The agony and ecstasy of Rodin
The artist best known for The Kiss and The Thinker infused dumb matter with passionate emotions, as The Making of Rodin at Tate Modern reveals.
Read review by Corinna Lotz
The roots of white ‘supremacy’
With white supremacists emerging into the daylight of post-Trump America, The Dawning of the Apocalypse, is timely, says Peter Arkell.
Tracing the origins of slavery, white supremacy, settler colonialism, and capitalism itself, author Gerald Horne, a professor of history at Houston University, takes us back to the 15th century when Portugal, Spain and the Netherlands began looking for territories overseas. Read more…
Palestinian uprising is a turning point
The widespread Palestinian revolt in response to threatened evictions in East Jerusalem, the attack on Al-Aqsa worshippers, the destruction of homes, farms and olive groves and the barbarous attack on Gaza is an uprising for democracy and against colonisation.
Keir Starmer
How the left can stick it to Starmer
By Paul Feldman
While the Tories plough on with a series of state interventions associated with their spurious “levelling up” agenda, lacing them with a heavy dose of authoritarian, populist measures aimed at protesters, migrants, voters and judges, Labour staggers from pillar to post.
The party is now consumed by what it has always excelled at – plotting, factionalism, briefing and counter-briefing. All to what avail? You may well ask at a time when real, effective opposition to the Tories is sorely needed.
Love in a time of Covid: beyond Glasgow’s radical tradition to real community resistance
By David Carr
Fortunately, a new tradition of resistance is being forged in Glasgow. The tale of how citizens went beyond opposition and forced the state to back down when they went to snatch two refugees.
Behind the mask
By Natasha Nicole Roffe
The Cartoon Museum has sourced original art work from one of the most compelling and iconic graphic novels of the 20th century. Its iconography has become instantly recognisable and associated with an idea of protest, empowerment and self agency, the struggles of all the characters.
Unhitch the movement from the SNP bandwagon
A good forensic scalpel wielded by Penny Cole – the SNP cannot and will not fulfil the aspirations expressed by the independence movement. Its radical side failed to survive the referendum defeat and is in desperate need of restructuring in a new form.
Ending state-sponsored sleaze
By Paul Feldman
When the main business of government is business itself, don’t be surprised when sleaze, political favours, dodgy contracts and the rest surface on a regular basis. The UK capitalist state, with its immense power and resources, is inherently open to misuse.
Burn now, pay later
By Robbie Griffiths
On World Earth Day, April 22, during a virtual summit, President Biden pledged to cut carbon emissions by 50-52% below 2005 levels by the year 2030. This was greeted with much fanfare by the BBC and the Guardian, although there was precious little detail about how this will be achieved or even whether it is sufficient.
On the same day, under the media radar, a report by leading climate scientists emerged which contained a stark warning about the dangers of pursuing a strategy of net zero emissions. The report called into question the UK’s approach to the climate emergency and reversing years of thinking on the environment. Read more…
Kick Out Capitalism
By Paul Feldman
The planned European Super League (ESL) – a self-contained format for elite clubs only – is probably on the point of collapse following the revolt by Premier League fans. They forced the owners of Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham to pull out of the project – for the time being.
Clubs owned by major corporations, hedge funds and advised by investment bank J.P. Morgan will be back sooner rather than later. Read more…
Tories disguise the sinister police bill’s real intent
By Sam Hadfield
Now, we’ve all been seriously annoyed in the past. However, it’s never been a criminal offence to be annoying – until now. But that’s what the terrifying Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts bill (PCSC) being forced through parliament does. Sam Hadfield decyphers the real intention behind the anti-protest bill. Read more…
Holocaust survivor appeals to Olympics chief
Open letter to Thomas Bach, President of the International Olympic Committee, by Ruth Barnett MBE, Holocaust Survivor, speaker, author and genocide educator.
The whole point of the International Olympic Games is as an icon of what cooperation and friendly competition can achieve in bringing out the best in humanity. This noble aim is simply wiped out and negated by a manifestation of its opposite on the same soil, namely the power to wipe out a whole people by genocide. Thus our precious Olympic Games becomes a “Genocide Game”.
Covid-19: from a global boardroom to your community
By Penny Cole
Global capital has driven the deforestation, industrial agriculture and urban development that has exposed us to new pathogens. If the virus has a source it is not Yunnan but the boardrooms of giant corporations, writes Penny Cole.
She chose to challenge
By Corinna Lotz
The theme of this year’s International Women’s Day is #ChosetoChallenge. If there was one person about whom this could be said it was Larissa Reisner.
This legendary woman was at the very juncture of the worst and best in humanity. A new translation of her Civil War despatches, The Hammer and the Anvil, evokes a key moment in the Russian Civil War.
Budget aims to prop up a capitalist system in ICU
By Paul Feldman
Behind all the budget ballyhoo, the picture is clear: capitalism is in intensive care and the Tories have deployed the state to keep it afloat at the expense of the majority of the population. Read more
Sharing the burden of building a democratic future
Democracy does not come in one form. There are many different types of democracy, from the ancient Greek system where only men over 20 could vote directly on issues to modern representative democracies. What this means is that simply being a “democracy” isn’t good enough. Read more…
Vaccine ‘nationalism’ exposes a rotten system
The unseemly dispute between the European Union and AstraZeneca over the supply of the Covid-19 vaccine just about sums up everything that is both wrong and rotten about the system, aka capitalism.
In a rational world, where public health and wellbeing came first, a global pandemic would be met with a universal, planned response. Vaccines would be distributed on an equitable basis and a mutually-agreed strategy put together. Read more…
Health care without Big Pharma: Cuba shows how
By Peter Arkell
The extraordinary achievements of the Cuban health system could not have happened without the revolution of 1959 and the new social relations that resulted.
Engels in the crosshairs
By Corinna Lotz
Getting a handle on reality in our image-dominated world is more vital than ever. A new book looks afresh at a thinker who set out some basic ideas about the essential nature of change. Turkish professor Kaan Kangal examines the controversial work of the man Karl Marx called “Fred” or “the General”.
Time to make ‘we the people’ a reality for the many
By Paul Feldman
The storming of the Capitol by Trump’s supporters dealt a huge blow to the US constitution and poses a great challenge. The existential crisis for US democracy affects us all… here’s how it can be resolved in favour of positive change. Read more…
Heal our broken relationship with nature
Dear friends in the UK and around the world.
Warm thanks for your support over the past year. Here are some thoughts and our plan for 2021. Stay safe and well in 2021!
Know the system, change the system
The Real Democracy Movement is working with others to create a free online political education course that people can do in their own time.
The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed a cruel, unjust and unequal economic and political system and compelled many people to consider alternatives. Our course will contribute to learning about how to bring about revolutionary system change.
If you want to help, please get in touch!
How ecology and socialism co-evolved
By Corinna Lotz
A landmark book by US Marxist John Bellamy Foster is a sweeping and fascinating account of revolutionary thinkers and doers. We discover that William Morris wore out his copy of Capital in a short time, how women like Eleanor Marx were key figures and how Soviet scientists inspired the British ‘Red Scientists’ of 20th century.
Read Corinna Lotz’s appreciation and critique
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Firefighters lead the struggle against Tory cuts
By Peter Arkell
For over a decade, firefighters have been at the forefront of the fight by trade unions and their allies against austerity cuts imposed from on high by successive Tory governments. The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) has vowed to continue the resistance after the chancellor’s latest attack.
Penny Cole talks to holocaust survivor Ruth Barnett about the importance of a new, critical approach to education and learning in the struggle for a democratic future.
Here’s a way to defeat Trumpism for good
By Paul Feldman
Joe Biden will take office – assuming he is actually allowed to do so – in the midst of a global pandemic that has killed over 225,000 Americans, a divided country and with the economic and political conditions that created Trump very much in place. Addressing these issues in any meaningful way is, frankly, beyond the capacity of the Democratic Party or the American state. The country needs a new people’s constitution and activists can make it happen. Read more…
May the Force be with you
By Corinna Lotz
They couldn’t be more different. Frances Aviva Blane is notorious for her “shock doctrine”; Claudia Clare’s decorated pots convey a contemplative serenity. Could they possibly work together? With her current show, Zuleika Gallery founder Lizzie Collins has banished this sceptical thought. Read more…
Putting profit first is a killer
By Paul Feldman
The very idea that there should be a “trade-off” between public health and the economy is repellent and immoral. Yet as the second Covid-19 wave sweeps the UK and the rest of Europe, the UK’s political class is reduced to bargaining over the economic cost of local lockdowns.
This amounts to a total cross-party failure, sitting alongside a state machine in disarray which in turn is directed by a Tory government totally divided over what to do next. Read more
Exciting times. Dangerous times.
81-year jazz legend Joe McPhee talks to Corinna Lotz about how the pandemic has changed his life and his music.
Covid 19 – a catastrophic failure of government
By Peter Arkell
This little book about the pandemic carries a real punch and will be read with dismay in government circles. It denounces the actions of governments, particularly the US and UK ones, in stark terms: “Every death was evidence of systematic government misconduct – reckless acts of omission that constituted breaches in the duties of public office… Missed opportunities and appalling misjudgements were leading to the avoidable deaths of thousands of citizens”. Read more…
Rishi Sunak should retrain as a human being
Dylan Strain talks to Efa Supertramp about her new album “Apocalipstick Blues” and her revolutionary outlook on life.
Efa Supertramp hit the headlines around the time of Glastonbury 2019, with first The Times, then the rest of the media trying to drag the owner Michael Eavis through the dirt thanks to him giving a platform to Jeremy Corbyn in 2017. Read more…
Aching
By Corinna Lotz
“I’ve been concerned with politics since I was aged 11. My parents were refugees from Nazi Germany who influenced me by saying you must be aware of what’s going on in the world, be engaged with it.it.”
Julie Held is Artist in Lockdown No. 7, by Corinna Lotz
Educating for real democracy
By Penny Cole
Our education system does not produce citizens who know how to use democracy, or even know what it is. Civic education teaches the “authorised version” – that the system of democracy we already have is an unchangeable given and the best we can achieve. The Real Democracy Movement’s education working group is developing a series of workshops that take on key challenges. Penny Cole reports.
A sense of liberation
Artists in Quarantine No.6
By Corinna Lotz
A second wave of infections, more quarantines, lockdowns, as the invisible virus searches for new hosts. Uncertainty about what the future has in store. When will we meet friends and family again?
Sculptor and multi-media artist Caroline Pick’s recent evolution can be seen as a metaphor for this moment of collective uncertainty. She is a many-sided personality who embraces a wealth of media, modes, disciplines and genres. Read more…
A sight for sore eyes
By Corinna Lotz
Oh no, not another Impressionism show! Gauguin again? Is this to pull in the punters with a bankable display of old favourites? Recycling the reliable?
Well, actually no. The first major London show to open since the pandemic is not a spectacular blockbuster. Instead it’s an intimate and moving experience. Beautifully displayed in the Royal Academy’s new spaces in the former Museum of Mankind, there’s so much to enjoy and mull over.
Five days that shook Seattle
Fiona Harrington praises an account of an amazing time when workers took complete power in the city of Seattle.
Over a century ago a historic general strike took place in Seattle on the Pacific North-West coast the like of which had not been seen before in the United States and it is fair to say, not since. In fact, this kind of total shut down verging on revolution has happened a mere handful of times anywhere. Read more…
The old Irish republic is dying – forward to a new one!
By Frank Hayes
After some 140 days of manoeuvring, Ireland has a new government. The rival right-wing parties, Fine Gael (FG) and Fianna Fail (FF) who lost badly at the February general election, found their salvation in the shape of a divided Green Party. Read more…
Starmer dances to Johnson’s sinister tune
By Paul Feldman
As the Tories lift the lockdown, principally for economic rather than public health reasons, some might expect a challenge to this business-led strategy from the opposition in Parliament. Don’t hold your breath.”Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition” is back in the wake of Jeremy Corbyn’s resignation. Read more…
Artists under Quarantine: a new series by Corinna Lotz
No.5 The chess piece logic of Cuckooland
Ray Bradbury was born 100 years ago in August 1920. Richard Walker re-imagines our pandemic world through Bradbury’s iconic Sci-Fi book Fahrenheit 451 in a brave forthcoming show at Art Bermondsey Space.
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No.4 The Covids are coming
By Corinna Lotz
David Downes captures the very Zeitgeist of the pandemic: not angels on Peckham Rye, but Covids in the sky. Locked down in Manningtree, in Constable country, David made one painting each day under the impact of the pandemic, which he sees as the “biggest crisis and tragedy of our times”. Read more…
No.3 Mind games under lockdown
By Corinna Lotz
Isolation has led to a new intimacy in the work of a distinguished member of the London Group – Peter Clossick.
“Far away from the merry-go-round of the market place, the only reasoning is to keep going on and stay safe,” he says.
No.2 Virus – dimensions unknown
By Corinna Lotz
The Freud Museum was the perfect location. Frances Aviva Blane, an artist who plumbs the depths of the human psyche, and Susie Orbach, one of the most distinguished psychotherapists of our time, were to have a public conversation. The theme? Oil paint on canvas as “a metaphor for the disintegration of personality and self”.
No.1 A silver lining for a scary time
By Corinna Lotz
When the coronavirus pandemic broke out, Michele del Campo felt he could not bear to carry on painting in the same way as before. The extremity of the moment drove him to reconsider.
The best of times and the worst of times
By Corinna Lotz
We are locked down, and yet the wealth of offerings via digital platforms has blossomed to extraordinary proportions. It’s truly an embarrassment of riches.
Artists, performers, galleries, museums and television producers are making use of video-conferencing, pod casting and Instagram in ways that we could not have possibly imagined. Read more…
Make system change the new ‘normal’ after pandemic
By Paul Feldman
Now is absolutely the right time to consider what kind of society we want when, thanks entirely to the heroic efforts of health service, other front-line workers and community solidarity, the coronavirus pandemic is eventually suppressed. Read more…
Transmission ‘agent’ for deadly virus is capitalism itself
What is apparent is that the Covid-19 virus has its own specific, socially-constructed “agent”. The vector is without doubt neoliberal capitalism. Read more…
Beyond Covid19: Demands for ourselves & others for a far brighter future
By Dylan Strain
In 2020 & beyond Coronavirus, it is high time people became more who they were meant to be, more who they want to be, follow the heart.