Reflections from a Picket Line
The following is a short letter from a Postal Worker from Oxford, giving his impressions in his own humorous words of his experience on the picket line. For many of us, it is a grassroots view we can identify with.
The following is a short letter from a Postal Worker from Oxford, giving his impressions in his own humorous words of his experience on the picket line. For many of us, it is a grassroots view we can identify with.
The commemoration meeting in memory of Leon
Trotsky was an outstanding success. 300 people gathered in the Jose Felix Rivas
hall of the Teresa Carreño Theatre in Caracas to hear the first ever public
event organised by a government ministry on the life of Leon Trotsky.
Could the Communist party of India have made a decisive difference in the independence movement? Here Jamil shows they were above all the prisoners of the policies imposed by Stalin, which were normally reformist, indeed counter-revolutionary. But occasionally Stalin lurched into an ultra-left phase as in 1947-48, called the ‘Zhdanov offensive.’ In lurching from right to left, a drunk will at one point be found upright. That is the significance of the correct perception of what was happening in India by the Moscow commentators Dyakov and Zhukov.
Authorities in Venezuela have organised a public
meeting to commemorate the 67th anniversary of the assassination of Leon
Trotsky. For the first time since that date, Trotsky’s death is being
commemorated officially by a government institution. Estaban Volkov, Celia
Hart, and Ricardo Napurí are participating in events around the commemoration,
which also include television and radio appearances, where the ideas and life
of Trotsky are discussed.
Leon Trotsky’s murder was no accident or spontaneous action by the dictator Stalin, but
a monstrous preconceived act that was the culmination of a murder campaign against
the whole of the old Bolshevik leadership of the revolution and those who stood
by the genuine ideas of Marxism. We republish this article published in Militant in 1985.
Showing tonight on ITV1 is The War on Democracy , John Pilgers documentary that analyses the relationship between Latin America and the US, focusing on Washingtons attitude to
countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile. Pilger pays special attention to the developing situation in Venezuela, including an interview with President Hugo Chavez.
Showing tonight on ITV1 is The War on Democracy , John Pilger’s documentary that analyses the relationship between Latin America and the US, focusing on Washington’s attitude to
countries such as Venezuela, Bolivia and Chile. Pilger pays special attention to the developing situation in Venezuela, including an interview with President Hugo Chavez.
Today is the 67th anniversary of the death of Leon Trotsky. Together
with Lenin, Trotsky was one of the great Marxist theoreticians of the
20th century, who dedicated his life to the emancipation of the working
class. Not only did he work for the overthrow of capitalism, but also
for the overthrow of Stalinism, a monstrous totalitarian regime which
held the Russian working class in submission. As a consequence, Stalin
sought during the Purge Trials to murder the entire leadership of the
Bolshevik party, and ordered the assassination of Leon Trotsky. After
the failed attempt in May 1940, Stalins assassin eventually succeeded
in murdering Trotsky on the 20th of August in Mexico city. Today we
publish Natalya Sedov Trotskys original account of the assasination.
The establishment of the Labour Party to give a political voice to the trade union movement was a historic achievement. Even today, after more than a decade during which the Party has been firmly in the grip of Blairite, pro-capitalist interlopers, the link between the unions and the Party remains.
The threatened invasion of India by Japanese imperialism in 1942
brought the question of India front and centre before the British
working class. Rather than arm the Indian people and risk India falling
into the hands of the Indians, the British imperialists would have
prefered it to fall, temporarily, into the hands of the Japanese.
Fred Weston, editor of the website In Defence of Marxism, talks about the current situation in Brazil to the London Aggregate of the Socialist Appeal at the begining of July. The occupied factories movement in Brazil is symptomatic of the extreme instability throughout the Latin American continent, as is the Lula governments attempts to divide the working class along race lines and its recent attacks on the CIPLA and Flasko occupied factories. Listen to part 1 and part 2 .
A
Speech delivered in Barcelona Wednesday August 1st 2007 to a gathering of
Marxists from around the world by Gerry Ruddy, a member of the Irish Republican
Socialist Party.