Socialist Appeal - International Marxist Tendency
Marxism. Socialism. Revolution.
One hundred years ago Europe was in the middle of a bloody world war. With tensions rising in the Middle East, the Korean peninsula, and the South China Sea - and given whose fingers are on red buttons all over the world - should we be worried about the possibility of a similar situation today?
The historic crisis of European capitalism expresses itself most graphically in the existential crisis of the European Union. This throws up a number of questions for Marxists on the nature of the EU and the attitude of Marxists to the idea of European integration. We publish here a reading guide on the question of Marxism and the European Union.
We publish here two pieces written by Leon Trotsky - in 1917 and 1923 respectively - on the question of the "United States of Europe". As Trotsky stresses, the only way forward for the working class of Europe is along the lines of a European-wide socialist revolution. As the capitalist European project unravels today, Trotsky's analysis remains as relevant as ever.
In this article, first published in 2004, Rob Sewell deals with the important contribution Lenin made on the national question and how such a correct stand on this issue guaranteed the success of the Bolshevik Party in October 1917. The national question remains a key issue for Marxists in the current epoch of capitalist crisis.
It is nearly seven years since George Bush, the then president of the US, made his famous "New World Order" speech. This was in 1991. In the build-up to the Gulf War the main imperialist power on earth promised a world without wars, without dictatorships and, of course, a world firmly under the control of a single all-powerful world policeman--the US. After the fall of Stalinism, US imperialism really thought that the world would be firmly under their command and they would be able to dictate the destiny of each and every country. All conflicts in the world were to be solved through dialogue in a kind of "Pax Americana." Now all these dreams have been reduced to rubble.