Workers' Liberty

Lenin and Trotsky lost

25 Jul 2008 |

Sean Matgamna

Lenin and Trotsky lost Lenin and Trotsky lost; defeated, they died. You tell me: "They could not have ever won, Those blood-infected dreamers, who essayed So much, hubristic in their raw Red pride, To leave a world dismayed, worse disarrayed: Nothing can rise, once thus self-crucified!" Daedalus dares, and Icarus will die: And yet, to spite harsh Gods, we learn—we fly! (In the legend, Daedalus made wings for his son Icarus; but Icarus flew up too high above the earth, and too near to the sun, until the wax binding his wings melted, and he crashed to his death).

Lenin, Iraq and "troops out now"

28 Oct 2007

By Sacha Ismail In "The Discussion on Self-Determination Summed up", written in July 1916, Lenin wrote as follows: The several demands of democracy, including [national] self-determination, are not an absolute, but only a small part of the general-democratic (now: general-socialist) world movement. In individual concrete cases, the part may contradict the whole; if so, it must be rejected. It is possible that the republican movement in one country may be merely an instrument of the clerical or financial-monarchist intrigues of other countries; if so, we must not support this particular...

The history of Bolshevism: did Leninism turn into Stalinism?

01 Oct 2007 |

Max Shachtman

Click here for the series on The Roots of Bolshevism of which this article is part The organisation of the party will take the place of the party; the Central Committee will take the place of the organisation; and finally the dictator will take the place of the Central Committee. Leon Trotsky, 1904 Predictions like this, Trotsky's, in a polemic written in 1904, have often been used to “explain” Stalinism as a logical continuation of Bolshevism. In this polemic against the book “Three Who Made A Revolution”, by Bertram D Wolfe (which has been continuously in print since it was first published...

The Lies Against Socialism Answered

28 Jun 2007 |

Sean Matgamna

For most of the 20th century, the common image of "socialism" was the USSR and the other states modelled on it, China, Cuba, and so on. There were always socialists who were critical of Stalin's or Khrushchev's USSR, seeing it as an unacceptably bureaucratic version of socialism, and keen to create a more democratic version in their own countries. By the late 1960s or early 1970s, a big majority even in the official Communist Parties was highly critical of Brezhnev's USSR. But most of those who criticised the USSR clung to the idea that some other USSR-model state - China, Vietnam, Cuba.... -...

The Voyage of Vladimir Columbus

23 Jun 2007

“And tomorrow I sail far away O’er the raging foam, For to seek a home On the shores of Amerikay”. (19th century Irish song) “O my America! my new-found-land” (John Donne, To His Mistress Going To Bed) Bold Vladimir Columbus sets his sails due West Into the stormy deep unknown, much-charted seas To find Amerikay: he goes at last to quest For the Unfound Land. Where others hide and bide, he’ll seize The chance; for he is sure his crew could, sailing to Hell, Prevail, they who have learned their trade in harsh rough schools: Map-makers have well done their work — practice will tell The true...

A factory bulletin by Vladimir Lenin - Against our “benefactors”

25 Mar 2006 |

Vladimir Lenin

This leaflet was written by Vladimir Lenin after November 7(19) 1895, in connection with a strike of about 500 weavers against bad conditions and new measures introduced by the factory management. The weavers, by their solid resistance to the employer’s pressure, have proved that at a difficult moment there are still people in our midst who can uphold our common interests as workers, that our worthy employers have not yet succeeded in turning us for all time into the miserable slaves of their bottomless purses. Let us, then, comrades, stand firm and steadfast and carry on to the very end, let...

What is the Bolshevik-Trotskyist tradition?

11 Nov 2005

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...

The origins of Bolshevism: Socialism and the workers’ struggles

27 Jun 2005 |

John O'Mahony

Click here for the series on The Roots of Bolshevism of which this article is part Lenin’s 1902 book, What Is To Be Done, is one of the most important of all the great texts of revolutionary Marxism. Its importance is especially great in the period we are now going through, when as a result of Stalinism and the defeats of the labour movement which it inflicted or precipitated, everywhere Marxism has come to be separated from the working class and its movement. The great task we face is once more to combine Marxism with the working class movements. What Is To Be Done was a polemical barrage...

The roots of Bolshevism: What is to be done?

12 May 2005 |

Jack Cleary

Click here for the series on The Roots of Bolshevism of which this article is part Lenin’s What Is To Be Done?, written in late 1901 and early 1902, is one of the most important books ever written. Certainly it is one of the most important socialist texts in existence. Yet it is often seen, even by people who are not antagonistic to Lenin and his work, in the grim retrospective shadow of Stalinism. This, we are told, is the book in which Lenin expounded his notion of a highly centralised party of “professional revolutionaries”, and therefore, whatever Lenin’s intentions, it was the seed of...

The background to Lenin's Iskra

23 Jun 2004 |

John O'Mahony

Click here for the series on The Roots of Bolshevism of which this article is part By John O'Mahony The 'Tsar Liberator', Alexander II, was on the eve of his death ready to make some concessions to the reform-minded liberals. The work of the Narodnaya Volya assassins put an end to reform from above for a generation. In the 1880s and 90s, the Tsarist regime was a frozen ice-cap on top of Russian society. Underneath that inert political regime, Russian capitalism expanded. Market relations became dominant in more and more of Russian life. The working class grew with the growth of industry. Great...