Trotsky’s theory of the permanent revolution is one of the most important, but also amongst the most misunderstood ideas in the entire Marxist tradition. Does it really mean that revolution needs to happen everywhere, all at once? Does it ignore workers outside of the West? Is it contrary to Lenin’s views? Josh Holroyd, leading member of the Revolutionary Communist International, takes up these questions and explains the real essence of Trotsky’s remarkable contribution to our theoretical arsenal.

This year marks the 50th anniversary of the Ethiopian Revolution, which began as an uprising against the semi-feudal despotism of Emperor Haile Selassie but would go much further, culminating in the abolition of capitalism in the country. In this article, Ben Curry, gives an account of these dramatic events, and explains the complex processes that shaped the revolution’s course.

In the autumn of 1914 Lenin began a detailed study of Hegel’s writings. His notes contain a brilliant insight into the dialectical method, of which he was a master. In this article, Hamid Alizadeh draws out the essential aspects of this method, underlining the fundamental importance of theory for the communist movement.

We are extremely proud to publish here a brand new English translation of a short 1922 article by Leon Trotsky, Attention to theory. First published in the monthly magazine Under the banner of Marxism, this article met with Lenin’s full approval and is referred to in a piece he wrote for the third edition of the magazine, On the significance of militant materialism. We are republishing the latter alongside this article.

50 years ago, after the long postwar boom, the world economy experienced its first truly global crisis. Falling output and spiralling inflation combined to devastate the working class. Today, capitalism faces similar turmoil. It must be overthrown.

In the summer of 1923, Germany found itself in the grip of an intense revolutionary ferment. But this historic opportunity for the working class to seize power was squandered, with devastating implications, not only for Germany, but for the course of the world socialist revolution. In this article, marking the hundredth anniversary of the dramatic failure of the German Revolution in October 1923, Tatjana Pinetzki explains how this situation emerged, the mistakes of the leadership, and the impact of these events on world history.

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.

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.

In the British general election, the Revolutionary Communist Party, only 8 weeks after its founding, ran the most successful revolutionary communist election campaign in decades. Fiona, candidate of the RCP, received 1,791 votes for an openly revolutionary programme. This is an excellent result, but the reason communists participate in elections is to raise their programme and to build the revolutionary party. In this article, Daniel Morley delves deeper into the theoretical underpinnings of communist strategy and tactics in elections.

After a brief break, we welcome the return of our series, Lenin in a Year, in which we explore the many writings – some more and some less well-known – of history’s greatest revolutionary, V. I. Lenin, in this centenary year of his death. 

Honoré de Balzac is renowned as a prolific literary genius and was one of Marx and Engels’ favourite authors. He was a pioneer of the Realist style that would be taken up by such famous authors as Émile Zola and Charles Dickens. In this article, Ben Curry explores Balzac’s Realist method, the predominant themes of his vast body of work, known collectively as The Human Comedy, and the fascinating paradox that lies at its heart.

We are very proud to announce the publication of Lenin’s masterpiece ‘Left-Wing’ Communism: An Infantile Disorder, by Wellred Books – the publishing house of the International Marxist Tendency. This rich text addresses the central questions of the building of a revolutionary party with Lenin’s characteristic clarity and depth. This edition contains a new introduction, written by Francesco Merli, which we publish below. Get your copy of ‘Left Wing’ Communism now!

Today we are proud to republish a very important article by Alan Woods, which we ask our readers to carefully consider. Through marxist.com, In Defence of Marxism magazine, and our publishing house Wellred Books, the IMT has conducted an all-round struggle for Marxist theory. But in doing so, we have addressed not only questions that are obviously connected to the workers’ struggle, but also others (apparently) far removed from it, from cosmology to culture to the class struggle in Roman antiquity. Some so-called ‘Marxists’ have mocked this approach, but as Alan Woods explains, their mockery is sorely misplaced.

This week in our Lenin in a Year series, we republish a short but punchy article by Lenin, originally written in 1913 for the Bolshevik paper Prosveshcheniye (Enlightenment). In it, Lenin traces the unbroken thread that places Marxism as the successor and synthesis of the most progressive and revolutionary ideas that came before it.

The deepening crisis of capitalism is causing immense political instability across the world. In this context, a rise in the number of ‘authoritarian’ and ‘populist’ governments has provoked much discussion over the rise of ‘strongman’ politics. But what exactly does this mean? In this article, Ben Gliniecki considers the nature of the capitalist state and the concept of ‘Bonapartism’, as developed by Marx, in order to answer this question and provide a perspective for the impact of the class struggle on politics today.