This article by Alan Woods was originally written in 1989 to commemorate 200 years of the Great French Revolution, with a new introduction by the author. Alan Woods explains the internal dynamics of the revolution and above all the role played by the masses.

In this in depth article Alan Woods looks at the specific historical role of Napoleon Bonaparte. He looks into the characteristics of this man that fitted the needs of the reactionary bourgeoisie as it attempted to consolidate its grip on French society and sweep to one side the most revolutionary elements who had played a key role in guaranteeing the victory of the revolution.

This article by Alan Woods looks at how the French Revolution affected British poets. It struck Britain like a thunderbolt affecting all layers of society and this was reflected in its artists and writers.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart is considered by many as the greatest musician of all time. He was revolutionary in more senses than one. One of his main achievements was in the field of opera. Before Mozart, opera was seen as an art form exclusively for the upper classes. This was true not only of those who went to see it, but also of its dramatis personae - the characters who were shown on the stage, and especially the protagonists. With The Marriage of Figaro (Le Nozze di Figaro in its original Italian title), all this changes. This is the story of a servant who stands up to his boss and outwits his master.

Despite his confused politics, Lenin had a great respect for the Russian anarchist Kropotkin, particularly as the author of the book about the Great French Revolution. He pointed out that Kropotkin had been the first to look at the French Revolution through the eyes of a researcher, to focus the attention on the plebeian masses, and to continually underline the role and meaning of the craftsmen, the workers and other representatives of the working people during the French Revolution.

Venezuela’s Bolivarian Revolution was a watershed moment in the history of the class struggle. It was a ray of light in the dark years following the collapse of Stalinism. Long before the 2008 crisis, Occupy, BLM, or the rise of Sanders or Mamdani, it gave credibility to anti-capitalism, anti-imperialism, and socialism.

The Fourth International was founded by Trotsky in 1938. By that point, the Second ‘Socialist’ International and the Third ‘Communist’ International had completely betrayed their historic missions and acted as traitorous obstacles in the way of the victory of the working class. A new revolutionary leadership was required worldwide, one founded upon the Marxist ideas long since abandoned by the other internationals.

Today is the 50th anniversary of the Fall of Saigon. Prior to this denouement, from 30-31 January 1968, 70,000 North Vietnamese soldiers, together with guerrilla fighters of the NLF, launched one of the most daring military campaigns in history. The Tet Offensive was the real turning point in the Vietnam War. In 2008, on its 40th anniversary, Alan Woods analysed the events that led to the Vietnam War and the significance of the Tet Offensive in bringing about the defeat of US imperialism.

The Second World War is one of the most mythologised events in history. In the West, we are led to believe that Winston Churchill and Roosevelt single-handedly led the Allies in a struggle for democracy against the fascist totalitarianism of Nazi Germany. But what’s the real story of WWII, the one they don’t teach you at school?

After four years of relative stasis, the Syrian civil war was reignited this week by a sudden rebel offensive on Aleppo. In order to answer the questions this raises from a Marxist perspective, we are republishing this reading guide.

Today, Venezuela is used as a horror story by right-wingers and reactionaries, who hold it up as an example of why “socialism never works”. In fact, the Venezuelan Revolution was an inspiring episode in recent history, which showed the immense power of the masses and the potential of workers to run their workplaces without bosses. But it also demonstrated that you cannot have half a revolution: once the process has begun, it must end with the expropriation of capitalism and socialist reconstruction – as our comrade Luis Romero from Caracas explains!

This book, originally published in May 2005, is a collection of articles written by Alan Woods and covers the momentous events of the Bolivarian revolution from the April 2002 coup which was defeated by the masses, up until 2005 when president Chavez declared that the aims of the Venezuelan revolution could only be achieved by abolishing capitalism.

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.

Last week in Lenin in a Year, we delved into an important text that Lenin wrote amidst the 1905 Revolution: Two Tactics of the Social-Democracy in the Democratic Revolution. The revolution, however, went down to defeat. In the wake of the counter-revolution, all kinds of pessimism and mysticism swept Russia. These moods even infected layers of the Bolsheviks, reflected in attempts to revise Marxist philosophy. This week we republish Alan Woods’ excellent introduction to Lenin’s 1908 work, Materialism and Empirio-criticism, in which Lenin launched a strident defence of dialectical materialism.

Following the article on James Joyce’s Ulysses, published in issue 39 of In Defence of Marxism magazine, Hamid Alizadeh of the IDOM editorial board writes on Joyce’s Dubliners: a masterful critique of the paralysis, hypocrisy and alienation of Irish bourgeois society in the 20th century, which epitomised the ferment brewing in Ireland in the years prior to the Easter Rising of 1916.