There are a great many things that can be said about Lenin, but it would take up several posts. In this particular post, I will instead offer a couple of quotes that give us an insight into Lenin’s lack of ‘dialectical foresight’ – foresight which even people at the time had! Before and after the … Read more
A few months ago, I was collecting all of the books I had bought from the IMT’s Wellred Books to deposit in the shed, where they belong. I picked up the third volume of Trotsky’s three-volume History of the Russian Revolution and skimmed it. It is a marvellous work of literature, providing a wealth of … Read more
In the IMT, I was always taught that Lenin and Trotsky had conducted a heroic battle against anti-Semitism, and that it was revived by the evil Stalin as part of the ‘bureaucratic counter-revolution’ that reversed many of the ‘gains’ of the Russian Revolution. I had no idea of the Bolsheviks’ early efforts to stamp out … Read more
Just a few months ago, I would have denied that the IMT was anti-Semitic. I would have said that, for all my problems with them, I did not see anti-Semitism as one of them. I even convinced myself, for a time, that our position on Israel was ‘moderate’ compared to those of other left-wing sects … Read more
I had my criticisms of Ted Grant and Socialist Appeal, but I considered it free of the taint of anti-Semitism – until now. You see, our position on Israel-Palestine was obviously absurd, but was distinct from the overtly racist position of the SWP, which has no problem with the ‘reactionary’ Israeli working-class being driven into … Read more
Life in a cult leaves you bruised and battered. When I left the IMT in March 2020, I knew I had a road both long and thorny to travel before I could recover. I may never recover fully from the experience, but that does not mean that I am not going to try. In recent … Read more
How I became a Corbynista It is the end of an era. Jeremy Corbyn’s time has come and gone. Despite all of the fire and fury, the optimism and exuberance, the tumult and turmoil, the Corbyn movement appears to have collapsed as quickly as it began. That is not to say that the Corbyn movement … Read more
Introduction A central feature of Marxism (and indeed, Trotskyism) is dialectical materialism. Marx developed his theory of dialectical materialism from his re-interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy. Hegel borrowed the concept from Heraclitus, an ancient Greek thinker, who famously argued that the world was in flux and contained contradictions. On this basis, he stated that ‘No one … Read more
Introduction Today marks exactly a year since my resignation from the International Marxist Tendency. I republish here in full my resignation letter, which most members of the organisation have not read. These things are naturally withheld from the membership. It will help set the record straight about my departure, since all sorts of lies are … Read more
Winston Churchill has become a favourite punching-bag of the far-left in recent years. Some have even gone as far as to put him in the same moral category as Hitler. Since Churchill is seen as one of the great heroes of Western and liberal civilisation, the surest way of discrediting it is to discredit the … Read more