Karl Marx

What is the Bolshevik-Trotskyist tradition?

What follows is a summary of the political and ideological traditions on which Workers’ Liberty and Solidarity base ourselves. Isaac Newton famously summed up the importance of studying, learning, and building on forerunners. “If I have seen a little further it is by standing on the shoulders of giants”, he wrote, referring to René Descartes, his contemporary Robert Hooke, and presumably also to his direct predecessor Isaac Barrow. In science few people think they can neglect the “tradition” and rely on improvisation. In politics, alas, too many. The summary here, written in 1995, starts as...

Study course on Marxist philosophy

This coming Saturday (10 July) sees the start of a six-part summer course on Marxist philosophy. Classes take place in Hackney on Saturday afternoons. Full course details are below. a 6-part course based on Marx's 'Theses on Feuerbach' 1. July 10 & 17 Why is crude materialism not good enough? (Theses 1, 9 and 10) What is 'crude' (ie. non-dialectical) materialism? What class interests does it reflect? How is it related to idealism? What is Marx's solution? How does this relate to Lenin's 'Materialism and Empiro-Criticism'? 2. July 24 Can we really know the world? (Thesis 2) What is wrong with...

Marx for which times?

I offer a different assessment of Daniel Bensaid's Marx for our times to the one given by Alan Johnson in Solidarity 3/40 . Marx for our times * is one of a number of books which Bensaid has published since 1990 to rethink Marxism in the light of the disconcerting events of 1989. Until then, Bensaid's current, the USFI, and many others had located their politics within a view of history as proceeding on two levels. The "underlying" history of the second half of the 20th century was relentless advance by the "world revolution" through more and more victories "against imperialism". It was both...

Marx for our times

Daniel Bensaid's book Marx for our times § is one of a number which Bensaid has published since 1990 to rethink Marxism in the light of the disconcerting events of 1989. Until then, Bensaid's current, the USFI, and many others had located their politics within a view of history as proceeding on two levels. The "underlying" history of the second half of the 20th century was relentless advance by the "world revolution" through more and more victories "against imperialism". It was both pushed forward in a mechanical way, by the ever-stewing "crisis of imperialism", and pulled forward inexorably...

Marx and Anglo Russian Relations and other writings

by David Riazanov, Francis Boutle publishers This is not an easy book to understand, but the effort to do so is worthwhile. It is not a work of hagiography, but an example of how the method of Marx can be used to develop the Marxist understanding of history. The author David Riazanov was arguably the greatest Marxist scholar of the last century. He was a revolutionary Marxist from the 1880s, a participant in the Russian revolution who was murdered on Stalin's orders in 1938. But it was as the editor of the Marx-Engels Works after 1917 that Riazanov made his reputation. To make the most of the...

Marx and Engels on war

Marx and Engels commented on many conflicts and wars between the great powers of 19th century Europe. In this article Hal Draper demonstrates that their political attitude towards those conflicts was consistently based on advancing, not whichever of the established five great powers seemed the “lesser evil” or more progressive, but what Engels called “the sixth great power… the [workers’] Revolution”. Draper’s account is here abridged from appendices in his book, War and Revolution: Lenin and the Myth of Revolutionary Defeatism (edited by Ernest Haberkern: Humanities Press, 1996). It forms the...

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