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
‘So far I have been discussing an ideal totalitarian society, of which the existing ones are (or were) only more or less successful approximations. Later Stalinism (like Maoism) was a reasonably fair approximation. Its triumph consisted not simply in that virtually everything in the Soviet Union was either falsified or suppressed—statistics, historical events, current events, … Read more
I have just read Tony Aitman’s obituary of Ted Grant from 2006. Aitman is a member of Peter Taaffe’s Socialist Party (which made off with the majority of the organisation after the split in Militant between Taaffe and Grant). In the obituary, Aitman is respectful but notes Grant’s many flaws, in particular a tendency to … 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