The birth of the Italian Left Opposition In the darkest days of the Italian labour movement in the early 1930s, shortly after Mussolini had consolidated his grip on power, and as many Italian Communists and Socialists languished in fascist prisons or were forced to live in exile, a small group of Communist Party members, including three Central Committee members, turned to Trotsky as they attempted to build an opposition to the Stalinist leadership of Togliatti. Here we publish five letters of Trotsky to the newly formed group.
Class Struggle or Conspiracy? Black helicopters, Area 51, the Illuminati, Freemasons, “lizard people,” and the New World Order—these are the building blocks of what are called conspiracy theories. These “theories” are not actually theories at all, in a scientific sense, but are generally formed from a strange—and often extremely inventive—connecting of unconnected dots.
Gore Vidal: a belated obituary On 31 July Gore Vidal died at his home in Los Angeles from complications arising from pneumonia. He was 86 and had been ill for some time. As I was away on holiday at the time, I did not find out about this till later. The comrades in charge of Marxist.com decided to republish an article I had written in July 2002 with the title The decline and fall of the American empire, based on a television interview with the American writer.
