Literature

Posted by: John Phoenix by Vikki Harper Speech delivered at CPGB-ML Southall seminar on 28 Feb. 2026 It’s Munich, November 1923 and Germany is in deep crisis. Defeat in the First World War, the humiliation of the Treaty of Versailles and an economy on the verge of collapse gripped by hyperinflation and mass unemployment – the German working class is being crushed. At this moment Adolf Hitler led a small but growing party calling itself the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. So named because then, as now, deceiving workers requires the language of socialism. Hitler believed the time had come to overthrow the Weimar Republic. Inspired by Mussolini’s March on Rome, he attempted to seize power by storming a beer hall where Bavarian leaders were meeting, declaring a ...

Posted by: John Phoenix Editors’ note: We are pleased to print this obituary by Carlos Martinez of Michael Parenti, an outstanding critic of capitalism and imperialism, who was instrumental in opening the eyes of huge numbers of people to the gross iniquities of the capitalist system – an awakening that is crucial if the masses are to be mobilised to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism. The only cautionary note that we would add is that Parenti was not as consistent as he should have been on the role of the Communist Party in suppressing counter-revolution, and he criticised Stalin for killing too many people (no evidence given) and for fomenting a cult of the personality (which Stalin actually opposed). Apart from that he is deserving of all the praise that Cde M...

Posted by: John Phoenix The news that newspaper proprietor Eddy Shah had died at the age of 81 did not make headline news, notwithstanding the obituaries sections. Indeed, the name Eddy Shah would today only have resonated with people of a certain age, given that his coming to prominence in his field occurred over forty years ago. But Eddy Shah, a local newspaper proprietor who owned a group of free papers in Warrington, Cheshire brought about a revolution in the production of newspapers which not only was ruthlessly exploited by Rupert Murdoch, culminating in the Wapping Dispute of 1986, but was subsequently adopted by every newspaper in the country, including the Morning Star. It was these changes in newspaper production that opened the door to the launch of new newsp...

Posted by: John Phoenix A Gaza Family Memoir Across Three Generations of Colonial Invasion, Occupation, and War in Palestine by Ramzy Baroud The social, political, and historical context of the Israeli war on Palestine told through the stories of the author’s family and village."Deeply researched and highly readable, Before the Flood is a must read, leading to action and protest."—Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, author of An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United StatesA profound exploration of Palestinian history and resilience through the personal stories of the author’s family—the al-Badrasawis. Beginning with intimate details of village life in Beit Daras prior to the Nakba, Ramzy Baroud vividly portrays the rich cultural heritage, deeply rooted tra...

Posted by: John Phoenix by Geoffrey Roberts – a resumé and review Over the next few issues of LALKAR we shall be publishing this review of Geoffrey Roberts’ book on Stalin’s library.  Although as a bourgeois academic Roberts is obliged to take an anti-communist approach and to repeat may of the usual slanders against Stalin, such as in the sentence; “this book explores the intellectual life and biography of one of history’s bloodiest dictators, Joseph Stalin”  (Introduction, p.2), nevertheless, as an honest historian, he has been able to shed a bright light on Stalin as a person, showcasing not only his genius as a political leader but also his untiring and meticulous devotion to the cause of proletarian revolution and the well-being of the toiling masses.. PART...

Posted by: John Phoenix We lost my dear friend, Lola Mozes, who survived Auschwitz, this morning. I wrote her story a decade ago. Concentration Camp Auschwitz, Women survivors in the barracks at Birkenau. February 1945. Photo taken from a Russian film about the liberation of the camp. The Soviet First Army of the Ukrainian Front entered Auschwitz on the afternoon of January 27, 1945, finding 7,650 surviving prisoners, 1,200 in Auschwitz I, 5,800 in Auschwitz II-Birkenau, and 650 in Auschwitz III-Buna-Monowitz. Poland. (Photo by Galerie Bilderwelt/Getty Images) BROOKLYN, N.Y — Lola Mozes’ childhood came to an end in the fall of 1939 at a small bridge in Poland. She was 9 — seated in a horse-drawn wagon, her back propped against her family’s silver Sabbath candelabra, which...

Avi LoebFollow Residuals in sky coordinates (Right Ascension [RA] and Declination [Dec]) of 3I/ATLAS relative to a gravity-based trajectory between May 15 and September 15, 2025. Averages and uncertainties are shown for 4,022 observations from 227 observatories worldwide, which were binned in time. The residuals are consistent with zero between May 15 and September 23, 2025. Given its mass loss, the lack of non-gravitational acceleration during this period implies that 3I/ATLAS is more massive than 33 billion tons and its diameter is larger than 5 kilometers. (Credit: Cloete, Loeb & Veres 2025) BREAKING NEWS: the interstellar object 3I/ATLAS is anomalously massive and large! In a new paper (accessible here) that I co-authored wit...