Party and class

A page bringing together reading and other materials related to the ABCs of Marxism series of online meetings. To be updated soon. See here for a list of introductory articles from Workers' Liberty on key issues. Session 1. What is the United Front? The idea of a "united front" was developed among the revolutionary Marxists who grouped together after the Russian revolution of 1917. It was developed further by Marxists such as Trotsky, often in opposition to Communist Parties were which stripped of revolutionary politics after Stalin's counter-revolution in the USSR. Notes on the United Front -...

“We are not a government party; we are the party of irreconcilable opposition… Our tasks... we realise not through the medium of bourgeois governments... but exclusively through the education of the masses through agitation, through explaining to the workers what they should defend and what they should overthrow. Such a “defence” cannot give immediate miraculous results. But we do not even pretend to be miracle workers. As things stand, we are a revolutionary minority. Our work must be directed so that the workers on whom we have influence should correctly appraise events, not permit...

From "Socialism Makes Sense" B. The working class? The "proletariat"? Ha! That is the best example of the falseness and foolishness running through your pretended "objectivity" and the allegedly "scientific" character of your Marxist socialism! Your view of the working class is absurd. A. Someone, John Maynard Keynes, I think it was, once asked why he should look to the social equivalent of mud, the working class, as saviour against the educated ruling classes. Why should he look for social salvation to the most ignorant, the least accomplished, the least able class in the society - to its...

People from the leadership of the International Socialist Organization (ISO) which was in place before the ISO’s convention in February 2019, have launched a new website, the International Socialism Project (ISP), internationalsocialism.net , and some forums in Chicago. The project also involves one or two former members of the “Orthodox Trotskyist” (in fact, semi-Assadist) Socialist Action group. Background: the ISO was long the most active group on the US far left, with up to 1500 members. Apparently overwhelmed by criticism from the ranks, the old leadership (many of them leaders since the...

“The extent to which the party rises to the occasion [of a revolutionary upsurge] — that depends in the greatest degree on how widely [the Marxists have] known how to make their influence felt among the masses in the pre-revolutionary period...” It depends on “the extent to which [they were] already successful in putting together a solid central core of politically well-trained worker activists with clear goals, how large the sum of all their political and organisational work has been”. Volume 3 of the new Complete Works of Rosa Luxemburg, published this year, shows how false the idea is that...

According to John Rees and the Counterfire group (a splinter from the SWP), Georg Lukács was "the most important Marxist political philosopher since Marx". He was "the great theorist of revolution in the 20th century", and his writings were "the most sophisticated development of the classical Marxist tradition that anyone has developed". John Cunningham's presentation ( Solidarity 511 ) is more sober. But generally Lukács has enjoyed high repute in a wide range of the left since the early 1970s, and with many Third Camp Marxists since Michael Harrington made the first English translation from...

• The printed paper carries an abridged version of this article. One of the strangest organisations on the British left is the Socialist Party of Great Britain (no relation to the similarly named Socialist Party of England and Wales). Founded in 1904, they are the oldest organisation on the British Left and yet unless you happened to walk past their shopfront on Clapham High Street, South London, you would not know they existed. Like their stuffy little shop, the SPGB is inert. Their only activity consists in preaching an abstract, millenarian version of socialism and pouring scorn on the...

A crisis which looks terminal is gripping the International Socialist Organization (ISO), the largest would-be Trotskyist organisation in the US. In a letter to ISO members of 15 March, now published at socialistworker.org, the Steering Committee elected at the ISO convention in late February to replace the old leadership describe the convention as their “most painful.” “Much of the convention was devoted to reckoning with the damaging impacts of our past practices and internal political culture. As branches have reported back and opened up these discussions, more examples of a damaging...

Janine′s article on “Neurodiversity, capitalism, and socialism” in Solidarity 494 was interesting and informative. I agree with most of what she advocates. However, I′d like to query her implication that “text-heavy” newspapers are no longer very important, and that alternative media (videos, meetings) can replace them. Those other media can′t replace in-depth reading. Videos can and should play a useful supplementary role, and meetings are of course vital. Text allows for in-depth studying of topics in a way that is often much more difficult or impossible in other formats. Text-based material...

A review of Stan Weir's writings, 'Singlejack Solidarity'. "The term singlejack... On-the-job organisers for the Western Federation of Miners and the Industrial Workers of the World... used it to describe that method of organising where dedicated advocates are developed one at a time on a highly personalised basis..." The leading Minneapolis Trotskyist Ray Dunne was a prime example. An IWW shop steward met Dunne, aged 15, in a lumberjack camp. He identified Dunne as willing to stand up against the boss, and also thoughtful. The IWWer (according to a later interview by Dunne with Harry Ring)...