Free collection of articles.
Taxing the Rich and Its “Left” Critics (tags)
In a recent article published on the website of Socialist Viewpoint, Chris Kinder criticized those on the left who call for raising taxes on the rich. Identifying himself as a Trotskyist, Mr. Kinder displayed particular displeasure with Trotskyists who embrace this demand. Yet, as we will argue, his arguments fundamentally deviate from the political-strategic framework established by Marx and Engels and developed by Lenin and Trotsky.
The Left, Labor and Occupy (tags)
Barely half a year after it burst on the scene, the Occupy Wall Street movement is splintering left and right. This was inevitable in a movement that was united only in what it opposed and could never put forward a positive program, whether of reformist "demands" on the capitalist state or of revolutionary action against it. Liberals, who latched onto Occupy hoping it could pressure the Democratic Party in a more populist direction, want to expel "black bloc" anarchists. Reformist social democrats rail against "ultraleftists" in Occupy and cozy up to the labor tops. On the other side, many (but not all) anarchists oppose unions. Some are simply arrogant petty-bourgeois labor haters. Others are grappling with real problems, but with skewed analysis and dead wrong conclusions. Discussion of recent workers' struggles, from Wisconsin to West Coast longshore, underlines that the key question is leadership, but not just replacing one set of bureaucrats with another. Unions have always faced vicious anti-labor laws, but we have the power to defeat them. It is necessary to drive out the pro-capitalist bureaucracy, the labor lieutenants of capital, in order to turn the unions into instruments of revolutionary class struggle.
The Strategic Role of the Role of the United Front (tags)
What distinguished Marx from all his contemporaries who professed revolutionary aspirations was his identification of the revolutionary agent: “The emancipation of the working classes [of every country] must be conquered by the working classes themselves….”
Open Letter from the Internationalist Group to the Spartacist League and ICL (tags)
The Spartacist League/U.S. and the International Communist League it leads are in deep political trouble. On April 27, the International Executive Committee of the ICL issued a statement “Repudiating Our Position on Haiti Earthquake,” headlined “A Capitulation to U.S. Imperialism.” After three months of “zealous apologies for the U.S. imperialist military intervention” in the name of humanitarian aid, the ICL suddenly declared that this was a fundamental “betrayal” and the Internationalist Group had been right all along in demanding U.S./U.N. troops out. While agreeing with the IG’s characterization of the ICL’s policy as “social-imperialist”and calling for a “savage indictment” of its own line, the ICL’s explanation for this betrayal – failure to have a formal discussion – doesn’t answer how an entire organization which proclaims itself revolutionary Marxist and Trotskyist could swallow this support for imperialism for months. Its origins can be found in years of capitulation to U.S. imperialism, notably by abandoning the call for its defeat in the Afghanistan and Iraq wars. The Open Letter by the Internationalist Group urges those in the ICL who do not wish to continue gyrating in centrist confusion to examine the real record of their organization’s adaptations and capitulations to “its own” bourgeoisie over the past years.
May Day Strike Against the War Shuts Down All U.S. West Coast Ports (tags)
On May 1, every port on the West Coast of the United States was shut down to demand an end to the U.S. war and occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. The historic May Day walkout by the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) is the first time ever that an American union has struck against a U.S. war. The union ranks defied the rulings of an arbitrator, who twice ordered them to go to work. They overcame the capitulations of the ILWU leadership, which didn't want the work stoppage in the first place, tried to water it down and cowered before the threats of legal action while waving the flag. The employers' Pacific Maritime Association (PMA) declared the May 1 port shutdown an "illegal strike." But after all the huffing and puffing from the bosses' mouthpieces, the dock workers pointed the way to defeating the imperialist war by mobilizing working-class power. In the end, it was more than a work stoppage. The dock workers' May Day strike against the war was a first step, a show of what it will take to bring down the warmongers in Washington. Their "symbolic" action was felt all the way to Iraq, where dock workers in two ports stopped work in solidarity with the ILWU. But it was only a beginning. What is needed is not only industrial action but a political offensive against the Democrats and Republicans, the partner parties of American imperialism, to build a class-struggle workers party.
THE ABC'S OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, 1917. (tags)
THIS IS A REVIEW OF LEON TROTSKY'S HISTORY OF THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION, ORIGINALLY PBLISHED IN 1930-23, BY AN UNREPENTENT DEFENDER OF THE OCTOBER REVOLUTION
Kronstadt: Trotsky was right! (tags)
New material from Soviet archives confirms the Bolsheviks' position. Kronstadt: Trotsky was right! By A Kramer
The Makhno anarchists, Kronstadt and the position of the Russian peasants (tags)
In September of 1920, Ivanov V. (representative of the Southern Front Revolutionary Soviet) visited Makhno. He later wrote this description of Makhno’s camp: “The regime is brutal, the discipline is hard as steel, rebels are beaten on the face for any small breach, no elections to the general command staff, all commanders up to company commander are appointed by Makhno and the Anarchist Revolutionary War Council, Revolutionary Military Soviet (Revvoensovet) became an irreplaceable, uncontrollable and non-elected institution. Under the revolutionary military council there is a ‘special section’ that deals with disobediences secretly and without mercy.”
Chavez reiterates the call to arm the people (tags)
solidarity with the Venezuelan Revolution
Kronstadt:Trotsky was right!! (tags)
New material from Soviet Archives
The Permanent Revolution: Battle cry of the 21st Century (tags)
On the trotskyist review Marxism Alive 2 - October 2000