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By Rob Sewell
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Friday, 15 February 2008 |
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Tomorrow marks the 70th anniversary of the murder
of Trotsky's eldest son - Leon Sedov - by agents of the Stalinist secret police,
the GPU. He was thirty-two years of age. This crime constituted part of the
systematic hounding and murder of Trotsky's key supporters and family, whose
only ‘crime' was to defend genuine Marxism against Stalin and the crimes of the
Russian bureaucracy.
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By Jon Avis
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Monday, 26 March 2007 |
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The slave trade inflicted tremendous suffering on millions of people. For the rising bourgeoisie, the slave trade played a pivotal role in the expansion of the global market and the creation of modern world capitalism. In the words of Marx, capitalism was born "dripping with blood from every pore."
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By Ted Grant, May 1940
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Friday, 23 February 2007 |
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“An endless period of destruction and slaughter opens out
before the peoples of the world. It can be ended, not by the victory of either
imperialism, which would merely lay the basis for new wars and is not in the
interests of the workers of any country, but by the victory of the workers over
imperialism.” Ted Grant in the early period of the Second World War.
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By Pablo Roldan
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Friday, 16 February 2007 |
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This week marks the 70th anniversary of the
Battle of Jarama during the Spanish Civil War. Ten years ago, celebrating the
60th anniversary, some of the British volunteers who fought in that
battle went to Madrid
University. Here a
comrade who was present at meetings where they spoke expresses his gratitude to
those working class heroes.
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By Leon Trotsky
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Tuesday, 18 July 2006 |
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“The tragic experience of Spain is a terrible - perhaps
final - warning before still greater events, a warning addressed to all the
advanced workers of the world. ‘Revolutions,’ Marx said, ‘are the locomotives
of history.’ They move faster than the thought of semi-revolutionary or
quarter-revolutionary parties. Whoever lags behind falls under the wheels of
the locomotive, and consequently - and this is the chief danger - the
locomotive itself is also not infrequently wrecked.”
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By Ted Grant
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Tuesday, 18 July 2006 |
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Today marks the 70th anniversary of Franco’s coup
in Spain, the day the Spanish Civil War began. In 1973, as the situation in
Spain moved towards revolution and final overthrow of the hated Franco regime,
Ted Grant wrote this document drawing all the lessons from those tumultuous
events.
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By Rob Sewell
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Tuesday, 18 July 2006 |
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This introduction originally written in 1995 points out that
the new generation of young workers and youth should learn the lessons of
history. The tragedy of the Spanish revolution is a painful lesson of cynical
betrayal. We must learn from the defeats as well as the victories of working
people to prepare ourselves for the future.
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By Leon Trotsky
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Monday, 06 March 2006 |
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In the 1930s Mexican president Cardenas came into conflict with imperialism because of several measures he introduced, including land reform and the nationalisation of the oil industry. In this conflict Trotsky emphasised that it was the duty of workers, especially in countries like Britain, to side with the Mexican people against the imperialists.
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By Rob Lyon
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Monday, 20 February 2006 |
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In Part Four we look at the developing struggle for workers’ control in Venezuela. This struggle indicates that the Venezuelan working class is beginning to actively intervene in the Bolivarian revolution and has led some of the more advanced layers of the movement to the conclusion that the socialist transformation of society is the only way forward for the Latin American revolution.
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By Rob Lyon
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Friday, 03 February 2006 |
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In Part Three we look at so-called workers’ self-management in Yugoslavia, at the time hailed as a genuine alternative to the Soviet model. But what was the real nature of workers’ self-management in Yugoslavia and what are the lessons we can learn for the developing struggle for workers’ control in Venezuela?
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By Rob Lyon
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Monday, 23 January 2006 |
In Part Two Rob Lyon looks at the experience of workers' control and management in the Russian revolution. The experiences of the Russian proletariat offer invaluable lessons to the workers in Venezuela.
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By Alon Lessel
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Monday, 16 January 2006 |
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An Israeli Marxist sends this message of revolutionary solidarity to German socialists on the anniversary of the murder of these two outstanding leaders of the German revolution. |
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By Rob Lyon
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Friday, 13 January 2006 |
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We publish this article based on a speech given by Rob Lyon at the international Marxist school in Barcelona last summer. Part One looks at the revolutionary principles of workers' control and management as opposed to the reformist idea of workers' participation, best realized in Germany in the 1970s.
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By Alan Woods
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Friday, 21 October 2005 |
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Today is the 200th anniversary of the battle that is associated with the name of one man, Horatio Nelson. He was considered a national hero, both in his own lifetime and in the Victorian period following his death. But should the working class celebrate the life of this man? We will examine his exploits and show them in a light that is not exactly what the present patriotic hullabaloo is designed to do. |
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By Ray Smith
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Tuesday, 22 February 2005 |
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Forty years ago, yesterday, Malcolm X stood up at the Audubon Ballroom
in Harlem (New York) to speak. He was going to speak against the racial
segregation all over the US. He was going to appeal to his brothers and
sisters to resist and fight back against the “oppression of the white
man” when he was gunned down. More than one or two breathed a sigh of
relief at the top of the US establishment. One of the loudest voices
against injustice had been lost. |
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By Ted Grant
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Wednesday, 09 February 2005 |
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We are making available an article by Ted Grant on the Argentine
Revolution first published in July 1973. As he predicted back then,
“The capitalists having clutched the straw of Peronism, will turn to
the stick of the generals once again.” This unfortunately is what
happened a few years later with another military coup. Today’s
activists must study the mistakes of the movement in the past in order
not to repeat them today. |
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By Greg Oxley
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Wednesday, 15 December 2004 |
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After twelve years of upheavals, war, carnage and betrayals, the
revolution that broke out in 1791 in Saint-Domingue finally abolished
slavery and brought independence to Haiti. Its successive stages,
marked by numerous shocks and setbacks, were largely determined by the
ebbs and flow of the revolution in France. |
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By Ramon Samblas
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Tuesday, 05 October 2004 |
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70 years ago the mining and industrial region of Asturias in Spain
witnessed one of the most fascinating revolutions in the history of the
20th century. During the course of 15 days men and women fought to
establish a new society free of exploitation and ruled by the
principles of workers’ democracy. This was the beginning of the
Asturian Commune. |
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By Esteban (Vsievolod) Volkov
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Friday, 20 August 2004 |
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Today is the 64th anniversary of the brutal assassination of Leon Trotsky by a
Stalinist agent. We commemorate this event by publishing an article by his
grandson, Esteban Volkov, which was a preface to the recent reissuing of Trotsky’s
My Life. It is a fitting tribute to this great revolutionary who remains an
inspiration to all those fighting for the emancipation of the proletariat. |
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By Celia Hart
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Monday, 16 August 2004 |
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Celia Hart comes from a family of veteran Cuban revolutionaries who fought
against the Batista dictatorship together with Fidel Castro. Celia Hart has been
an outspoken defender of the political and revolutionary heritage of Leon
Trotsky. Her recent articles on this subject have been published by the Spanish
Marxist website El Militante and also
on Marxist.com and have provoked an intense debate on the question of Trotsky
internationally. Here she describes her political evolution. |
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By Alan Woods
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Wednesday, 21 July 2004 |
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Last month marked the 60th anniversary of the Normandy D-day landing. The
leaders of the major powers were all present at the official celebrations, a
far more pompous celebration than the 50th anniversary. This has more to do
with present day politics than the events of 60 years ago. Although it was a
brutal and bitter battle, with many soldiers heroically giving their lives,
today's propaganda blows out of all proportion the significance of D-day in
terms of the overall development of the war. A far bigger and bloodier war
was being fought on the eastern front. It was in fact the speedy advance of
the Red Army westards that finally pushed the allies into opening the front
in France in an attempt to stop the Russians from taking the whole of
Germany. |
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By Alan Woods
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Wednesday, 21 July 2004 |
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In this second part of his article on the 60th anniversary of the D-day
landings we look at the manoeuvres between British and US imperialism,
their conflicting interests and their common struggle against Soviet
Russia. So long as they needed Russia's help to defeat Germany and Japan
- and to hold back the workers in Western Europe - they remained
"allies". Once the war was over the real contradictions
emerged and the period of the "Cold War" began. |
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By Leon Trotsky
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Friday, 02 July 2004 |
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A letter written to the Italian Trotskyists in 1930 in which Trotsky deals
with the question of the Constituent Assembly and the perspectives for Italy at
that time. He severely criticises those who attempted to mix the slogan of the
Constituent Assembly with that of workers' soviets, and also showed incredible
insight into how the process would unfold once the Mussolini regime collapsed. |
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By Fred Weston
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Wednesday, 09 June 2004 |
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This article should be read in conjunction with Trotsky's Problems
of the Italian Revolution. It draws the lessons from Trotsky's work and
how they can be applied today. |
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By Pierre Brou
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Monday, 07 June 2004 |
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An interesting critique of some of the European Trotskyists during the
second world war who had failed to grasp the essence of Trotsky's military
policy. |
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By Ted Grant
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Monday, 07 June 2004 |
An edited version of a reply of the leadership of the Workers' International
League during the war to the sectarian position of the then RSL that refused to
apply Trotsky's military policy. Read the reply at www.tedgrant.org
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By Leon Trotsky
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Saturday, 15 May 2004 |
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One of the last interviews on the war situation given by Trotsky in
January and March 1940 and published in three sections in the St. Louis
Post-Dispatch issues of March 10, 17 and 24, 1940. Read the interviews at www.marxists.org.
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By Phil Mitchinson
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Tuesday, 08 October 2002 |
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"Capitalism is dead in Portugal" wrote the Times in 1975. And yet today it
lives. How was it able to survive? What lessons can we learn from the Portuguese
Revolution of 1974?
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By Ted Grant
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Monday, 15 July 2002 |
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This is in Part Two of Ted Grant's History of British Trotskyism which
outlines how the British Trotskyists applied and developed Trotsky's military
policy. |
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By Phil Mitchinson
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Thursday, 16 May 2002 |
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Today the word "fascist" has become a general term of abuse hurled
at every reactionary bigot. The papers are full of stories about the "rise
of fascism" thanks largely to the electoral support of Le Pen in France.
Not every reactionary nor every dictatorship is fascist, however. It is
necessary to understand the nature of a regime or a movement otherwise the tasks
of the workers in relation to it can be confused.
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By Alastair Wilson
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Wednesday, 16 May 2001 |
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In 1968 the world turned upside down. The long years of the
post war economic upswing had led many to declare that class struggle was obsolete,
revolution outdated, the working class bourgeoisified, capitalism invincible. Within a few
short months, though, they were all proved wrong.
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By Alan Woods
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Wednesday, 08 November 2000 |
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The movement of the Portuguese workers has been an inspiration to working
people everywhere. After fifty years of brutal oppression under a fascist state,
the Portuguese workers have demonstrated their unconquerable will to change
society.
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By Ted Grant
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Friday, 17 December 1999 |
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After nearly half a century of Fascist dictatorship the revolution in Portugal ushered
in a new stage of the European and World Revolution. Beginning as a military
pronunciamento or coup it has shown what inexhaustible reserves of strength and endurance
rest within the ranks of the working class, because of its role in society.
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Marxist Theory 
