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
Trotskyists always deny that Trotsky bears any responsibility for the horrors of Stalinism. It is entirely the fault of the ‘objective conditions’. That Trotsky assisted Lenin in suppressing the working-class, establishing a one-party state and crushing all opposition within the party itself are facts which are overlooked. All of this paved the way for the … Read more
For decades, Trotskyists have denied that the degeneration of the USSR has anything to do with Bolshevik ideology. Most of us realise that the seed of Stalinism was in Bolshevism from the very beginning. Trotskyists prefer to blame the difficult conditions specific to ‘backward’ Russia. It was the ‘objective conditions’ of this uncivilised, peasant nation … Read more
Trotskyists are fond of saying that the USSR wasn’t ‘real socialism’. They have any number of excuses – economic and cultural backwardness, imperialist encirclement, counter-revolution, diplomatic isolation, etc. They are convinced that this was unique to the experience of Russia, and that other revolutions in the ‘advanced’ countries of the West will not have faced … 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
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
I have been sitting in my living room, looking through ancient bank statements and scrawling through with a fine tooth-comb the cold, expressionless figures that appear on every page, searching for the payments I made to the International Marxist Tendency over two and a half years. I have calculated that I spent over £1000 – … Read more
I made this blog for those doubting members of Trotskyist cults who are reconsidering their commitments. It would make sense, then, to make a post advising all those who find themselves having second thoughts about their involvement with the sordid sects of which they are a member. Here are some of the things to watch … 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
Chris Williamson, former Labour MP for Derby North, Corbyn supporter and anti-Semite extraordinaire, just made this bizarre retweet of an anti-Semitic conspiracy theory: Now when some lefty loony on Twitter brings up the Rothschilds, you know it’s something bad. But Williamson, who is either an ignoramus or an anti-Semite who knows exactly what he is … Read more