I haven’t posted on here for a while. I have been intensively learning French, and it is incredible what a few weeks of unplugging from Trotskyist bullshit can do for your mental health. Given the fact that it is the twentieth anniversary of 9/11 is today, I thought I may as well give my thoughts … Read more
Louis Proyect’s death was announced just this week. Having just found out the news, I feel duty-bound to write something in tribute. A well-known and well-respected online Marxist commentator, with a blog that attracted millions of hits over many years, he is one of the people to which I am indebted for rescuing me from … Read more
When I was in the IMT, we boasted endlessly of our democratic credentials. We compared ourselves favourably with Peter Taaffe’s organisation, which hounded out dissidents mercilessly. We replayed the trauma of the 1991-2 split over and over again. We convinced ourselves that we had much higher standards for our organisation. Little did I know that … Read more
When I joined the IMT, I found myself in this strange environment with which I was both personally, and, as it would turn out, politically incompatible. It was inevitable that it would all end in tears and that, as with so many other times in my largely depressing life, separation, ostracism and anger all round … Read more
I touched on this in my very first post on diamat, but at least two aspects of dialectical materialism which boggle the mind to no end, are the ideas that (a) one’s social class background is necessarily connected to one’s thought and (b) that human thought exists as part of an organic, homogeneous, dialectical whole, … Read more
In the latest example of the sensational anti-Semitism of the International Marxist Tendency, we have the organisation’s take on the crisis currently gripping the country. The author of the article is a member of the German section. Funny that, you would think a German would know better. The article begins thus: The Israeli bombing of … Read more
In this video from 2019, Alan Woods, head of the International Marxist Tendency (of which Socialist Appeal is the British section) makes the sensationally anti-Semitic claim at 12:34 that the anti-Semitism furor surrounding the Labour Party is a fabrication by the Israeli Embassy and its agents within the Labour Party. Needless to say, I did … Read more
One of the biggest philosophical questions is the problem of evil. Needless to say, it is a problem that Marxists wave aside. The whole notion of ‘good versus evil’ smacks of ‘bourgeois idealism’. Such moralism is to be avoided as much as humanly possible. One can only speak of ‘class struggle’, the forces of progress … 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
Like everyone else in Britain, I heard the sad news of the death of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. His passing has been marked by a reflection on his life, legacy and the institution of monarchy that he did so much to uphold. Likewise, it has also been an opportunity for the worst far-left cranks … Read more