The Russian Revolution 1917

This document was written by Inqaba Ya Basebenzi of the ANC Marxist Workers’ Tendency in 1987 with introduction by Anton Nilson, militant socialist of the Russian Revolution, and reposted here from Socialist Alternative. Introduction The Russian Revolution was the greatest step forward in history. The working class, though a minority, led all oppressed and exploited people in smashing the Tsarist dictatorship. Taking state power through their Soviets (councils), the armed workers overthrew landlordism and capitalism, laying the first foundations for a state owned and planned economy....

December 19, 2020

The Sliding Scale of Wages As the First Transitional Demand

Leon, Trotsky. “Sliding Scale of Wages and Sliding Scale of Hours” in The Transitional Programme. 1938. http://www.marxist.net/trotsky/programme/p2frame.htm?wages.htm In 1938, Trotsky outlines his vision of the transitional program, which would meet the minimum demands already held by the workers with the call for socialist revolution that would overthrow the bourgeoisie, instead of searching for ways to appease them. Due to historical peculiarity, and knowing that we could choose any of the minimal demands in existence to work with, the first transitional demand he outlines turns out to be as he calls it the, “Sliding scale of wages....

October 19, 2020

Building a United Front During Growth of Far Right Authoritarianism

The Menace of Fascism in Italy The purpose of Ted Grant’s pamphlet, The Menace of Fascism", is to argue that fascism had carried over in the UK after WWII had ended, in contrast with the celebratory mood of the victory of democracy over the forces of fascism. The roots of fascism found in the UK could be traced back to Mussolini’s Italy where fascism first appeared in modern Europe and to Nazi Germany....

September 8, 2020

The Commodity Form in Marx's Capital Vol. 1

“And since it is not real man, nor therefore nature – man being human nature – who as such is made the subject, but only the abstraction of man – self-consciousness –”1 My aim here is to raise some additional points about the commodity form in Marx’s Capital Vol. 1. In response to the argument that Capital can’t help us much with reaching workers and we should avoid using overly dense theory in our outreach, we say that Capital is a correction of the bourgeois ideology....

July 31, 2020

Marx's Poverty of Philosophy

It should be of interest for us discuss The Philosophy of Poverty because it is an understudied text in the canon of Marxist theory even though its contents are of vital importance. This is also surprising because so much of elementary Marxist criticism bases itself on the argument that philosophical metaphysics is undermined by a proper understanding of historical materialism. This argument overlaps with the really lousy naive realism included in the modern reception of ideological scientism by both our scientific research institutions and by the popular culture at large....

July 29, 2020