Workers Party/ ISL archive

The East German workers revolt

The June uprising of the workers in East Germany is one of the great events in modern history. The uprising in Germany will open up new historical opportunities which seemed to have vanished with the defeat of the European labour movements during the last twenty years and the emergence of the Stalinist state. Two world wars, a defeated proletarian revolution in Germany and a “successful” proletarian revolution that failed in Russia, finally the victory of fascism in Germany, coincided with the decay and destruction of the old traditional labour movement in Europe. It seemed to be impossible to...

Who were the leaders?

There have been anti-Stalinist actions before, both outside of Russia and even inside of it. But yet they are not the same thing as the rising that occurred in Berlin. Inside of Russia it has happened any number of times, before, during and since the Second World War. There have been many cases of small isolated strikes, long strikes, by desperate, atomised leaderless workers who would almost rather die than continue to submit any longer to the depredations and abuses of their masters. Invariably, according to all the reports about them, they were blown to bits by the platoons of the GPU. And...

Since the uprising

The June uprising of the East German workers demonstrated to the world — and to Moscow — that the Grotewohl-Ulbricht regime was built of sand and rested on water. Since it could no longer pretend to represent anyone but its Russian masters, its usefulness as a pawn in Moscow's game to draw Western Germany out of the American orbit seemed at an end. Nevertheless, Moscow did not sweep the wreckage of the discredited regime aside and attempt to install a new government that could bid for some degree of popular support. Instead, the Kremlin began to do everything within its power to rehabilitate...

The new Russian imperialism

The bad blood in Big Three relations that came to public view during the London Conference of Foreign Ministers in September, 1945, reached its boiling point last month as the world lived through a war of nerves reminiscent of the Munich days. [In March 1946 the Greek civil war restarted; there was British-USSR tension in Iran; and Winston Churchill made a speech putting the turm “Iron Curtain” into currency]. If the man in the street did not react with the frenzy of fear that swept the world during the Munich crisis, it was only because humanity is still too numb with the pain of six years’...

Stalinist imperialism

There is a paradox — only an apparent one — in the development of Stalinist imperialism. Stalinism arose out of the counter-revolution in Russia under the slogan of building “socialism in one country” as against the perspective of “world revolution” represented by the Bolshevik left wing under Trotsky. An historic internal struggle took place within the party under these different banners, in which, as everybody knows, the Stalinist wing won out. To the Stalinists, the theory of “socialism in one country” which they put forward meant: Let’s keep our eyes fixed on our problems at home; let’s...

Roots of Stalinist imperialism

When the defenders and journalists of capitalism speak of Stalinist Russia as a “socialist state” they have, from their standpoint, two good reasons for saying so. One reason, the product of ignorance if not malice, is to discredit the cause of socialism in the mind of workers by identifying it with the oppressive police rule of the Stalinist state. The other reason results from their sound class instinct. They have never concerned themselves with the positive aspect of socialism, which is the liberation of the working class from all forms of oppression and exploitation and the assurance of...

What to learn from Stalinism

Whoever has not been able to learn lessons of the greatest importance from this, whatever movement has not been able to assimilate and readapt its conceptions to this, is doomed to impotence and worse — but to impotence only at the very best. What our independent Socialist movement has learned from the rise of Stalinism would take much more than this page to present. We select only five of the most important lessons here. They are basic to “our kind of socialism”, that is, to a genuinely socialist re-adaptation of Marxist policy for our era — not a mere “reaffirmation”, not a parroting of...

Stalin’s Place in History: Assessing the Social Role of the Great Assassin

Stalin is the greatest man of all times, of all epochs and peoples.—Sergei Kirov Stalin proves himself a ‘great man’ in the grand style… Stalin is Lenin’s heir. Stalinism is Communism.—James Burnham WHEN Lenin lay gravely ill, he gave much thought to the future of the revolution and the party which he, above all, helped to create. Fully aware of the dangers which surrounded the young, new state, uncertain of its future as an isolated and backward nation, he concerned himself with the internal situation in the party which now ruled the country alone. In his famous ‘Testament’ he turned directly...

Trotsky and the Communist International

The rich and noble history of the Communist International, formed in a period of tremendous class struggles, has yet to be written. Trotsky has contributed a considerable amount of material toward that history and a portion of it is now available in The First Five Years of the Communist International. Since the formation of the Comintern in 1919, a new generation of revolutionaries has grown up. It knows little about the travail which attended its birth, the heroic period of its early growth, the tremendous figures – martyrs all – of the world revolutionary movement who directed its destinies...

How Stalin destroyed communism

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...

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