Ian D. Thatcher’s 2003 biography of Trotsky is a work of genuine historical scholarship. In contrast to the hagiographies of Trotskyist sects, and the impressive but biased account by Isaac Deutscher, Thatcher’s work is a measured and objective assessment of Trotsky’s political career. It also includes incisive observations on Trotsky’s writings and political analyses in … 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
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
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