Greek social democracy (PASOK) really went through a phase like this in its 70s-80s international outlook, and it isn’t talked about enough in English language accounts about social democracy of that era.

One of the saddest elements of the breakup of the USSR was the crushing of this ephemeral, hopeful moment between one system and the next, where people & workers on the ground took a stand to ensure the outcome would be democratic & socialist.

"For my part, I lay little stress on the distinction, whether a man is an anarchist or a socialist, because it seems to me that too much weight is attributed to this difference."

Joseph Dietzgen - German socialist, original & early dialectical materialist philosopher, tannery worker & journalist.

One of the funniest things about Tolstoy’s anti-Tsarist Christian philosophy is along with the rejection of war, military service, serfdom, slavery, capital punishment etc there is a wholesale rejection of divorce + second marriages, as if that was just as bad as the rest lol

Excepts lifted from this book on the history of the Tasmanian Labor Party

Do wish Tasmanian Labor would adopt ‘complete socialisation’ as a policy however, as they once almost did.

Then they really would earn my vote 🗳️ 🚩🫡

The opponents of the Australian Labor Party always make it sound way cooler than it actually was.

Evergreen pamphlet title

Perhaps no one elucidated the content of ‘critical communism’ so well as the Italian Marxist Antonio Labriola.

Retains its force into the present.

Excerpt from ‘In Memory of the Communist Manifesto’, the first chapter of ‘Essays on the Materialistic Conception of History’

Decarbonisation as a path to demilitarisation in Europe, as opposed to the false promise of security supposedly generated by military Keynesianism.

(Grace Blakeley in the Spring 2025 issue of Tribune)

Good point by Juliano Fiori in Tribune about the function of nationalism, and the place rising English nationalism fills, drawing on the work of Tom Nairn.

I look like this and say exactly this

Have to admit, I do love the ‘bury Labor’ angle from the Australian Spartacists. It fills this left-sectarian heart with glee.

Australian federal election day today.

With all the usual qualifications about and inherent limits in simply voting, it is not nothing either.

Vote socialist where they are running, and as progressive as possible in all other electorates.

Glad to see this classic book on the Communist Party reprinted in an updated edition. The distinctive IS politics of the author inform the analysis, and whatever criticisms of it there are to be made, the case is made well and relatively concisely. A deeper historical dive requires other books.