We are excited to announce the publication of a new book on Chartism – a titanic struggle by British workers in the 1800s that involved arming, general strikes and insurrection, a fact buried by official “histories” – by Rob Sewell, editor of Socialist Appeal, British publication of the International Marxist Tendency. In this review, Socialist Appeal writer and activist Josh Holroyd explains the importance of this new book, which reclaims the revolutionary history of the British labour movement. Until the end of October, Chartist Revolution is available for pre-order

50 years ago, Swedish miners at the state-owned company LKAB went on a mighty wildcat strike. This cut right through the propaganda about Sweden as a country of polite class collaboration. The miners inspired workers up and down the country to take up the struggle for better working conditions, in a wave of spontaneous strikes that spread like wildfire. This is the story of the great miners’ strike.

Note: We are republishing this article, written by Ji Han (吉汉) and published 28 May 2019 by Initium Media (Hong Kong) because we believe it provides some interesting insights into what happened in China in 1989. Of particular interest is what it describes taking place within the Chinese working class at the time. However, we do not agree with the pessimism about today’s situation expressed towards the end. 

With mass unemployment on the cards, many are comparing the current crisis to the Great Depression of the 1930s. In both cases, however, these crises were not 'accidental', but a product of capitalism's insoluble contradictions.

Watch this livestream by our US comrades at Socialist Revolution about about Villa, Zapata, and the Mexican Revolution of 1910–1920! 100 years since the end of the revolution, what are its legacy and lessons for today? Presentation by John Peterson, editor of Socialist Revolution.

Today is Marx’s birthday. To celebrate, our British comrades at Socialist Appeal are premiering a new documentary on Marx’s life in London. Join us to watch this online at 6pm!

With the ongoing coronavirus crisis sparking a global economic crisis, there has never been a better time to study Marxist theory. Given this, Wellred Books, the publishing house and bookshop of the International Marxist Tendency, are running discounts on all books and eBooks.

In Defence of Marxism is proud to announce the launch of Marxist University: the ultimate source of Marxist theory and analysis on a range of topics – from dialectical materialism to the national question, from women’s oppression to the role of the state. There is no better way to

Today is the 200th anniversary of what has gone down in history as the Peterloo Massacre. This is one date that the ruling class has little desire to remember. Even now, two centuries on, a reminder of the bloodshed and violence associated with the history of British capitalism will be uncomfortable for the establishment.

Alan Woods introduces his new book, Spain's Revolution Against Franco: The Great Betrayal(coming soon from Wellred Books). This is an account of the so-called Spanish transition to democracy, which was actually a revolution – one that is unfortunately little known or understood. Click here to pre-order your copy now!

As the capitalist system lurches from one crisis to the next, old contradictions are re-emerging. Instability, polarisation and huge political shifts are taking place all over the world. As part of this process, unsolved national questions are erupting once more with renewed force around the globe - from Catalonia to Kurdistan to Ireland.

And it is not just on the national question that these giant shifts are taking place. The emergence of new political movements and formations, from Sanders to Corbyn to Podemos, reflect the impasse of the system and the fact that the masses - deprived of a party with a clear, revolutionary programme - are searching for a way out.

Today is 50 years since the Stonewall riots of 28 June 1969, which marked the beginning of the modern LGBT rights movement. Following other revolutionary events of the 1960s, the riots – described as the “hairpin drop heard ‘round the world” by the New York Mattachine newsletter – marked a shift amongst LGBT people away from individualised, small-scale activism and towards mass protest and demonstrations.

On 28 June 1969, a riot just outside the Stonewall Inn bar, located on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village, New York City, marked a turning point in the fight for the emancipation of LGBTQ people. That night, the bar was raided by the police, which was all too common at the time with gay bars. But this time, gay people didn’t let the police walk over them. They stood up to the NYPD in an unprecedented weekend of rioting. This courageous act transformed the movement and led to thousands of LGBTQ people coming “out of the closet, into the streets!” It is important to revisit these events and draw the main lessons for today.

Thirty years ago, the world’s largest-ever student movement was brought to a violent close by the so-called People’s Liberation Army. For about six weeks, hundreds of thousands, and at one point over a million, students, workers, Communist Party members and Beijing residents had flooded into and occupied Tiananmen Square, the same place from which forty years earlier Mao had proclaimed the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

From May to August of 1934, Minneapolis was rocked by a strike that would forever change the course of U.S. labour history. This was the strike of Teamsters Local 574, a union led by Trotskyists. Many of the best techniques used by organised labour today find their origins in the Minneapolis Strike, in particular the flying picket. However, the strike's greatest conquest was in laying the foundations for industrial unionism in North America, leading to the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the following years. Above all, the Minneapolis Strike demonstrated the role played by the young forces of American Trotskyism in obtaining gains for workers.