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On 4th May 1919 Chinese people marched to end backwardness in China and
humiliation by the imperialist powers. They were led by Chen Duxiu. Chen realised that the modernisation of China could only be carried out by
the working class and founded the Chinese Communist Party in 1921. For a
hundred years the Chinese have engeged on the long and tortuous march to
modernisation.
"...the French events
suddenly brought home to me the reality of socialist revolution and how we had
entered a new stormy period, which the tendency had predicted. Within a couple
of years, the Labour government had fallen and Britain entered a convulsive
period including a near general strike. The French events of 1968, after a
short delay, had even found an echo in Britain. Those days of 40 years ago will
return again. This time we can be better prepared. Without doubt, 1968 will be
forever remembered as a political turning point by all those who were touched
by those historic events. That was certainly my experience."
With preparations for war in full swing the
small Workers' International League gathered around Ralph Lee and Ted Grant was
the only voice that stood out defending a real internationalist position. Here
we provide our readers with the lead article of the August 1939 edition of Youth
For Socialism, signed by Ted Grant.
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.
Today marks 40 years since the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther
King Jr., shot in the face on the 2nd floor balcony of the Lorraine
Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. James Earl Ray was imprisoned for the
assassination, though never granted a trial for his murder. Given the
US government's targeting of radicalised black leaders at this time,
whoever pulled the trigger did the state's dirty work for them. The
King family never accepted Ray was responsible.
This horrific destruction of French civilians compares with the
militarily useless slaughter of the people and cities of Dresden and
Magdeburg in the closing days of the War. Was this a warning to the
French workers like the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki was
warning to Stalin: thus far and no farther?
The nineteenth century was an era of price
stability. It was also the age of the gold standard. Inflation can have many
triggers, but it always involves an increase in money emissions at some point
in order to give expression to higher prices. It is difficult to increase the
money supply quickly if you have to mine precious metals, so runaway inflation
just didn’t happen back then. The government can’t really control inflation.
Now it’s back!
Here we publish A Marxist View of the 20th Century, first shown at 
Tomorrow marks the 70th anniversary of the murder
of Trotsky's eldest son - Leon Sedov -by agents of the Stalinist secret police,
the GPU. He was thirty-two years of age. This crime constituted part of the
systematic hounding and murder of Trotsky's key supporters and family, whose
only ‘crime' was to defend genuine Marxism against Stalin and the crimes of the
Russian bureaucracy.
The coming to power of the Nazi party in Germany 75 years ago marks the begining of one of the darkest periods of human history. What is Fascism and how did it emerge in a country with the strongest labour movement in the world? Mick Brooks of Socialist Appeal talks on the story of the rise of the Nazis.
If there was one man who embodied the spirit of revolutionary democracy,
it was Tom Paine. He inspired the American Revolution of 1776, took part
in the French Revolution of 1789 and, while abroad in France, was tried
in Britain for seditious libel for writing his book 'The Rights of Man'
Pentrich in Derbyshire is a quiet place these days. But in 1817 it was the centre of a plot to
overthrow the Government of the day.
Seventy-five years ago today, on January 30th 1933, Hitler was appointed
Chancellor of Germany. Two months later the Reichstag voted him
dictatorial powers. The workers' parties were banned and their leaders
thrown into concentration camps. The strongest labour movement in
Europe was destroyed without even breaking a pane of glass, as Hitler
boasted. The way was clear for genocide and world war.
"The new generation, in particular,
must understand the part Stalinism played in German events prior
to Hitler's seizure of power, if they wish to understand its
present role", wrote Ted Grant in 1944. Trotsky and the Fourth
International alone warned of the catastrophe the Nazi's would bring upon the workers of Germany, Europe and
of the Soviet Union. The Stalinists surrendered the
German masses to Hitler and even proclaimed the coming to
power of Hitler as a victory
expressing the crisis of capitalism, boastfully proclaiming 'our turn
next'.
