130th anniversary of the death of Karl Marx
To mark the 130th anniversary of the death of Karl Marx we are republishing here a revised version of an article by the late Phil Mitchinson.
Marxist theory
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A History of Film
The last few years have seen a number of Hollywood film companies marking their centenary anniversaries. Marxists see film, as with other art forms, as providing a reflection of class society and its structures. Bob Stothard looks over the long history of film and what it can tell us.
The History of Philosophy
Alan Woods, editor of the In Defence of Marxism website, speaks about the history of philosophy at the UCLU Marxist Society in London, giving an overview of philosophical thought from the early Greeks, through the British empiricists and the German romantics, to the revolutionary ideas of Marx, Engels, and dialectical materialism.
Civilisation, Barbarism and the Marxist view of History
This article by Alan Woods – published in the second edition of the In Defence of Marxism magazine – deals with barbarism and the development of human society. In post-modern writing, history appears as an essentially meaningless and inexplicable series of random events or accidents. It is governed by no laws that we can comprehend. This denial of progress in history is characteristic of the psychology of the bourgeoisie in the phase of capitalist decline.
Origin of the family: In Defence of Engels and Morgan
Rob Sewell discusses Engels’ famous text on the ‘Origins of the Family’ – a powerful example of the Marxist method of historical materialism, which traces the beginnings of the family, women’s oppression, and class society.
Marxism and the Media – Part Two
As with the sites of production of other commodities, the sites of media production are simultaneously sites of struggle. Journalists and other media workers can and must struggle against the domination of capital over their professions and over humankind.
The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man
John Pickard, former editor of the British Marxist newspaper “Militant”, speaks at the ULU Marxist Summer School 2012 on the role played by labour in the transition from ape to man and the Marxist analysis of human evolution.
Marxism and the Media — Part One
Perhaps nothing elicits more disagreement and debate among Marxists and other left activists than a discussion about the media. There is no doubt that the mass media is omnipresent, mediating every aspect of our lives. How one relates to and interprets the world is largely colored by how the media informs us. On the eve of the release of the Leveson report, we publish this Marxist analysis of the media from a correspondent in the USA.
The Moscow Trials: A lesson from history
The Moscow Trials, which lasted from 1936 to 1938 will go down as the greatest frame-up in history. Their aim was to liquidate the entire
remaining Bolshevik old guard and act as the means by which Stalin
could consolidate his power as head of the bureaucratic caste that ruled the Soviet Union. Seventy-five years on, Jim Brookshaw – a former member of the British Communist Party – looks back at what happened and asks: why?
Conserving Culture Under Capitalism
The effects of the capitalist crisis are being felt at every level of society. As reported in a Time
magazine article in April, this also includes the preservation of
historical sites. As the cash-strapped European states race to cut
public spending and slash budgets, the historical achievements of
mankind crumble under paltry allotments for cultural preservation.
“Under-consumption” and the Marxist Theory of Crisis – Part Two
We will deal with the tendency of the rate of profit to fall in a future article, but for now it is sufficient to observe that the views expressed in Anti-Dühring represent the standpoint of both Marx and Engels, which, despite all the efforts of the revisionists to misrepresent them, was identical.
Marx, Darwin and Gould: The revolution of evolution
The theory of evolution represented a major revolution in modern science, forever changing how we view the natural world and our place within it. In this article, we look at how the theory of evolution has been developed since Darwin’s time, and the insights offered by the philosophy of Marxism.