Part of the World Socialist Movement
March 2, 2020
2000’s 2000 No. 1145 January 2000 Editorial: A Millennium To Win! Voice From the Back Cleaning houses Education System, or Wages System? The ultra rich TV Review Theatre Review Book Reviews An Open Letter to ‘Reclaim the Streets’ Letters Greasy Pole: Poverty – Blair Speaks World View 50 Years Ago: They all go the same …
2000’s 2005 2006 No. 1217 January 2006 Editorial: Six Million Cartoon: Free Lunch Voice From the Back Greasy Pole: Nightmare for Tory Leaders 50 Years Ago: Mr. Bevan and the Bombs Book Reviews Be disobedient – think for yourself Working till we drop When the truth hurts Cooking the Books 2: The Property Rights Act …
January 17, 2019
Ever since the death of Stalin, the rulers of Russia and of the farcically named Peoples Democracies have been engaged in a new industry—the rehabilitation of ghosts from their murky past. So far they have not actually succeeded in bringing back to life one of Stalin’s murdered victims, but, no doubt, they are working on …
June 21, 2018
A large quantity of literature now exists in connection with the Russian question. While much of the information is contradictory, and a confused assortment of statements, still we can glean sufficient from it to enable us to make a fairly accurate survey of the general position, although details of certain matters, such as the method of taking the vote, are still lacking.
Conditions Favoured Bolshevists
From this literature we can see what the conditions were that enabled the Bolsheviks to obtain possession of power, and to retain their hold upon it up to the present time.
October 12, 2017
Trotskyists frequently bemoan the outcome of the power-struggle between Stalin and Trotsky. While the former became undisputed dictator of the Soviet Union, the latter was exiled and was eventually assassinated in August 1940. It is claimed that the many atrocities committed by the Stalin regime were a departure from Bolshevism and that if Trotsky had held power, then the course of events would have been different. What Trotskyists label the “degeneration” of the Russian Revolution is blamed on Stalin.
April 19, 2016
“The Communist International,” by F. Borkenau. Faber & Faber. 12/6. 442 pages
A by no means insignificant reason for the lamentable condition of the international working-class movement is to be sought in the baneful influence of events in Russia. Hypnotised by its mythical Socialist character, bull-dozed by its offspring, the Communist International, thousands of militant workers have fallen victims to its spell. Fortunately, numbers of workers everywhere, under the hard blows of reality, are beginning to come to their senses. Anything that tends to hasten this process can only be welcomed, and therein lies the importance of this book. Written by a former official of the German Communist Party, it is a painstaking and scrupulous attempt to reveal the origins of Russian Bolshevism and its influence, through the Comintern, on the world Labour movement.
August 25, 2015
Ramon Mercader, the man who murdered Leon Trotsky, died in Havana on October 18th. Four days later his ashes were flown to Russia, the country whose secret policy, in 1940, recruited Mercader to kill Trotsky in his Russian exile.
“I was a Trotskyist until one day I realised that the leader who claimed to be struggling for the liberation of the working class was in reality just a fanatic thirsty for revenge against Stalin.” These were the words Mercader, who afterwards served a 20-year prison sentence, used to explain to the Mexican police his motives for splitting Trotsky’s skull with a pickaxe.
March 25, 2013
Venue: The Socialist Party’s premises, 52 Clapham High Street, London SW4 7UN Directions: About 4 minutes walk south-east from Clapham North station on the Northern line of the London Underground system and 3 minutes walk from Clapham High Street station on the Circular Overground line A talk by guest speaker Simon Pirani Simon Pirani studied …
Read more ““The Russian Revolution in Retreat 1920-1924” (Clapham – 3.00pm) – 21st July 2013″
February 9, 2011
MENTION has already been made of the theory of the Russian Communist Party that the achievement of Socialism did not need to wait on the growth of the workers’ understanding.
On an extreme interpretation such a theory would have been compatible with a belief on the part of the Russian Communist Party that its seizure of power in November 1917 could be followed by the early inauguration of Socialism in Russia alone, and in Western Europe and America many of their uninformed admirers, as well as frightened defenders of capitalism, believed this to be true.
Preface
In 1948 we published a pamphlet ‘Russia Since 1917: Socialist Views of Bolshevik Policy’, consisting of a reprint of articles from our journal THE SOCIALIST STANDARD during the years 1915-48. The following note appeared in the Preface:
“In the articles themselves, no attempt has been made to interfere with the original text. The articles stand just as they are written. We have nothing to fear from letting our original words stand. There are, it is true, passages in some of the earlier articles which, were we writing them today in the light of information now available, we would phrase differently; but these are points of detail. In essentials, the articles stand as overwhelmingly testimony to the soundness of the Marxist position – the position of the Socialist Party of Great Britain.”