Max Shachtman

No party like the Bolshevik party

In Defence of Bolshevism, the new book from Workers' Liberty, had its launch at a lively meeting in central London on 12 October. Edited by Sean Matgamna, the collection of texts by American Trotskyist Max Shachtman represents one of the greatest polemics in the Marxist tradition. It is the defence of a revolutionary socialist consciousness being developed in the working class as the irreplaceable pre-condition for the self- emancipation of the working class. Crucially, it describes the only type of party fit for the purpose of seeding, nurturing and growing this consciousness in the working...

Under the Banner of Marxism

The AWL’s new book, In Defence of Bolshevism, will upset many people on the left – and is warmly welcomed for doing so. The bulk of the book consists of texts by the foremost Heterodox Trotskyist, Max Shachtman. In 1949, Shachtman published Under the Banner of Marxism, originally written as an answer to Ernest Erber, a former Third Camp comrade who had just deserted. In this review, however, I want to pay attention to the book’s introduction by Sean Matgamna, tying in the texts with today. The introduction spares no left tendency from withering criticism. The book is an indictment of Corbynism...

In defence of Bolshevism

Shachtman’s polemic against Ernest Erber, which Workers’ Liberty have reprinted, is one of the classics Marxist movement, like Marx’s Poverty of Philosophy or Engels’ Anti-Dühring . Erber considered himself a socialist of sorts until his death, quite recently, at the age of 96. Mostly he gave his energies to the career he made after quitting, as a town planner, and to domestic life. He wrote occasionally for the reform-socialist journal Dissent. There were lots of people slipping away from the revolutionary socialist movement around that time. In fact, in the USA the process had started with a...

The professor and the helicopter

People tried to construct flying machines for thousands of years before the first planes were built in the early 20th century, and the first regularly-produced helicopters from the 1930s. Suppose a historian were to study all the documents she or he could find about that effort, prior to say 1900, but without registering that the purpose was to find a flying machine. Maybe the historian would imagine that the purpose was just to find some way of getting from place to place, and would comment: why didn’t they just walk? John Kelly, an academic at Birkbeck University, structures his account of...

Why revolutionaries organise

Why revolutionaries organise The working class has the potential to become a great power in society, but can make that potential a reality, even on the most limited scale, only by organisation. That fact follows from two facts about the working class in developed capitalist society. It is the basic productive class. It is simultaneously a wage-slave class. Its members are relegated to relative poverty, cultural and educational restrictions, insecurity, and exhausting work burdens of parcellised tasks. Individual workers, without collective organisation, are merely troops under capitalist...

In Defence of Bolshevism

Order online | Full contents | Study guide | Video | Bulk orders Max Shachtman's Under the Banner of Marxism , which forms the bulk of this book, deserves to be considered one of the classic polemics of the Marxist movement, alongside The Poverty of Philosophy , Anti-Dühring , and others. It defends the Bolsheviks, their revolution, their work to build a revolutionary socialist movement, and the continued relevance of their approach. The British political labour movement is trying to recreate itself. Over the last three years something like half a million people have joined the Labour Party...

In Defence of the Bolsheviks: new book coming soon

Max Shachtman’s response to Ernest Erber in 1949, which forms the bulk of a forthcoming book to be published by Workers’ Liberty, deserves to be considered one of the classic polemics of the Marxist movement, alongside The Poverty of Philosophy, Anti-Dühring, and others. It summarises and vindicates the Bolsheviks’ work to build a revolutionary party and lead a revolution, and makes the case for continuing a similar effort in times both of high and of low political temperature. Over the last three years something like half a million people have joined the Labour Party, and done so mostly...

War, Realism and the "Lesser Evil". The Socialist Attitude on the Problem of War by Julius Jacobson, in Anvil and Student Partisan, Fall 1950.

One of the greatest tragedies of a Third World War which is now drawing closer is the lack of organized opposition to it. The mass of people are not enthusiastically pro-war but they are resigned to it, while the organized social, political and cultural movements, with rare exceptions, are exerting their influence to create the necessary enthusiasm for the all-out Atom War. Military men with their national honor, business men with their funds, publishers with their journalists, politicians with their rehearsed inflammatory speeches, are all busily using their respective resources to instill an...

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