Marxists

For scrupulous reviews

I’ m grateful to Stuart Jordan for alerting comrades to the RS21 pamphlet on ecology ( Solidarity 619 ). We certainly should evaluate what the rest of the revolutionary left says on these important matters. I’ve not read the RS21 pamphlet, so I trust Stuart’s criticisms are warranted. However I think he is far too casual about Marx and Engels, the founders of our tradition and where our assessments often begin. There is nothing “so-called” about Marxist metabolism. For two decades this term has been used as shorthand for Marx’s approach to ecological questions in his mature political economy...

The invention of tradition on Marxist ecology

In his influential book The Invention of Tradition , Eric Hobsbawm explained the process by which historians seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, attempting to establish continuity with a suitable historic past. Marxism is not exempt from the manufacture of tradition. In fact the battle of ideas is often fought around the legitimacy of decisions made by individuals and parties at crucial times in the past. Thus we openly proclaim our affinity with the methods, theories and practices of Marx and Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, Luxemburg and Gramsci, the foremost...

More on our half-price book offer

The coming weeks of fewer labour-movement meetings and activities are a good time to read our longer books, and within our general half-price offer we’re doing a special deal on The Fate of the Russian Revolution volume 1 and The Two Trotskyisms Confront Stalinism : both large books for £10 post free. If you’ve already read those, or want something easier, the half-price offer also makes many shorter texts more available. Socialism Makes Sense is an attempt to allow anti-socialist ideas full voice and then refute them in favour of the idea of socialism which was advocated by the mass socialist...

Use the coming weeks to study

The coming weeks, as labour movement activity dwindles in the second half of December and in early January, are a good time to catch up on reading. Workers’ Liberty is running a half-price offer on all our older books, aiming to redress the backlog in circulation caused by the lack of in-person political meetings over the last two years. We also offer special deals if you buy a few books — for example, both The Fate of the Russian Revolution volume 1, and The Two Trotskyisms Confront Stalinism , for £10 post free. It’s an especially good time to read the longer books, more difficult to work...

The early life of Paul Frölich

The German revolution, 1919 Paul Frölich deserves to be better known. He is chiefly credited for his valuable 1928 biography of Rosa Luxemburg. However Frölich was a significant figure on the German revolutionary left in his own right. A recent book, Paul Frölich, In the Radical Camp: A Political Autobiography 1890-1921 , edited and introduced by Reiner Tosstorff, provides a window into his life. The book deserves the attention of contemporary socialists. Paul Frölich was born in Leipzig on 7 August 1884. Both his parents were active in the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), which...

A new history of humanity

Clive Bradley reviews The Dawn of Everything: a new history of humanity , by David Graeber and David Wengrow (Allen and Lane). Potentially, this book changes everything. It is certainly what the authors intend. For Marxists, it poses some profound challenges. Broadly speaking, Marxists have accepted what these authors call the ‘evolutionary’ perspective on human history, namely that there are certain stages through which human culture has passed: pre-agricultural societies, which have no classes; agriculture, which gives birth to classes (because it facilitates the accumulation of a surplus...

Haitian revolution vs British empire

The French Revolution was a bourgeois revolution, and the basis of bourgeois wealth was the slave trade and slave plantations in the colonies. Though the bourgeoisie traded in other things than slaves, upon the success or failure of the traffic everything else depended. Therefore when the bourgeoisie proclaimed the Rights of Man in general, with necessary reservations, one of these was that these rights should not extend to the French colonies. There was the abolitionist society to which Brissot, Robespierre, Mirabeau, Lafayette, Condorcet, and many such famous men belonged even before 1789...

Sam Farber, the Third Camp and Cuba

Repression in Cuba Samuel Farber has played an irreplaceable role in the third-camp Marxist tradition for more than six decades. Kent Worcester has conducted a fascinating interview with Farber about his political and intellectual history, now published in Left History journal (24, 1, Spring/Summer 2021). You can also read it as text, with photos and images, on the website of US socialist magazine Tempest here . Farber’s outstanding contribution has been his Marxist analysis of Cuban society, articulated in four books and countless articles. A simple rule should apply on the left: no socialist...

Marxism and Irish politics: Rayner Lysaght and Sean Matgamna debate and discussion

In November 2018, the longtime Irish-based Trotskyist Rayner Lysaght debated with Sean Matgamna, a founding member of Workers’ Liberty, on Marxist perspectives on Irish history and the Irish revolution. The following day they had an extended discussion on related topics. This has been recorded and released as nine videos.

Malm: Further into the swamp

Second in a series of articles about the writings on climate politics of Andreas Malm. More here . Since the publication of his celebrated book Fossil Capital (2016), Andreas Malm has continued to expound his views on climate change. He has published several books, including The Progress of This Storm (2018), Corona, Climate, Chronic Emergency (2020) and How to Blow Up a Pipeline (2021), along with numerous journal articles. Malm’s evolution has been erratic, consistent only with his pseudo-profound pontification. His advice to the climate movement has veered from geoscience to acts of...

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