The events of the Russian Revolution1917 are the greatest in all of human history. For the first time in history, the exploited masses fought back and won. And yet within 10 years, the Soviet Union had degenerated into a bureaucratic and totalitarian regime, with Stalin at its head. How did this process occur? And what is Stalinism?

The decision of Lawrence & Wishart to demand that the Marxist Internet Archive (marxists.org) take down the collected works of Marx and Engels from their website has sparked justified outrage across the internet. Such works should not be a source of profit for publishers, but a freely available source of revolutionary education for workers and youth.

In this recording from the Marxist Summer School 2013, Jorge Martin, writer for www.marxist.com and International Secretary for Hands Off Venezuela, discusses the contributions made by Ted Grant – founder of the Militant Tendency – towards the Marxist theory of the state and the analysis of the Stalinist regimes in Russia and Eastern Europe after the Second World War, primarily based on Ted Grant’s excellent document “Against the Theory of State Capitalism”.