Germany 1921: The March Action "The Bolsheviks thought that their revolution could only be the forerunner: the problems posed in Russia could only be resolved on a world scale and, in the meantime, the decisive battlefield was Germany, where the bourgeoisie, after November 1918, owed its survival to the alliance between the officer corps and the Social Democratic and trade union apparatus against the Workers’ Councils."
From: The Colonial Revolution and the Sino-Soviet Split A key historical document that analyses the important question of "proletarian bonapartism", i.e. Stalinism, in the former colonial countries. It explains the roots of the Chinese revolution and why the Maoist regime came into conflict with the Soviet Union, and also the nature of several similar regimes that came into being in that period. It was also the basis for the expulsion of Ted Grant and his followers from Mandel's so-called Unified Secretariat of the Fourth International.
Will there be a slump? Ted Grant's perspective that the seemingly endless boom of the post 2nd World War period would actually end and 'be followed by a catastrophic downswing, which cannot but have a profound effect on the political thinking of the enormously strengthened ranks of the labour movement' must have seen like madness to some at the time. However, as we have seen, the Marxist analysis has been proven to be more than correct in predicting the continuing crisis of capitalism over the last few decades. This text remains even today an excellent riposte to all those who thought that capitalism could by magic avoid crisis and enter a period of non-stop plenty.
