Friedrich Engels

Prehistory: a contribution to the discussion

Following the publication of the two part article on women's role in the emergence of culture and human solidarity as a result of the evolution of the human species, the aptly named comrade "Baboon", who has made frequent contributions to (for example) the forum discussions on this site, has sent us this critical article. We are very glad to publish it on this site because it provides both an unusually well-documented investigation of the evolution of homo erectus in particular, and because we hope that its critical viewpoint will stimulate debate on the emergence of primitive communist, human, society.

At the end of Baboon's article, we also publish a reply from the author of the original articles on the subject.

Decadence of capitalism (vi): The theory of capitalist decline and the struggle against revisionism

According to a certain school of academic Marxologists, councilists and anarchists, marxist theory entered a period of sterility after Marx's death in 1883.  The social democratic parties and the Second International, in this view, were actually dominated by "Engelsism", an attempt by Marx's second fiddle and his camp-followers to turn Marx's method of investigation into a semi-mechanical system which falsely equates radical social criticism with the approach of the natural sciences.

G20 and world economic crisis: The state can’t save us!

Now the G20 London Summit is over, what is the message that the rulers of the earth is they can deal with the economic catastrophe facing the capitalist system.The present crisis of overproduction, however, has its roots not, as the economic experts claim, in any kind of temporary ‘imbalance' in the world economy, but in the basic social relations of capitalism.

Darwin and the Workers Movement

This year sees the commemoration of the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin's birth (and the passing of 150 years since the publication of Origin of Species). The marxist wing of the workers' movement has always saluted Darwin's outstanding contributions to humanity's understanding of itself and nature.

Review of Chris Knight's "Blood Relations: Menstruation and the Origins of Culture"

In WR 309 we published a contribution from one of our close sympathisers (‘Baboon'):  ‘Baboon's revenge: marxism versus feminism on the origins of humanity', a report of a meeting presented by Chris Knight of the Radical Anthropology Group at the Anarchist Bookfair in London last October.Baboon's article is very critical of Knight's basic thesis, rejecting it as anarchist and feminist. Having recently read Chris Knight's major theoretical work Blood Relations: Menstruation and the origins of Culture (Yale University press, 1991), I feel that his work deserves rather more consideration, even if some of Baboon's key criticisms certainly express valid concerns. 

The Revolutionary Perspective Obscured by Parliamentary Illusions

At the end of the last article in this series, we looked at the principle danger posed to the social democratic parties operating at the zenith of capitalism’s historical development: the divorce between the fight for immediate reforms and the overall goal of communism. The growing success of these parties both in winning ever increasing numbers of workers to their cause, and in extracting concessions from the bourgeoisie through the parliamentary and trade union struggles, was accompanied, and indeed partly contributed to, the development of the ideologies of reformism...

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