Your Party: The Return of the Left by Oliver Eagleton, editor, £8.99 Verso Paperback 2025

This book from the Pabloite Verso publications has been rushed out to justify the need for a new reformist type party under conditions of a global crisis of capitalism, a fascist in the White House and the temporary replacement of the Labour Party as the favourite Party of the British bourgeoisie. While the need for a new party is palpable, this is not the one the working class needs.

The book consists of a collection of interviews edited by Oliver Eagleton, of Zarah Sultana MP, Leanne Mohamad, Stop the War co-founder Andrew Murray, Our Bloc author James Schneider, Andrew Feinstein, and former Corbyn speechwriter Alex Nunns.

Oliver Eagleton is an associate editor at the New Left Review (NLR), a Pseudo-Left publication that promotes a middle-class, reformist, and ultimately pro-capitalist perspective. Like all the people interviewed in the book, Eagleton, through his writing, seeks to channel left-wing sentiment into reformist, dead-end political projects like "Your Party" and the Labour Party establishment.

According to the World Socialist Website (WSWS), Eagleton promotes the illusion that genuine social change can be achieved through the parliamentary system and within the framework of the capitalist state, rather than through an independent, international socialist movement of the working class. He is a specialist in obfuscating class Issues by promoting "left-populism" to obscure fundamental class divisions and the necessity of a precise class analysis of society.

Eagleton’s first interview is with Corbyn’s second-in-command, Zarah Sultana. She is a Pseudo-Left “figurehead. Her "socialist" or "anti-fascist" rhetoric is merely a cover for a reformist agenda that ultimately serves capitalist interests. The feud that broke out between her and Corbyn was more about factionalism and a lack of Principles on both sides. It was also over who controls the not inconsiderable £800,000 membership fund, which is still growing.

Like other pseudo-Lefts, she presents her "rotten and spineless Labour 'left' colleagues as part of a fighting socialist alternative to Starmer". Despite her use of rhetoric such as  "class war", her focus remains within the limits of parliamentary politics and nationalistic frameworks.

Leanne Mohamad has no differences whatsoever with Corbyn or Sultana and has spoken on Pseudo-Left Platforms. She spoke at Jeremy Corbyn's Peace and Justice Project conference. Like other interviewees, she seeks to subordinate genuine working-class anger into reformist and nationalistic channels. The  WSWS has noted reports of a "bitter rift" within her campaign team, specifically with the Redbridge Community Action Group (RCAG), as evidence of the unprincipled and factional character it attributes to this political current.

Perhaps Corbyn’s most useful ally in this coalition of frauds is Andrew Murray. Murray has used his influence as a leader in the Communist Party of Britain, the Stop the War Coalition (STWC), and the Unite trade union to keep the working class tied to the Labour Party. Murray is a Stalinist and has a long history in the Communist Party of Britain. He has been a long-standing adviser in the Corbyn leadership.

James Schneider, a key figure of the British "left", co-founder of the grassroots movement Momentum, and former Director of Strategic Communications for Jeremy Corbyn.  Schneider was a founder member of “Your Party. His Momentum movement was instrumental in facilitating Labour's purge of left-wing members under Corbyn and in helping contain it within the confines of the Labour Party bureaucracy.

Andrew Feinstein’s politics are based on an appeal for a "more moral government" and "human values," which explicitly rejects a class analysis of society and obscures the fundamental class antagonisms inherent in a capitalist system.

Lastly, Alex Nunns is an author and apologist for Corbynism: Nunns is the author of The Candidate: Jeremy Corbyn's Improbable Path to Power and the forthcoming Sabotage: The Inside Hit Job That Brought Down Jeremy Corbyn. These books are part of a veritable "cottage industry" of "pseudo-left" post-mortems that fail to provide a genuine class analysis of the movement's failure,

Eagleton’s fellow pseudo-left organisations and every political scoundrel under the sun have welcomed Your Party. Probably the biggest of these political scoundrels is Tariq Ali. Ali has been intimately involved in the development of "Your Party" and has now joined it, marking the first time he has been a member of a political organisation since 1981. Ali will feel at home in this anti-working-class party. At 81, he still feels he has one more revolutionary movement to betray. He is also still a darling of the pseudo-left media. Recently, he was asked What do you think are the prospects for the left today?

He wrote, “Starmer is dreadful. I’m in no doubt that his policies will create a space that, at the moment, the far right will try to fill. We need to respond. But we can’t simply do what we did in the past the same way. In the 1970s, the Anti-Nazi League and Rock Against Racism were vital, but the world has changed, the situation is different, and we need appropriate responses. It won’t be easy, but you know it wasn’t always easy in the 1960s and 1970s. It took time to build the anti-Vietnam War movement. We were constantly under surveillance and harassment from the state.

Over the last few decades, we have witnessed the growth of dynamic movements such as Stop the War. Today, the struggle around Palestine has brought large numbers into action. The horrors of Gaza, the complicity of the Western governments in the slaughter, and the scale of the resistance movement on the streets will shape a generation. But we need to think about organisational outcomes, establishing networks and rebuilding a progressive political alternative. For the left, the Labour Party is finished. We should encourage the small number of Labour MPS (especially those who had the whip removed) to work with the Independent MPS to offer an alternative vision and voice for the future. We need some home, not necessarily a formal political party, for the 200,000 who left Labour when Corbyn was marginalised and kicked out; a home to those from the Palestine and anti-imperialist movements; a home for the old and new left. I think we face a long rebuilding period; there is no quick fix. But if we sit back and do nothing, things will only get worse.”[1]

Ali, like other pseudo-lefts, has argued that the new Your Party should be like other left-wing populist movements across Europe, such as Podemos, Jean-Luc Mélenchon’s La France Insoumise and Syriza (Greece). However, all these organisations have, in one form or another, betrayed the working class. Syriza (Greece), a coalition of the Radical Left, came to power and subsequently implemented austerity measures. Podemos (Spain) was a political trap for the working class, built by professional pseudo-left activists and academics. La France Insoumise (France): a movement led by Jean-Luc Mélenchon explicitly rejects a class analysis of society, instead relying on populist theories that pit "the working class against the French ruling elite. It obscures fundamental class antagonisms, thereby serving capitalist interests. Despite anti-establishment rhetoric, the LFI ultimately defends the French capitalist state, including its police forces and military. Mélenchon has called for increased military spending and supported French imperialist wars. Die Linke (The Left Party) (Germany) is essentially a capitalist party that functions as a loyal opposition and ultimately supports the German state's foreign policy.

One person missing from the book is Jeremy Corbyn. But his politics dominate Your Party. Corbyn and his acolytes are not leading a genuine socialist struggle but are preparing a political trap for the working class. Corbyn’s goal all along has been to subordinate the struggles of the working class to the Labour Party and the existing political establishment. He has always been pro-capitalist and nationalist. His closeness to the Stalinist British Communist Party and his agreement with its anti-working-class British Road to Socialism in his early political career have kept him in good standing.

His new party will act as a safety valve for working-class anger and work to prevent a genuine break from the pro-capitalist Labour Party. It is seen as a "Labour Party Mark II" that advocates only limited reforms to be pursued through parliament. The recent feud between Corbyn and his number two, Zarah Sultana, is evidence of its unprincipled, opportunistic nature.

Corbyn's platform, which includes campaigning on issues like "peace" and "social justice" but avoids explicit class analysis, is dismissed by the WSWS as "studied vagueness" designed to obscure fundamental class divisions. The WSWS also criticises Corbyn's reliance on and work with the trade union bureaucracy, which it characterises as having spent the last 40 years "shifting power and wealth away from the working class to the corporations and the state".

Your Party is not the party the working class needs. Workers and young people should reject Corbyn's new party. They should look for a genuine socialist alternative on the World Socialist Website.

 

Notes

Corbyn’s New Left Party: What It Is And What It Isn’t £3.00-mehringbooks.co.uk/product/corbyns-new-left-party-what-it-is-and-what-it-isnt/

 

 

 

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[1] www.counterfire.org/article/tariq-ali-memories-of-the-struggle-reloaded/

11-22 Lecture: David North — America’s Volcano-Political Crisis, Oligarchic Rule, and Socialist Strategy

Date/Time: 2025-11-22 14:13:15

London

(This is an AI-generated summary of the above lecture using Plaud Note)

This lecture by David North interrogates the trajectory of the United States amid an accelerating political and constitutional crisis, situating it within a global breakdown of capitalist democracy and the rise of oligarchic rule. Framing the decisive question “Where is America going?” in both objective (material forces, economic relations) and subjective (mass consciousness and response) terms, North adopts Trotsky’s historical method of posing strategic questions during periods of acute class conflict. He characterises the U.S. situation as “going to hell in a handbasket,” highlighting the rapid tempo of destabilisation, including Donald Trump’s denunciations of Democratic legislators as “treasonous” and calls for capital punishment after they urged the military to refuse illegal orders violating constitutional oaths. He notes the intersection of political leadership with U.S. intelligence agencies, underscoring the contested nature of civil-military relations and the legality of such relations.

Expanding beyond immediate developments, North argues that the apparent authoritarian reconfiguration of American governance after the 2024 election reflects a terminal crisis of global capitalism, driven by extreme inequality, financialization, fictitious capital, debt expansion, and erosion of the dollar’s credibility. He employs historical analogies (France before 1789, Chile 1973, U.S. slavery-era measures) to depict oligarchic aggression and spectacle—billionaire-dominated policymaking, symbolic restorations of reactionary iconography, and conspicuous consumption within state institutions—as symptoms of direct oligarchic rule. Internationally, he traces parallels with Britain under Keir Starmer and other governments, arguing that similar structural pressures produce convergent authoritarian trajectories.

The lecture critiques reliance on moral appeals absent a scientific socialist program centred on the working class, contending that war, militarisation, and genocide are ruling-class countermeasures to capitalist contradictions. North analyses the Marxist foundations of value and surplus value, rising constant-to-variable capital ratios, and the falling rate of profit; he contends that AI-driven automation intensifies these contradictions by displacing living labour—the source of surplus value—while delivering uneven, limited productivity gains. He rejects reliance on rival capitalist states (China and Russia), emphasising internationalist working-class unity (including between Russian and Ukrainian workers) against imperialism and national chauvinism.

North advances a strategic orientation built on transitional demands—expropriation of capitalists, factory committees, nationalisation under democratic control—and the necessity of a vanguard party to develop socialist consciousness. He underscores the degeneration of bourgeois leadership and the crisis of revolutionary leadership, asserting that U.S. mass sentiment trends left despite betrayals by the pseudo-left. In practice, he calls for organising rank-and-file committees, restoring Marxism’s authority through education on 20th-century revolutions and betrayals, and deploying new tools such as “Socialism AI”—an application trained on the WSWS archive and Marxist literature—to scale outreach, provide programmatic clarity, and assist in organising working-class struggles. The event concludes with a call to join the Socialist Equality Party and to build an internationally coordinated movement capable of resolving capitalism’s contradictions through conscious action.

Diary of a Nobody and News From Nowhere

At the time of writing this diary, the Blog/Website hit statistics have quietened down somewhat from the dizzying heights of the past two months. While I have increased the number of articles, I still urge anyone interested in writing for my website to get in touch.

The following articles are being worked on

1.   A Review of the Verso publication Your Party

2.   A polemic on the recent Communication Workers Union’s(CWU) publications. A CWU Local Reps Briefing and the year 2024 accounts of the CWU.

3.   History Today British Empire Special edition.

I have just downloaded and printed all the articles from the US SEP Summer School of 2025. The output from this school is extraordinary and unprecedented in the history of the Trotskyist movement. The Marxist writer David North is in London on November 22.November 22w. It is well worth your time to pay a visit.

Books Purchased Recently 

1.   Your Party, Oliver Eagleton Editor Verso Publications

2.   The New Age of Empire Kehinde Andrews-Penguin

3.   Inglorious Empire Shashi Tharoor-Penguin

4.   There is no Place for US Brian Goldstone

5.   I deliver Parcels in Beijing, Hu Anyan.

6.   The Crisis and the Crash-Richard B Day

7.   The Permanent Revolution, Leon Trotsky-Well Read books

8.   Unpacking My Library Walter Benjamin

 

Events

The American Volcano: Towards Fascism or Socialism-Saturday, November 22, November 22 Birkbeck University, Malet St, 2 pm

 

The Passing of Alan Gelfand: 1949-2025

It is with profound sadness that I hear about the death of Alan Gelfand, who truly was a fighter for socialism. I never met Alan, and I regretfully cannot call him my friend, but his struggle had a profound bearing on my own political development.

The conclusion of his struggle against the Socialist Workers Party (US) in 1983 coincided with the year I became involved in the Trotskyist movement. After a year as a supporter, I finally joined the WRP before the split, which was, in itself, a seminal moment for me. Although, as a teenager, I spent well over a thousand pounds on Marxist literature from the then Militant Tendency, they had nothing on the history of American Trotskyism. After the split, the then minority held classes on American Trotskyism.

I read James Cannon’s "The Struggle for a Proletarian Party" and many other works. I still have the books in my Library. Again, it was during the Split that I became familiar with the history of recent American Trotskyism, as embodied in the struggles of the Workers League. One thing that always struck me was the high level of camaraderie among the American comrades. They were on a different political and intellectual level and somewhat inspiring. Meeting Jean and Bill Brust was a thrill of a lifetime.

The first time I heard about the Security and the Fourth International (I had purchased a copy of How the GPU Murdered Trotsky but never read it, a bad habit that continues to this day) was when I read David North’s articles on the Death of Tom Henehan. Leon Trotsky and the development of Marxism, 1982, was published in the Young Socialists paper of the Workers Revolutionary Party. These articles were reprinted in the pages of the Young Socialist in 1984. I always read the YS paper as it contained far more interesting articles than the Newsline, which seemed more of a comic to me at the time. I learnt nothing about Trotskyism from it.

It was during the split that I learnt not only about the Security and the Fourth International investigation, but it was my first introduction to Gelfand's struggle. During the division, a large number of internal documents were circulated by the minority. A large number of these documents pertained to security and the Fourth International. But it was only with the release in 1985  of the two books The Gelfand Case: A Legal History of the Exposure of U.S. Government Agents in the Leadership of the Socialist Workers Party - Volumes One and Two (1 and 2/ I and II), Paperback that I really began to fully understand the havoc caused by the murderous agents of the GPU.

Gelfand will always have a special place in my political heart. It is inspiring that he faced death with the same approach he had to life, as the great poet Dylan Thomas wrote.

Do not go gentle into that good night,

Old age should burn and rave at the close of day;

Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Finally, as David North wrote, “In his final words to a comrade and close friend, Alan said: 'It’s hard to say goodbye. But I have joy in my heart and a smile on my face, and confidence in the movement and in my comrades.” Alan Gelfand will never be forgotten. His place in this history of the Fourth International and the hearts of his comrades is secure.”[1]

 

Notes

Alan Gelfand: A fighter for socialism and historical truth-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/11/08/eprm-n08.html

Harold Robbins Archive-https://findingaids.library.nyu.edu/tamwag/wag_175/

Register of the Socialist Workers Party records-https://oac.cdlib.org/static_findaids/ark:/13030/tf1k40019v.html

 

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[1] Alan Gelfand: A fighter for socialism and historical truth-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2025/11/08/eprm-n08.html

Making Space (The Time Traveler’s Passport) by R. F. Kuang, Amazon Kindle Edition 2025

Making Space is a beautifully crafted 32-page eBook. It is essentially about a childless couple who take in a mysterious boy in a dark and foreboding short story about the responsibility of parenthood, self-sacrifice, and how we perceive the future. It is also what happens to a person’s soul when they sell it to the devil. Although different from Oscar Wilde’s Picture of Dorian Gray, there are striking similarities.[1]

R. F. Kuang’s Making Space is part of The Time Traveller’s Passport. It is a collection of stories about memory, identity, and the choices we make in life. New York Times bestselling author John Joseph Adams edited the book. It is a little surprising that Amazon would snare an author of Kuang’s stature. The book is currently only available on Amazon, and a printed version has not been released yet. Review copies appear to be sanctioned by Amazon through NetGalley.[2]

Although the short book genre is new to Kuang, she handles it superbly, serving as a testament to her intellect and experience. The dark and not-unsurprising ending is typical of Kuang. Her main narrative is beautifully crafted, delving into the complexities of human relationships and social responsibilities. However, it is a little disturbing that Kuang makes far too many concessions to the right-wing #MeToo campaign.

I am not saying that Kuang is an ardent supporter of the #MeToo movement. However, her work on Making Space makes it difficult to turn such narrow, selfish concerns of Jess into great, compelling drama.

As the great  G. V. Plekhanov wrote, “I know that an artist cannot be held responsible for the statements of their heroes. But very often he, in one way or another, indicates his own attitude to these statements, and we are thus able to judge what his own views are.”

And writing an observation that would not look out of place in today's world, He writes in the same essay, “in present-day social conditions, the fruits of art for art’s sake are far from delectable. The extreme individualism of the era of bourgeois decay cuts artists off from all sources of genuine inspiration. It renders them completely blind to what is happening in social life, condemning them to sterile preoccupation with personal emotional experiences that are entirely without significance and marked by the fantasies of a morbid imagination. The end product of their preoccupation is something that not only has no relation to beauty of any kind, but which moreover represents an obvious absurdity that can only be defended with the help of a sophistically distorted idealist theory of knowledge.”[3]

While there is nothing wrong with using the internet to publish books or short stories, it does contain certain dangers. Kuang has been accused of using AI to write her books on TikTok. But as one reader succinctly puts it, “Sadly, AI is so common now that talent is suspicious! Would you accuse Sanderson or Stephen King of AI? Or is 'too articulate' a critique only reserved for female authors?”.

In defence of Kuang Varika Rastogi writes, “Kuang—in no small part because of the role TikTok has played in her rise to success—is also deeply aware of the Internet being the 'realm that the social economy of publishing exists on, and she deploys this (Yellowface) novel as a means to assess how it can both heal and harm projects. A significant portion of Yellowface is represented through Twitter discourse and Goodreads reviews. By placing us in the shoes of the targets of its vitriol and negativity, the author attempts to make us privy both to the mental impact such harassment can have on a person, as well as to the fact that "allegations get flung left and right, everyone's reputations are torn down, and when the dust clears, everything remains exactly as it was." However, if nothing changes, it is also because someone is making a profit”[4]

Making Space is still a superbly written book. Kuang is to be commended for her recent efforts in the field of battle against the racialisation of literature, and her defence of the fundamental right of an author to write about whatever they want without fear of their books being burned or pulped. However, Making Spaces is a dangerous concession to the #MeToo movement. Her new book, Katabasis, which is already a best seller, will be reviewed at a later date.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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[1] en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Picture_of_Dorian_Gray

[2] https://www.netgalley.com/

[3] Art and Social Life by G. V. Plekhanov 1912-https://www.marxists.org/archive/plekhanov/1912/art/ch03.htm

[4] https://keith-perspective.blogspot.com/p/rebecca-f-kuang.html

The Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr by Martin Luther King Jr Abacus Paperback – 6 April 2000

 “I sometimes wonder what I would have done if I hadn’t received the phone call, whether I would have written something that was more mine,” Carson reflected. “The best-selling book that I’ll ever publish is the Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. I can hardly take credit for piecing together his words. I’ll always know that Martin Luther King will always outsell anything I write, and his writings and speeches will be more lasting. But look, if you have to be overshadowed by somebody, it might as well be Martin Luther King.”

Clayborne Carson

“Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand today, signed the Emancipation Proclamation. This momentous decree came as a great beacon light of hope to millions of enslaved Negroes who had been seared in the flames of withering injustice. It came as a joyous daybreak to end the long night of their captivity.”[1]

Martin Luther King

“Here comes that dreamer!” they said to each other. “Come now, let’s kill him and throw him into one of these cisterns and say that a ferocious animal devoured him. Then we’ll see what comes of his dreams.”

Genesis 37:19-21

The theory of race, specially created, it seems, for some pretentious self-educated individual seeking a universal key to all the secrets of life, appears particularly melancholy in the light of the history of ideas. To create the religion of pure German blood, Hitler was obliged to borrow at second hand the ideas of racism from a Frenchman, Count Gobineau [4], a diplomat and a literary dilettante. Hitler found the political methodology ready-made in Italy, where Mussolini had mainly borrowed from the Marxist theory of the class struggle. Marxism itself is the fruit of the union among German philosophy, French history, and British economics. To investigate retrospectively the genealogy of ideas, even those most reactionary and muddleheaded, is to leave not a trace of racism standing.

Leon Trotsky

Clayborne Carson, PhD, was commissioned by Martin Luther King’s widow, Coretta Scott King, to be the editor of the massive collection of papers that King had left behind. The majority of these papers were held in the King Centre for Nonviolent Social Change in Atlanta. When Coretta Scott King initially selected him for the project in 1985, Carson estimated it would take around 20 years to complete, a deadline that has long passed. It will take several historians to complete the task. The King family will direct the long-term project of editing and publishing Dr Martin Luther King Jr.'s papers.

Even a historian of his statue must have baulked at the prospect of this challenging task being handed to him by the King family. The offer to edit the King archive came out of the blue. Carson had not written a single word on King, but jumped at the chance. However, from the start, the role caused difficulties for Carson as he was based at Stanford and wanted to stay there. Coretta King wanted him to relocate to Atlanta, where most of the papers were located. However, a happy compromise was made.

The work has taken him well into the 21st century (Vol. 6 of the Papers was published in 2007. Clayborne Carson has not finished editing the complete set of Martin Luther King Jr.'s papers. While he has edited and published seven of the planned fourteen volumes, he has stated that the whole project will likely not be completed in his lifetime.[2]

“I sometimes wonder what I would have done if I hadn’t received the phone call, whether I would have written something that was more mine,” Carson reflected. “The best-selling book that I’ll ever publish is the Autobiography of Martin Luther King, Jr. I can hardly take credit for piecing together his words. I’ll always know that Martin Luther King will always outsell anything I write, and his writings and speeches will be more lasting. But look, if you have to be overshadowed by somebody, it might as well be Martin Luther King.”[3]

The work done by Carson on this book is to be commended because it now enables us to lift the large number of dead dogs that have been placed upon the historical reputation of Martin Luther King Jr. As Helen Halyard wrote, “King was unquestionably one of the most powerful orators of twentieth-century America and a man of great personal courage. He was able to give voice to the passionate strivings of millions of people to throw off the shackles of racial discrimination. Unlike those in today’s official civil rights leadership who seek to cash in on his memory, King was an honest man, not driven by financial gain.”[4]

From an early age, King knew he was living on borrowed time and that sooner or later his life would be taken. Perhaps that’s why he crammed so much into his short thirteen-year political career, which has filled his archive with so much documentation. King, during his short life, was reviled, spied upon, and in the end was assassinated. Over the last five decades, King's courageous struggle for social equality has been politically undermined, and King himself has been turned into a harmless icon.

King was an essential part of what was a mass movement which fought against racial discrimination and in defence of democratic rights for both blacks and whites. However, as Helen Halyard correctly wrote, “ the leadership was characterised by a petty bourgeois class makeup and a thoroughly reformist political outlook and program. King’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference was based on the perspective that racial equality and social and economic justice for Black people could be achieved without challenging the existence of capitalist property relations or the existing government institutions. From the Montgomery bus boycott through to the marches into Cicero, Illinois, King and the SCLC's strategy was to mobilise nonviolent demonstrations and acts of civil disobedience to pressure the government into enacting reforms.”[5]

There is no denying King's leadership played an immense role in the struggle for civil rights, and some limited reforms were achieved, notably the enactments of 1964 and 1965, which established the legal groundwork for a new era of civil and racial equality in America. However, a lot has happened since the 1960s, and a balance sheet is in order since King’s assassination in 1963.

The limitations of the victories achieved by the movement he led are more apparent today than ever. An objective assessment is warranted to critically examine the political program that guided his movement. King rejected both Marx and Marxism from an early age, writing, “With all of its false assumptions and evil methods, communism grew as a protest against the hardships of the underprivileged. Communism in theory emphasised a classless society, and a concern for social justice, though the world knows from sad experience that in practice it created new classes and a new lexicon of injustice.” 

King was not a revolutionary, but he did have socialist sympathies. He understood that for the civil rights movement to win, it had to have the collaboration of the American working class.

He recognised that under capitalism, workers were being oppressed regardless of the colour of their skin. Writing in 1958, King drew on his own working experiences, when he witnessed  “economic injustice firsthand, and I realised that the poor white was exploited just as much as the Negro. Through these early experiences, I grew up deeply conscious of the varieties of injustice in our society.”

King’s turn to the working class, which probably got him killed, would be an anathema to the current leadership of the struggle against racial and social inequality. The leadership that is responsible for the New York Times' 1619 Project have made it clear that they want no part of Martin Luther King and his “left turn”[6]

As Tom Mackaman and Niles Niemuth point out, “the universal Enlightenment principles King fought for and defended are under vicious assault. It is striking that in the 1619 Project, the Times’ initiative to write the 'true' history of America as rooted in slavery and racism, King’s contribution to the fight for equality is totally ignored. This doesn’t represent a different interpretation of facts or a mere oversight, but an outright historical falsification.[7]

To his credit

 Eminent historian Professor Clayborne Carson, director of the Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute, opposed and criticised the 1619 Project. In an interview for the World Socialist website, he noted that the ideals of the American Revolution and the Enlightenment played a key role in the civil rights movement and King’s own role as a political leader. “One way of looking at the founding of this country is to understand the audacity of a few hundred white male elites getting together and declaring a country—and declaring it a country based on the notion of human rights,” Carson explained. “Obviously, they were being hypocritical, but it’s also audacious. And that’s what rights are all about,” he noted. “It is the history of people saying, ‘I declare that I have the right to determine my destiny, and we collectively have the right to determine our destiny.’ That’s the history of every movement, every freedom movement in the history of the world. At some point, you have to get to that point where you have to say that, publicly, and fight for it.”[8]

2025 marks the fifty-fifth anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.It is perhaps remarkable still that the questions raised by the struggle of King and the civil rights movement have lost none of their urgency in the past five decades. There must be a serious discussion of this period to understand our present predicament.

As Patrick Martin says “The world we have today is not the outcome that King would have desired, nor does it represent the strivings of the millions of working people and youth—white as well as black—who joined in or were inspired by the civil rights struggles of the 1960s. Those aspirations will only be carried forward through the emergence, at a far more politically conscious level, of a new mass movement of working people to challenge the capitalist system as a whole.”[9]

 

Notes

1.    The King Centre-thekingcenter.org/what-we-do/king-library-and-archives/

2.    www.archives.gov/research/mlk

3.    King-Jonathan Eig

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[1] www.npr.org/2010/01/18/122701268/i-have-a-dream-speech-in-its-entirety

 [2] www.archives.gov/research/mlk

 [3] Clayborne Carson: Looking back at a legacy-news.stanford.edu/stories/2020/08/clayborne-carson-looking-back-legacy

[4] Thirty years since the assassination of Martin Luther King-www.wsws.org/en/articles/1998/04/mlkz-a04.html

 [5]Thirty years since the assassination of Martin Luther King

[6] See www.wsws.org/en/special/library/nyt-1619-project-racialist-falsification-history/00.html

[7] Martin Luther King Jr. and the fight for social equality

Tom Mackaman, Niles Niemuth 23 January 2020.wsws.org

[8] An interview with historian Clayborne Carson on the New York Times’ 1619 Project-https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/01/15/clay-j15.html

[9] www.wsws.org/en/articles/2008/04/king-a07.html