Marxism and war

Our Remembrance

This is the abridged text of a speech given by Workers’ Liberty supporter Jarome Radley to an AWL forum entitled “Our Remembrance: a working-class history of war” at the University of London Union on Thursday 15 November 2012. The meeting was attended by over 100 people, stirred up by a controversy around Workers’ Liberty member and ULU Vice President Daniel Cooper’s refusal to take part in an official University of London Remembrance ceremony. Daniel had been subjected to a right-wing smear campaign. For a report of the meeting, see here . For a statement supporting Daniel Cooper signed by...

Right-wing threat to anti-war meeting

Young Tory louts have put out a call online to disrupt a Workers’ Liberty student forum on Thursday 15 November about the meaning of the First World War. Workers’ Liberty member Daniel Cooper was invited to lay a poppy wreath at an official Remembrance service, in his capacity as Acting President of the University of London Union (ULU). Daniel declined, on principled grounds — that the official remembrance service is a pageant of nationalism, monarchism, and militarism which celebrates the institutions which organised the First World War. Daniel wrote in a personal statement: “Mourning the...

As we were saying: The Falklands and the war of 1982

The Falkland Islands, small specks in the South Atlantic, were annexed by Britain and settled by British people in the 1830s. There had been no previous indigenous population. A century and a half later, in the 1970s and 80s, the islands were an odd little relic of empire. They had no huge economic or strategic importance. Their 1,800 or so inhabitants, many of whom would move on to more clement climates after their time in the Falklands, had no desire to separate from Britain. Argentina had long laid claim to the islands — calling them the Malvinas — on the grounds that it was the nearest...

Why the poppy is wrong

Published November 2010 A couple of weeks ago my daughter, aged seven, came home from school, requesting money for a poppy. With liberal indulgence, I explained why I believe wearing a red poppy linked to those who continue to make war is wrong. Then, with more difficulty, I explained why the pacifist white poppy is also problematic. I gave her 50p and told her to spend it wisely using her judgement. The red poppy has been sold by the British Legion since its formation in 1921, but this was not the first veterans’ association. After the First World War, demobilised soldiers were promised “a...

Thirty five years after America's war

America’s war in Vietnam, and the international movements that sprung up in opposition to it, are central events in the history of 20th century radical politics. The events of that conflict continue to cast a long shadow over the contemporary left’s understanding of imperialist war. Looking back over a distance of 35 years, Vietnam still has a huge amount to teach us in terms of the nature of capitalist imperialism, the nature of Stalinism, and what kind of anti-war politics and movement socialists should aspire to fight for and build. Background Vietnam’s history is inextricably bound up with...

Trotsky's "The War and the International": discussion points

1. Why and how did nation-states arise? Why does Trotsky argue that the capitalist development of the forces of production has come into conflict with the European nation-state framework? 2. What is Trotsky's bedrock argument for refusing support to any side in the World War? 3. "In the dealings between the Danube monarchy [i.e. the Austro-Hungarian empire] and the Serbian government, the historic right... rests entirely with Serbia". Why not then back Serbia and its allies (Russia, France, England...) in the World War? 4. Trotsky does not question that the Tsarist state is the most vicious in...

The Life and Death of Henk Sneevliet

Leon Trotsky once said that the small revolutionary movement he led was like the apex of an inverted social pyramid, upon which the whole weight of capitalist society pressed down. Hounded and murdered by fascists and Stalinists, the Trotskyists suffered terrible casualties during and immediately after the Second World War, all across Europe, from France to Greece. The politics of independent working class socialism, which the Trotskyists represented, was everywhere defeated. ===== All that proved possible to Trotsky's small army was to keep the red flag of international socialism flying and...

French Trotskyists' and German Soldiers' Underground Paper in Nazi-Occupied France: Full Text

World War Two created extremely difficult circumstances and political challenges for internationalist Marxists. In German-occupied Europe the Trotskyist Fourth International mounted a heroic struggle against national chauvinism and illusions in the democratic aspirations of Britain and the United States. Aiming to win German soldiers to a common struggle against imperialism, in summer 1943 the French Trotskyists turned to organising amongst the German troops occupying France. Given the strict discipline of the Wehrmacht and the murderous anti-communism of the Gestapo (and their French...

1943: the situation in Europe

By summer 1943 the Axis war machine was suffering heavy setbacks. Although Hitler had completed a total occupation of France in November 1942, and still held on to his conquests in the Low Countries, Denmark, Norway, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia, Greece, Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States and parts of western Russia, the Axis powers no longer looked able to win the war. The German defeat at Stalingrad and the subsequent loss of much of south-western Russia; the Allies’ conquest of North Africa and threatened landings in southern Italy; Japan’s defeats in the Pacific; the taking of much...

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