Vladimir Lenin

Solidarity 299 reprinted an interesting article from 1917 in which Lenin argued for public control over advertising in the press as a main means to win a “freedom of the press” accessible to the working class and not just to the rich. Another classic text of Marxism argues against public control over press advertising. Eduard Bernstein’s Ferdinand Lassalle as Social Reformer was written under the direct guidance of Frederick Engels, while Bernstein was still a revolutionary Marxist. It was a key text in making the German Social-Democratic Party in its great days “Marxist” rather than...

The world is paying dearly for the isolation of the Russian Revolution, paying in blood and sweat, and tears and in car- nage and destruction such as history records nowhere else. The Bolshevik Revolution of November, 1917, opened up a new eporh for mankind. It contained, the promise of a life of security and peace, of abundance and brotherhood, of equality among men in a world freed of classes and class rule. What no other social upheaval before it had even dared to hope for, the Russian Revolution proclaimed boldly and confidently. Not the great French revolution, not even the Paris Commune...

The world is paying dearly for the isolation of the Russian Revolution, paying in blood and sweat, and tears and in car- nage and destruction such as history records nowhere else. The Bolshevik Revolution of November, 1917, opened up a new eporh for mankind. It contained, the promise of a life of security and peace, of abundance and brotherhood, of equality among men in a world freed of classes and class rule. What no other social upheaval before it had even dared to hope for, the Russian Revolution proclaimed boldly and confidently. Not the great French revolution, not even the Paris Commune...

The Privy Council — an unelected body of medieval origin — will meet on Wednesday 30 October to see if it can modify the proposals for press regulation backed by the three big political parties and placate the big newspapers, most of whom backed a rival scheme already rejected by the Privy Council. The press lords want to retain the right to smear and lie without redress; but the proposed regulations include such things as making publications outside their framework (like Solidarity ) liable to worse penalties under Britain’s libel laws, which already do much to protect the rich from criticism...

In 1988 the SWP suddenly became very 'anti-imperialist'. It became a loud cheerleader for what it sees as progressive or revolutionary nationalisms. It still talks of socialism and class struggle, but now these are proposed as merely the best means to secure the greater nationalist end. It fiercely supports Iraq in the Gulf War. It insists fanatically that it is not even worth thinking about an appeal to the Israeli working class, that Israel must be destroyed, and that a 'two-state' solution in Palestine is worthless even as an interim measure. The war, which began in September 1980, is...

70 years ago, on 22 May 1943, Stalin announced the formal shutting-down of the Communist International, the association of revolutionary socialist parties across the world set up after the Russian Revolution. Although Moscow retained close control of the Communist Parties until the 1960s, the shutting-down was a symbolic disavowal of socialist revolution. This is how socialists commented at the time. He long ago destroyed it as an instrument of socialism! By Albert Gates (Al Glotzer) The announcement by the Executive Committee of the Communist International that it was proposing its...

Forty years have passed since the proclamation of the Paris Commune. In accordance with tradition, the French workers paid homage to the memory of the men and women of the revolution of March 18, 1871, by meetings and demonstrations. At the end of May they will again place wreaths on the graves of the Communards who were shot, the victims of the terrible “May Week”, and over their graves they will once more vow to fight untiringly until their ideas have triumphed and the cause they bequeathed has been fully achieved. Why does the proletariat, not only in France but through out the entire world...

The fourth part of a review article looking at the themes of John Riddell’s new book of documents from the early communist movement. The week Paul Hampton looks at how they debated women’s liberation and other issues of oppression. The early Communist International’s focus was on working class self-liberation and this was reflected in the time spent on discussions on party building, work to transform the labour movement and on the specifics of class struggle strategy. But the Bolsheviks had made their reputation as tribunes of the people, taking up any and every matter of injustice and...

The Central Committee (CC) of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) has changed its line. For the first while after the SWP's unhappy conference on 4-6 January, the CC said that the conference had decided the controversial issues. The case was closed, SWP members were instructed to think and talk about other things, and, as for non-SWPers, it was none of their business. Now it has felt obliged to open a public polemic. Alex Callinicos published a blast against the SWP opposition online on 28 January . It will appear in print in the SWP magazine Socialist Review. Callinicos closes his article by...

January marks the anniversaries of the deaths of three giants of revolutionary socialism — Liebknecht, Luxemburg, and Lenin. Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg were theorists and organisers of the German working-class revolution of 1918–9. They were executed by the German state, aided by the reformist labour leaders, in January 1919. The articles printed here — Liebknecht’s “In spite of all!” and Luxemburg’s “Order is established in Berlin” — were their last. The “Spartacus” they refer to is the Spartacus League, the Marxist group around Liebknecht, Luxemburg, and Clara Zetkin which founded...