent on Saturday evening after the conference session debating this issue with the delegates from the French groups. They broadly agreed with the mainstream approach of the French revolutionary left, summed up in three slogans: Stop the NATO bombing, Down with Milosevic, Self-Determination for Kosova. AWL members, while emphasising that the AWL argued for no trust and no support for NATO, argued that this formula made "stop NATO bombs" the only immediate "do-it-now" slogan, whereas the slogans on what should be the central issue, the national rights of the long-oppressed Kosovar Albanians, were general and timeless statements of principle. Why not demand "Serbian troops out of Kosova"?

As last year, one of the most controversial issues in the conference was participation in independent working-class and socialist election candidacies against Tony Blair's New Labour, and its relation to ongoing activity in Labour-affiliated trade unions and local Labour Party organisations. The differences had narrowed considerably since last year. There was general agreement that the Blair faction has already made drastic changes to Labour's structures, grossly limiting the openings for calling Labour leaders to account through the trade unions and local Labour Parties, and that it is set on transforming New Labour into a party like the US Democrats or the pre-1900 British Liberal Party, with the trade unions having at best a client relationship. Grassroots working-class anger against this hijack is rising, and it is the job of socialists to help it find appropriate political expression.

Everyone agreed that we should support Ken Livingstone as an independent labour candidate for London mayor if he stood (as he has since decided to) and participate in the London Socialist Alliance slate for the London Assembly, which unites the AWL with the Socialist Workers' Party (to which the ISO in Australia is affiliated), the International Socialist Group, the Socialist Party (ex-Militant), the CPGB, Workers' Power, the Independent Labour Network, and unaffiliated leftists. Despite some criticisms of the orientation of the SWP, the biggest force in the list, which tends to proclaim it flatly as the accomplished "socialist alternative" to New Labour, instead of stressing the political axis of working-class political representation as the AWL does, we all felt that the slate was an important contribution both to challenging Blair's hijack of the labour movement and to revolutionary left unity in action.

Differences focused on two practical issues. One, should the AWL seek to promote and participate in independent working-class and socialist candidatures in local government elections this May outside London as well as in London? Two, in areas where no well-based independent working-class candidature is feasible, how should we vote? The conference decided by majorities both to pursue some candidatures outside London, and to retain a general "fallback" or "default" position of voting Labour where there is no well-based independent working-class candidate.

There was also debate about whether the underestimated the strength of the movement behind Ken Livingstone and been excessive in some of our polemics against Livingstone.

The conference concluded with an enthusiastic response to a speech by Janine Booth, a London Underground worker and an AWL member on the socialist London Assembly slate, calling on the AWL to maximise its efforts in the weeks up to polling day on 4 May to make the most of the expanded audience we will have in the election campaign.

Workers Liberty Australia Front Page    |   Workers Liberty Australia site contents and index |  Workers Liberty Britain
Your comments to the editor or author? E-mail to wlaus@ozemail.com.au

Billionaires’ dogfight on the Internet

By Eric Lee

I have to admit being a bit baffled by left-wing friends of mine who seem to believe that Microsoft is evil incarnate — as opposed to other computer software and hardware companies. I've come across this point of view more than once — often triggered by my promoting the use of this or that Internet tool which sometimes doesn't have a Mac version yet.

Mac aficionados sometimes write angry letters accusing me of being in league with the devil (Bill Gates) and in one bizarre case, a Mac enthusiast produced "proof" that Microsoft was actually running ads on the LabourStart website, which I edit, meaning that I had been bought out. (The ad actually appeared on a website which was giving us space to run a web forum — does anyone really believe that Microsoft would financially support a labour website?) The legal battle between Microsoft and the US Department of Justice revealed many things and among them the fact that most of the government witnesses against Microsoft came from competing companies — primarily America Online, Netscape and Sun. It was Microsoft's unfair business practices, hurting those companies, which triggered the lawsuit, and not Microsoft's treatment of its employees or consumers.

Anyone who has been on the net long enough remembers the days when Microsoft wasn't even a player. Its Internet Explorer browser was laughed at by people in the know. Its email client wasn't nearly as good as its rivals. For a long time, Netscape held a virtual monopoly on web browsing. (And yet no one — and certainly no one on the left — called for a breakup of Netscape's monopoly.) Then Microsoft released versions three and four of Internet Explorer and the rest is history. Nearly every reviewer announced that Microsoft had finally produced a better product than Netscape. It had won the browser wars.

Let me be absolutely clear how I feel about Microsoft products: on the whole, they suck. My decision to upgrade from Windows 95 to Windows 98 was a huge mistake; LabourStart was grounded for three days when I did that. My computer crashes at least once a day thanks to Microsoft products. I persist in using Opera and Netscape Navigator as my browsers because I like them, even though I really should be viewing my website through the eyes of most of its visitors — and they overwhelmingly use Internet Explorer. I use a Palm Pilot instead of Microsoft's Windows CE rivals.

I agree with anything bad anyone can say about Bill Gates. I can't think of a single nice thing to say about him myself.

But — does this make Microsoft somehow worse than Netscape or Sun or IBM or Apple? (As companies, I mean.) Microsoft doesn't tolerate trade unions, and there's a heroic effort going on by a group called WashTech (www.washtech.org) to try to unionise them. But where's Netscape's union? And where's Apple's? The reality is that the IT sector is on the whole a no-go area for trade unions and one of the great challenges facing the labour movement is how to organise workers in that sector, and not only in Microsoft.

From the point of view of socialists, there is no difference between one software company and another. There may be a difference between Open Source software and commercial software — I can see a case for that — but the companies behind the Justice Department lawsuit (Sun, IBM, Netscape, America Online) are hardly proponents of Open Source. Many years ago, I saw a headline in one of the most ultra-left newspapers America ever produced. At the height of the Watergate scandal, it labelled the affair a "billionaire's dogfight" — something of no concern to working people down here on the ground. How sectarian of them! And yet what an apt description of the Microsoft vs. Department of Justice battle.

This truly is a billionaire's dogfight, a battle over market share by competing predatory, anti-union mega-companies. There are no good guys and bad guys here. And it has nothing to do with us.

Eric co-ordinates www.labourstart.org .

Workers Liberty Australia Front Page    |   Workers Liberty Australia site contents and index |  Workers Liberty Britain
Your comments to the editor or author? E-mail to wlaus@ozemail.com.au

Health day of action on Friday 7 April

By Beth Mohle, project officer, Queensland Nurses’ union

Unions, community groups, health consumer representatives and health organisations concerned about the integrity and viability of our public health system need your help. We have commenced a campaign in defence of Medicare and public hospitals. The first major campaign activity will be a National Day of Action on World Health Day, Friday 7 April 2000.

This campaign arose out of widespread concern about the under funding of Medicare and public health services and the current federal government health policy changes (especially those relating to incentives for private health insurance) that we believe serve to undermine our universal health system. The executives of the Australian Nursing Federation, Australian Council of Trade Unions and Queensland Council of Unions have all endorsed this campaign.

Activities are planned across the country on World Health Day — justcontact your local nurses' union for details. For example, in Brisbane we have booked a space in the Queen Street Mall for the day.

Campaign material available from http://www.qnu.org.au

Workers Liberty Australia Front Page    |   Workers Liberty Australia site contents and index |  Workers Liberty Britain
Your comments to the editor or author? E-mail to wlaus@ozemail.com.au

"A must-read for those associated with Trotskyism"

From the New International Bookshop in Melbourne: "Left-linkers interested in Marxism might be interested to know we now have a few copies of The Fate of the Russian Revolution: Lost Texts of Critical Marxism. It contains major essays by Max Shachtman, Hal Draper, C L R James, Al Glotzer, Joseph Carter, Leon Trotsky and other revolutionaries grappling with the question of how to understand the degeneration of the Russian Revolution. A must-read for those associated with the Trotskyist tradition".

Extracts from the book are available on the Internet at http://www.workersliberty.org/book/index.htm .

Trotsky in print

Also from the New International Bookshop: "A leader of the Russian revolution, a gifted journalist and polemicist and an elegant theoretician, Leon Trotsky's work is crucial to understanding the 20th century and beyond. But for too long his books have been expensive and hard to find. At last, the New International Bookshop is now stocking a comprehensive range of texts from this key figure in Marxist theory. Books in stock include The Revolution Betrayed, Their Morals and Ours, The First Five Years of the Communist International, In Defense of Marxism and many others (including numerous rare pamphlets)."

The New International Bookshop is open 10.30 to 6.30 from Monday to Friday, and 11.00 to 5.00 on Saturday and Sunday. Trades Hall, Cnr Victoria and Lygon Sts, Carlton Phone: (03) 9662 3744 or visit the website at www.nibs.org.au

Workers Liberty Australia Front Page    |   Workers Liberty Australia site contents and index |  Workers Liberty Britain
Your comments to the editor or author? E-mail to wlaus@ozemail.com.au