Trotsky, a recent Netflix series produced by Russian state television, is a scandalous misrepresentation of both Trotsky’s life and the October Revolution. Alan Woods and Josh Holroyd respond to this insulting portrayal of Trotsky and the Bolsheviks’ legacy.
We publish here an article produced by Esquerda Marxista, the Brazilian section of the IMT, in reply to some of the outrageous slanders presented as historical drama in the Russian series, Trotsky, which was recently released on Netflix (read the original in Portuguese here).
Marxists recognise the enormous achievements of the 1949 Chinese Revolution. Unsurprisingly, many slogans by Mao Zedong found an echo across the world as an alternative to the bureaucratised USSR after the Sino-Soviet split. However, there are significant political differences between the ideas of genuine Marxism and those of Maoism, which should be clarified.
This document, after a thorough discussion at all levels of the International Marxist Tendency over the past year, was approved unanimously by the IMT World Congress held at the end of July 2018 with the original title Marxist Theory and The Struggle Against Alien Class Ideas. Its aim is to draw a line between Marxism and a set of idealistic and postmodernist alien class ideas, which have affected for some time a layer of activists in academic circles and are also being used in a reactionary manner within the international workers' movement.
On 3 August, Alberto Garzón, the leader of the Spanish United Left (Izqierda Unida, or I.U.) posted an article entitled "Is Marxism a scientific method?" Under the guise of presenting a 'scientific' critique, Garzón was preparing a break with Marxism. Like every revisionist in history, he disguises this break with the excuse of 'modifying' the ideas of Marx. In reality, he was jumping on the bandwagon of those 'left' leaders who are making a dash for the 'centre ground'.
To commemorate the anniversary of Rosa Luxemburg's murder in 1919, we republish the following introduction to a 2014 Mexican edition of her important work, Reform or Revolution. The legacy of this martyr for proletarian revolution endures through her ideas.
Today, we find ourselves in the midst of one of the deepest crises capitalism has ever faced. While the 99% are being asked to pay for the crisis, the 1% are amassing wealth at an ever accelerating pace. The saturating level of scandal and corruption in the establishment is alienating millions from traditional politics. All of this is causing a deep questioning of capitalist society. Many are looking for an alternative to the system that we have, and a growing number are looking towards revolutionary socialism for the answer.
The past two decades have witnessed a barrage of propaganda against Marxism and its revolutionary heritage. Since the collapse of Stalinism – not socialism, but a monstrously deformed caricature of Marxism - from one front to another the mainstream media, universities, professors and historians have gone on the offensive to discredit Marxism. We examine here the most common myths about Marxism and socialism.
To mark the 130th anniversary of the death of Karl Marx – who died in London on 14th March 1883 - we are republishing here a revised version of an article by the late Phil Mitchinson. Here Phil outlines the life and contribution made by Marx to the building of the socialist movement and the development of the ideas of scientific socialism.
“The news of the death of capitalism is at least premature, the economic and social system that has dominated the world for hundreds of years is not even sick, just look at China to be convinced and see the future. In the East, the masses of peasants are entering into the world of waged labour, leaving the rural world and becoming proletarians. A new phenomenon has been born, unprecedented in history, state capitalism, where the old enlightened bourgeoisie, creative, even if predatory – such as Marx described in the Communist Manifesto – has been substituted by public institutions. In short, we are not seeing the apocalypse and no revolution is around the corner. Capitalism is simply changing its skin”.
As the 1960s became the 1970s, Hobsbawm stopped defending the nationalised planned economy and became part of the Eurocommunist tendency whithin the Communist Party. He provided theoretical justifications not only for the dissolution of the Communist Party but also for the right-wing turn of the Labour Party in Britain, something which earned him the epithet “Kinnock's favourite Marxist”. [part 1]
News of the death of Eric Hobsbawm on 1st October was marked by an unprecedented outburst of flattery and adulation in the bourgeois media. [part 1]
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