Marxist theory

We republish one of Ted Grant’s most important
writings. In the years after the Second World War the Trotskyist movement had to
reorient itself to a very different situation to that envisaged by Trotsky when
he had founded the Fourth International in 1938. Rather than falling into
crisis, capitalism in Western Europe and North America was experiencing a boom
which was later described as a ‘golden age’. After the post-War revolutionary
wave was seen off in the advanced capitalist countries, this made conditions
for revolutionaries very difficult. Illusions that capitalism had solved all
its problems began to develop quite widely. Ted analysed the causes of the boom
and why it would come to an end in ‘Will there be a slump?’ in 1960.’

Terry was a larger than life figure and a
fine representative of the Liverpool working
class. A ‘salt of the earth’ man who dedicated his efforts to the cause of the
working class. Always smiling and joking, he was always seen wearing his black
leather jacket, even in Parliament, a place he pretty much hated. He served his
time there from 1983, when he was elected along with Dave Nellist and later Pat
Wall as part of the Militant trio, until 1992. This was the culmination of
decades of work by Militant supporters in the Merseyside labour movement. They
had refused to abandon the struggle within the Labour Party.

On the 14th of March, at a quarter to three in the afternoon, the greatest living thinker ceased to think. He had been left alone for scarcely two minutes, and when we came back we found him in his armchair, peacefully gone to sleep — but for ever.

Karl Marx was a man with a family to look after, and a revolutionary
who no country acknowledged as citizen. A giant thinker of the modern
era who transformed our outlook in philosophy, economics and political
thought, Marx’s revolutionary activity was hobbled by poverty. Steve
Higham chronicles his hardships and achievements a century and a
quarter after his death.

Marxism
is a not a moral code and is more than a set of ideas. It is a method that, if
applied correctly to the concrete situation, acts as a compass for the movement
towards the transformation of society by the working class in the interests of
humanity as a whole. Anyone can use a compass but it is still necessary to
decide whether to continue heading north or to change direction. Trotsky’s
short article, Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay, though unfinished, contains some vital lessons for the class conscious
workers and youth.

As young men, Marx and Engels came
out of the German philosophical tradition. They were at this time groping their
way to becoming revolutionary activists. In 1845 Marx and Engels set out their
revolutionary world view for the first time in a book, The German Ideology, that
settled accounts with the Hegelian tradition from which they had just emerged.
It points the way to the clear language of the Communist Manifesto, published in 1848 and addressed to the workers
of the world.

Here we publish A Marxist View of the 20th Century, first shown at In Defence of Marxism in 2001.
Narrated by Alan Woods, with Lal Khan, Ted Grant and Noam Chomsky.