Issue 48 of In Defence of Marxism magazine – the quarterly theoretical journal of the Revolutionary Communist International – is out now! Alan Woods’ editorial, which we publish below, takes up the central question of whether we can truly know and understand the world around us, which is a theme throughout this issue. The four articles in this issue take up a wide range of questions relating to this topic: the crisis and stagnation of contemporary science, mysticism in interpreting quantum physics, the philosophical insights of Goethe’s Faust, and a critique of the philosophical writings of Mao.

With just two weeks before Trump re-enters the White House, the outgoing Democrats are doing everything they can to undermine the next president. In Ukraine in particular, where they fear a drastic change of course in the policy of US imperialism, they are funnelling in as much money as they can get away with, as well as escalating the war by allowing Ukraine to strike deep into Russia with US bombs.

Oh yes, you read the title correctly. An angry old man in Washington and a psychologically deranged president in Kyiv have been busy jointly plotting a plan that may potentially push the world into an abyss.

We live in an epoch of war. Israel’s brutal campaign in Gaza, backed by the West, has spilled into Lebanon. The Ukraine War is careening towards its bloody denouement. These and many other conflicts are a product of the crisis of capitalism, which is sharpening the divisions between the imperialist powers, and sowing instability everywhere. What is the solution? On 15 November, 19:30 GMT, the Revolutionary Communist International’s lead theoretician Alan Woods will deliver a speech on the question of war and imperialism today.

The shock result of the US presidential election provides yet another example of the kind of sudden and sharp changes that are implicit in the situation. Up to the very last minute, the media pundits were straining every nerve and muscle to prove that the polls were heading for a Harris victory, albeit with a narrow margin. 

This week, Against the Stream podcast went live for a very special episode. Now that the results of the US election have come in, Hamid Alizadeh and Alan Woods from the International Secretariat of the Revolutionary Communist International (RCI) sat down to discuss the implications of Trump's victory and what it means to communists. Alan is the editor of marxist.com, the author of numerous books on Marxist theory and the lead theoretician of the RCI.

The Middle East is sliding, inexorably it seems, towards regional war. Whose interests would such a war benefit? In a discussion we had in the International Secretariat of the Revolutionary Communist International, we asked ourselves this question.

Issue 47 of In Defence of Marxism magazine – the quarterly theoretical journal of the Revolutionary Communist International – is out now! We publish here Alan Woods’ editorial for this issue, in which he traces the lessons of the international communist movement from the times of Marx and Engels to today, and the revolutionary tradition of struggle against militarism, imperialism and war, which communists continue down to the present. Get your copy of issue 47 of In Defence of Marxism magazine now!

“‘Curiouser and curiouser!’ Cried Alice (she was so much surprised, that for the moment she quite forgot how to speak good English).”  (Lewis Carol, Alice in Wonderland)

As I write these lines, the headlines of the newspapers are dominated by the shock announcement that Russia would be “at war” with the United States and its allies if they lift restrictions on Ukraine’s use of long-range western missiles for the purpose of deep strikes on Russian territory.

“When the leaders speak of peace, the common people know that war is coming.” (Bertolt Brecht)

On this day in 1940, Trotsky died of injuries inflicted by a Stalinist agent. Despite the lies of Stalin’s epigones, there is nothing in Trotsky’s ideas that cannot also be found in Lenin. The two men reached the same political conclusions and led the Russian Revolution to victory in 1917, at the head of the Bolshevik Party. Both understood the necessity of world revolution; and after Lenin died, Trotsky continued to defend his real ideas and legacy against Stalin’s bureaucratic counterrevolution. It was for this reason that he was marked for death.

We publish here the editorial of issue 46 of In Defence of Marxism magazine, which looks at the relationship of culture, and art in particular, to the struggle for socialist revolution and human emancipation. In this editorial, Alan Woods dismantles the lazy caricature of Marxism as unconcerned with the rich cultural and artistic history of humanity. Issue 46 of In Defence of Marxism magazine is available now! Get your copy here.

The Spanish student strike of 1986/87 was an epoch-making movement, lasting three months, involving three million school and university students, with hundreds of thousands in demonstrations, which ended up in a victory against the Socialist Party government. This document, written at the time by Alan Woods, is a blow-by-blow account of the movement which draws out the main political points. Alan was in Spain for most of the struggle, involved in daily discussions with the leading Spanish Marxists which led the movement.

“Can a man take fire to his bosom, And his clothes not be burned? Can one walk on hot coals, And his feet not be seared?”(Proverbs 6:27-29)