C.L.R. James
A FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, THE ONLY HOPE
THERE IS A LOGIC IN HISTORY AND DESPITE ALL THE rich and strange episodes of historical evolution there is a consistent line which can be followed. We can see the future of the Third International in the role it plays in the Spanish revolution. THE SPANISH REVOLUTION
When Franco launched his attack on the Popular Front Government, that hybrid showed exactly what is to be expected from these political combinations of bourgeoisie and (...)
Home > 20- ENGLISH - MATERIAL AND REVOLUTION
20- ENGLISH - MATERIAL AND REVOLUTION
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A FOURTH INTERNATIONAL, THE ONLY HOPE
29 December 2021 -
Jack London - War of the Classes
28 December 2021, by Robert ParisJack London
War of the Classes
PREFACE
When I was a youngster I was looked upon as a weird sort of creature, because, forsooth, I was a socialist. Reporters from local papers interviewed me, and the interviews, when published, were pathological studies of a strange and abnormal specimen of man. At that time (nine or ten years ago), because I made a stand in my native town for municipal ownership of public utilities, I was branded a "red-shirt," a "dynamiter," and an "anarchist"; and (...) -
The first open declaration of opposition by old Bolshevik leaders to Stalinism in 1923
27 December 2021The Platform of the 46
A week after Leon Trotsky had sent his letter to the Central Committee 46 prominent Bolsheviks, some of whom occupied leading posts in economic management, presented their own criticism of the economic and inner-Party policy of the Party leadership of Kamenev, Zinoviev, Stalin, Rykov and Tomsky. This statement of opposition which became known as ‘The Platform of the 46’ was submitted to the Politburo on October 15, 1923, after being circulated among a number of (...) -
LENIN AND SOCIALISM
26 December 2021C.L.R. James
LENIN AND SOCIALISM
THOUGH BEFORE VERY LONG THE SOVIET UNION WAS TO be the only Workers’ State in the world, the international Socialist revolution had begun. As time passed and the isolation of the Soviet Union became clear, it might have been thought that the dictatorship of the proletariat in Russia enforced by the situation inside the country was premature. Difficult and dangerous as was its position, liable to collapse at any time, yet the Soviet Union fitted into the (...) -
Stalinism and Fascism
21 December 2021C.L.R. James
“AFTER HITLER, OUR TURN”
THE INTERNATIONAL PURGED
AS THE STALINIST REGIME DESTROYED THE BOLSHEVIK party by slander and organisational terror (not against class-enemies, it must always be remembered, which all history proves to be necessary, inevitable and not in the least confined to Communists, but against honest, intelligent and devoted members of its own ranks), so it automatically transferred these methods to the International. [1]
With the final expulsion of the (...) -
STALIN RUINS THE CHINESE REVOLUTION
19 December 2021C.L.LR. James
STALIN RUINS THE CHINESE REVOLUTION
EVEN WHILE THE STALINISTS, BY FALSIFICATION AND PHYSICAL repression, were destroying the propagandists of international Socialism, the world revolution which had seemed so remote in October, 1924, stirred itself, and even while the new theory was being made law presented the International with one of its greatest opportunities. We have to pass over how the Stalinists forced the Communist Party of Poland to support Pilsudski in the coup (...) -
The Right of Self-Determination and the Negro in the United States of North Americas
16 December 2021C.L.R. James
The Right of Self-Determination and the Negro in the United States of North Americas
(July 1939)
Source: SWP New York Convention Resolutions, 11 July 1939. Proofreading: Einde O’Callaghan (March 2016).
In 1930 Negroes in America constituted nearly twelve million, or 10 percent of the American population. Of these, two-thirds were still in the South, despite the war and postwar emigration to the North. In the cities of the North and East, the Negroes form only a small (...) -
Hegel’s Philosophy of History - Part III
12 December 2021Part III: The Roman World
Napoleon, in a conversation which he once had with Goethe on the nature of Tragedy, expressed the opinion that its modern phase differed from the ancient, through our no longer recognizing a Destiny to which men are absolutely subject, and that Policy occupies the place of the ancient Fate [La politique est fatalité]. This therefore he thought must be used as the modern form of Destiny in Tragedy – the irresistible power of circumstances to which individuality (...) -
Hegel’s Philosophy of History - Part I
11 December 2021Introduction
Part I: The Oriental World
We have to begin with the Oriental World, but not before the period in which we discover States in it. The diffusion of Language and the formation of races lie beyond the limits of History. History is prose, and myths fall short of History. The consciousness of external definite existence only arises in connection with the power to form abstract distinctions and assign abstract predicates; and in proportion as a capacity for expressing Laws (of (...) -
Hegel’s Philosophy of History - Part II
10 December 2021Introduction
Part I
Part II: The Greek World
Among the Greeks we feel ourselves immediately at home, for we are in the region of Spirit; and though the origin of the nation, as also its philological peculiarities, may be traced farther – even to India – the proper Emergence, the true Palingenesis of Spirit must be looked for in Greece first. At an earlier stage I compared the Greek world with the period of adolescence; not, indeed, in that sense, that youth bears within it a serious, (...)