“Man does not live by politics alone – and [we must] never forget it in our propaganda, written or spoken,” wrote Trotsky in 1923. Marxism is often accused of being a lifeless ‘dogma,’ engaging purely in economic analysis. However, as Alan Woods explains in the #IMU22 session ‘Marxism and Art: Unshackling Culture from Capitalism,’ human lives would be meaningless without artistic expression. Rescuing culture and raising it to a higher level for future generations is an essential task of the class struggle.

The Summit of the Americas is typically a window-dressing exercise where political leaders from the continent meet on a regular basis to issue a joint statement of good intentions. Not this time. The one Biden convened in Los Angeles on 6-10 June was an unmitigated disaster, which showed the decreasing ability of the US to dominate its own backyard. 

In 2001 US President George W Bush sent American troops into Afghanistan, and soon afterwards the Taliban regime fell. This was followed by years of fighting, in which hundreds of thousands of people were killed. After twenty years of fighting, the Taliban are now back in power.

The Supreme Court’s position on Roe v. Wade would ban abortion access for millions of people in the US. In this podcast episode, Laura Brown (editor of Socialist Revolution) and Joel Bergman (editor of Fightback) discuss the reasons and impact of a repeal of Roe v. Wade, and provide a Marxist perspective to fight back against this egregious attack on abortion rights.

There are many myths surrounding Lenin and the Bolsheviks – particularly regarding the origins of the revolutionary party in Russia. Rob Sewell examines an important chapter from the history of Bolshevism, and the lessons for Marxists today.

The final round of the French presidential elections will be held on Sunday 24 April. The French electorate will be called upon to chose between Emmanuel Macron or Marine Le Pen – two sides of the same pro-boss, viciously anti-worker and reactionary capitalist coin! While the so-called leaders of the French left and trade union bureaucrats have capitulated to bourgeois pressure, calling for workers and youth to form a ‘Republican Front’ behind Macron to beat Le Pen, we say: neither one, nor the other!

Postmodernism is a counter-revolutionary tendency in ‘philosophy’ (if we are to dignify it with the term). While it presents itself as radical, in fact it represents a pessimistic attack on progress, objective truth and science in general – and the revolutionary ideas of Marxism in particular. We have to combat these reactionary ideas, which exert a powerful influence in academia, and even parts of the labour movement.

V. I. Lenin was one of the greatest revolutionaries to have ever lived. His life’s work and his ideas represent a brilliant application of the Marxist method. On the firm foundation of Marxist theory, Lenin built the Bolshevik Party, which in 1917 was able to lead the working class to the seizure of power in Russia – the first time that the working class anywhere had seized power on the scale of an entire nation. In this talk from Revolution Festival 2021, editor of Socialist Appeal, Rob Sewell, discusses his remarkable legacy, which any serious fighter for socialism today must undertake to carefully study.

As capitalism traverses its death agony, the world is experiencing turmoil: from the war in Ukraine, to the unresolved pandemic, to runaway inflation and the threat of a new recession triggered by the war. In the following talk, delivered at the recently held national conference of Socialist Appeal, the British section of the International Marxist Tendency, Fred Weston explains the fundamental driving factors of this crisis, how it is making life unbearable for millions of working people, how it is transforming consciousness, and how it is preparing the ground for an era of revolutionary upheaval.

One of capitalism's oldest myths is that of the efficiency of the so-called 'free-market' and its superiority to a socialist planned economy. Defending economic planning, in this talk from the 2021 Revolution Festival, Adam Booth responds to the libertarian ideas of the Austrian School of economics, whose 'theories' amount to vitriolic support of the unrestricted rule of capital at the expense of the needs of society.

Dialectical materialism is the philosophy of Marxism. It is our method for understanding nature, history and society. This nine-episode podcast series, ‘The ABCs of Marxist philosophy’, will provide listeners with a valuable introduction to the basics of dialectical materialism, explaining all its aspects in a clear and accessible way.

It has now been two weeks since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia. Since then, the hypocritical Western imperialists and their lackeys in the media have been pouring forth endless denunciations of Russia's actions.

The Ukraine crisis has confirmed the dictum that "the truth is the first victim of war". In this talk given to British Marxists on Tuesday 1 March, Jorge Martín of the International Marxist Tendency cuts across the lies and war propaganda. He explains the real causes of this war, its background, the imperialist ambitions of both Russia and the West, and the hypocrisy of western imperialism throughout the course of this conflict.

We’re often told that the British monarchy is little more than harmless pompery, the equivalent of a shiny ornament atop the solid Christmas tree of British democracy. It is there to look nice, but does not actually affect how the country is run. And after all, isn’t the Queen a lovely lady who works mightily hard?

In November 1918, Germany exploded into revolution. In the spring of 1919, the working class succeeded in seizing power and declaring a Bavarian Soviet Republic. In its short, heroic lifetime, the republic had to fight not only against open counter-revolution, but also against the results of its own inexperience. This article was first published in the theoretical magazine ‘In Defence of Marxism’. Get your copy of the latest issue here.