Why Albo’s no Jez
For an ashen-faced bureaucrat who has spent 20 years quietly decaying in the House of Representatives, Anthony Albanese displays a stunning capacity to fire the imaginations of certain demographics. He is “Hot Albo” on the internet when a 30-year-old photograph of him with an earring inspi...CONTINUE READING
Why radical change is not an impossible dream
To be a radical in Australia today, one must confront a daunting reality. To transform society, we must overcome powerful institutions designed to hold back social change. To do so, we need a mass socialist movement, harnessing our collective power to a project of fundamental social change...CONTINUE READING
Why democracy and capitalism don’t mix
When he took office in January, Donald Trump declared that he was “transferring power from Washington, DC, and giving it back to you: the people”. As the rain fell on the half-empty National Mall, the new president predicted: “January 20, 2017, will be remembered as the day the people beca...CONTINUE READING
Capitalism’s illusory freedom
World capitalism is a mess. Racked by political crises, teetering on the brink of economic crash or war, every year reaching new heights of economic inequality so extreme as to be almost unimaginable: the system seems to offer no hope for the future. We live in a period with no governing p...CONTINUE READING
Who’s afraid of Leon Trotsky?
Jeremy Corbyn has shifted British society to the left in many ways. He has encouraged a revival of a number of supposedly antiquated notions: the large-scale nationalisation, the strike and the protest. But perhaps most surprising of all is that Corbyn (or more specifically the campaign ag...CONTINUE READING
Simon and Garfunkel no more: the day Corbyn and Sanders parted ways
Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders: two survivors of the 1960s who, for about a year, have seemed as much in spiritual harmony as Simon and Garfunkel. Both their bewildered detractors and their super-fans have upheld the grandfatherly reformists as models of a new left populism of the Anglos...CONTINUE READING
Brexit: a crisis of their own making
European capitalism has entered a new and unpredictable phase of its protracted crisis. The British referendum has caused havoc in the EU, the United Kingdom, the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. All are in turmoil. In the aftermath of the global financial crisis, the illusion of ”...CONTINUE READING
British Labour in crisis as thousands rally to defend Corbyn
The British Labour Party is in one of the greatest crises in its history. Last week’s vote to leave the EU has the potential to splinter four key institutions of global capitalism: the EU itself, the British state, the British Conservative Party and the British Labour Party. All are paraly...CONTINUE READING
Does opposing business tax cuts mean you’re against humanity?
Some readers of Red Flag may have become a little concerned about the Turnbull government’s priorities. In this paper, you may have read that “[Turnbull’s] agenda is one of screwing the working class and rewarding the party’s big business backers” (27 February 2015); about his “track recor...CONTINUE READING