31 August 2011

Why Marx was right

Book review: Starting with today's global economic crisis, Eagleton comments: "You can tell the capitalist system is in trouble when people start taking about capitalism. It indicates that the system has ceased to be as natural as the air we breathe...

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18 August 2010

The legacy of Leon Trotsky

Leon Trotsky, a revolutionary leader of the Russian revolution, was murdered on 20 August 1940 by an agent of Stalin. His role in the 1917 revolution, the greatest single event in human history, alone makes his writings worthy of study.
The ideas and methods of the Socialist Party and the socialist international to which it is affiliated, the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI), are based on Trotsky's, alongside those of Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels and Vladimir Lenin.
70 years after his death Peter Taaffe, Socialist Party general secretary, assesses the contribution of Trotsky's ideas to the struggle for socialism in the 21st century.

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18 June 2010

Sessions

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18 November 2009

Service with a snarl: Robert Service refuses to answer questions

HISTORIAN ROBERT Service recently wrote a well-publicised and widely distributed book Trotsky - a biography...

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14 September 2009

Class Society and the State

1. The State: A Product of the Irreconcilability of Class Antagonisms: The State: an Instrument for the Exploitation of the Oppressed Class...

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14 September 2009

The Experience of 1845-51

1. The Eve of Revolution: The first works of mature Marxism - The Poverty of Philosophy and the Communist Manifesto - appeared just on the eve of the revolution of 1848...

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14 September 2009

The Vulgarisation of Marxism by the Opportunists

The question of the relation of the state to the social revolution, and of the social revolution to the state, like the question of revolution generally, was given very little attention by the leading theoreticians and publicists of the Second International (1889-1914)...

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5 June 2009

The Frock-Coated Communist: the revolutionary life of Friedrich Engels

Review FRIEDRICH ENGELS wrote The Condition of the Working Class in England when he was just 24 years old. Tristram Hunt says: "The power, incisiveness and prescience of Engels' polemic remains undiminished...

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4 June 2008

Engels: A Revolutionary Life

Freidrich Engels

The ideas of the Socialist Party, based on scientific socialism, are identified with Karl Marx and 'Marxism', but Friedrich Engels deserves to be bracketed alongside the great 'philosopher of the millennium'. Peter Taaffe reveiws Engels: A Revolutionary Life, by John Green. (Artery Publications, London 2008)

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19 March 2008

Socialist Party 2008 congress

Delegates and visitors from Socialist Party branches across England and Wales met in London on 8-10 March, for the Socialist Party's annual congress. Reports on main sessions.

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20 February 2008

Science, Marxism and the big bang

Science, Marxism and the Big Bang

Reviewed by Roy Farrar.

Science, Marxism and the Big Bang by Peter Mason is written in a style that may not be familiar to the modern reader - that is, of a polemical presentation.

In certain critical reviews this is necessary in order to follow the arguments as laid out by the authors being criticised and to more fully refute and correct them.

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28 June 2007

Rehabilitating Stalin?

Review by Peter Taaffe of Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore: "Lenin shot by Trotsky in drunken brawl". This was a headline, not from the gutter press but from a so-called 'quality' US capitalist newspaper in...

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19 April 2007

Venezuela: Will the trade unions give up their independence?

THE VENEZUELAN president has announced the need to create a united socialist party, capable of transforming Venezuela and setting out on the road to socialism...

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8 March 2007

What's Left? - not Nick Cohen!

PETER TAAFFE reviews What's Left? by Nick Cohen and replies to his accusation that the 'left' supported Saddam Hussein because it opposed the invasion...

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1 March 2007

Congress to build the forces of socialism

Socialist Pary congress 2007, photo Paul Mattsson

The Socialist Party's 2007 national congress took place during the three days 17-19 February...

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1 February 2007

CWI World Congress: Building the forces of socialism worldwide

The ninth world congress of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI) took place in Belgium in mid-January...

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7 December 2006

Socialism 2006

How can the consequences of globalisation be combated?: Socialism 2006 featured discussions and debates which focused on the key issues facing socialists today...

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22 November 2006

Marxism in Today's World

New publication: BILL MULLINS, the Socialist Party's national industrial organiser, reviews Marxism in Today's World, the new book from the Committee for a Workers' International. THE NEW book published by the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI), Marxism in Today's World, is an opportunity for many people to read in detail the ideas and policies of the CWI.

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27 July 2006

Militant pioneer dies

Ted Grant 1913-2006: TED GRANT, one of the founders of Militant, the forerunner of the Socialist Party, has died at the age of 93 in London, writes Peter Taaffe, Socialist Party general secretary.

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22 January 2005

Russia 1905: When workers gained a glimpse of power

THE MOMENTOUS events of 100 years ago, 1905, provided the working class in Russia with the understanding that it was a force capable of bringing industry to its knees, a force capable of turning railways, power, gas etc. on and off like a light-switch. Most importantly, it gave the working class a glimpse of itself as a force capable of the socialist transformation of society.

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