Nationalism and the 'national question'

“Third camp” or no camp?

Many responses from the left to the Ukraine crisis have ignored, sidestepped, or downplayed the right to self-determination of the Ukrainian people. Yet Ukraine is one of the longest-oppressed large nations in the world. In an article of 1939 where he raised Ukraine’s right to self-determination as an urgent question, Leon Trotsky wrote: “The Ukrainian question, which many governments and many ‘socialists’ and even ‘communists’ have tried to forget or to relegate to the deep strongbox of history, has once again been placed on the order of the day and this time with redoubled force”. The same...

The collapse of the Socialist International in the First World War

“To forget is counter-revolutionary.”* “If our resolution does not foresee any specific method of action for the vast diversity of eventualities,” said Jean Jaurès in urging the adoption of the famous anti-war resolution of the Second International at its special conference in Basel on November 24, 1912, “neither does it exclude any. It serves notice upon the governments, and it draws their attention clearly to the fact that [by war] they would easily create a revolutionary situation, yes, the most revolutionary situation imaginable.” So the resolution did. The unanimous vote cast for the...

Leon Trotsky: Stalinism and Anti-Semitism

At the time of the last Moscow trial I remarked in one of my statements that Stalin, in the struggle with the Opposition, exploited the anti-Semitic tendencies in the country. On this subject I received a series of letters and questions which were, by and large – there is no reason to hide the truth – very naive. “How can one accuse the Soviet Union of anti-Semitism?” “If the USSR is an anti-Semitic country, is there anything left at all?” That was the dominant note of these letters. These people raise objections and are perplexed because they are accustomed to counter-pose fascist anti...

When the Weekly Worker Group ("CPGB") Backed Imperialism in Afghanistan (2004). An Exercise in Political Sanitation.

Introduction. Afghanistan: the Russian Invasion and the Left "The Stalinist April 1978 Coup and the December 1979 Russian Invasion "Workers' Voice", the "CPGB's" Turkish Stalinist Mentors Conrad and Fisher on Afghanistan: The Tankies' Tankies -1 The Tankies' Tankies -2 The Tankies' Tankies -3 The Tankies' Tankies -4 The Tankies' Tankies -5 Stalinist Mind At End Of Its Tether -1 Stalinist Mind At End Of Its Tether -2 Stalinist Mind At End Of Its Tether-3 Stalinist Mind At End Of Its Tether -4 Stalinist Mind At End Of Its Tether-5

When the Weekly Worker Group ("CPGB") Backed Imperialism in Afghanistan. A series of articles.(2004)

Introduction. Afghanistan: the Russian Invasion and the Left "Workers' Voice", the "CPGB's" Turkish Stalinist Mentors Conrad and Fisher on Afghanistan: The Tankies' Tankies -1 The Tankies' Tankies -2 The Tankies' Tankies -3 The Tankies' Tankies -4 The Tankies' Tankies -5 Stalinist Mind At End Of Its Tether -1 Stalinist Mind At End Of Its Tether -2 Stalinist Mind At End Of Its Tether-3 Stalinist Mind At End Of Its Tether -4 Stalinist Mind At End Of Its Tether-5

The Price of Isolation for the Russian Workers and their Revolution

The world is paying dearly for the isolation of the Russian Revolution, paying in blood and sweat, and tears and in car- nage and destruction such as history records nowhere else. The Bolshevik Revolution of November, 1917, opened up a new eporh for mankind. It contained, the promise of a life of security and peace, of abundance and brotherhood, of equality among men in a world freed of classes and class rule. What no other social upheaval before it had even dared to hope for, the Russian Revolution proclaimed boldly and confidently. Not the great French revolution, not even the Paris Commune...

The Price of Isolation for the Russian Workers and their Revolution

The world is paying dearly for the isolation of the Russian Revolution, paying in blood and sweat, and tears and in car- nage and destruction such as history records nowhere else. The Bolshevik Revolution of November, 1917, opened up a new eporh for mankind. It contained, the promise of a life of security and peace, of abundance and brotherhood, of equality among men in a world freed of classes and class rule. What no other social upheaval before it had even dared to hope for, the Russian Revolution proclaimed boldly and confidently. Not the great French revolution, not even the Paris Commune...

Self-Determination of Nations and Self-Defense

Note: With Rosa Luxemburg and others, Karl Liebknecht, a Deputy in the German Reichstag, opposed the the First World War and laid the basis for a new revolutionary socialist movement. Liebknecht, along with Rosa Luxemburg, Leo Jogiches and many others was killed by counter-revolutionaries at the beginning of 1919 "But, since we have been unable to prevent the war, since it has come in spite of us, and our country is facing invasion, shall we leave our country defenceless? Shall we deliver it into the hands of the enemy? Does not Socialism demand the right of nations to determine their own...

Manifesto of the Revolutionary Socialist Party of Ireland, 1919

Introduction: In 1919 it looked to many - to Lenin and Trotsky, for instance - as if the capitalist system was breaking down and that a working class revolution was beginning, at least in Europe. There was tremendous working class militancy all across Europe. Short-lived Soviet Republics were set up in Hungary and Bavaria. In Ireland, the big majority of the M P s elected in the General Election at the end of 1918 had seceded from the British Parliament, and met in Dublin as an Irish Parliament, Dail Eireann. They pronounced themselves the elected government of the Irish Republic proclaimed in...

Remaking Socialism: From Socialism's Collapse in 1914 to the Foundation of the Communist International in March 1919

THE ECLIPSE OF THE INTERNATIONAL On 4 August, 1914, the Workers' International breathed its last, and that watchword of socialism "Death to militarism", which should have rung out clear and strong above the tumult of mobilisation and the clash of arms, was unheard by the peoples of the world. No doubt this cry of revolt from a workers' movement animated by a true solidarity of the exploited against their task masters would have been promptly stifled by the death-dealing implements of war, and by the weight of censorship and martial law, but ere its defeat it would have awakened the consciences...

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