Ted Grant has been the foremost figure of Trotskyism in Britain and internationally. In the post-war period, the effects of world boom, the policies of right wing Labour Party reformism and the degeneracy of Stalinism combined to make a massive onslaught against the ideas of Marxism. While Grant's contemporaries now stand on the right of the movement, in dusty academic circles or have sunk into obscurity, the articles in this collection show the clarity of Grant's understanding and his ability to deepen and expand the ideas of Leon Trotsky.

As was the case with so many post-war political developments, the colonial revolution was shrouded in mystery and confusion to the leadership of what remained of the so-called Fourth International, as well as to the theoreticians of Stalinism and reformism. Different 'Trotskyist' sects took turns to idealise Mao Tse Tung, Ho Chi Minh, Fidel Castro, Che Guevara and others, without a glimmer of understanding about what real political forces these leaders represented. It was the Marxist tendency gathered around Ted Grant which was able to place all these leaders and movements in their correct context, explaining their origins and development.

One of the most important contributions made by Trotsky to the theoretical storehouse of Marxism was his analysis of the rise and development of Stalinism. He explained that the fundamental social gains of the October revolution remained intact, in the form of the state-ownership of the economy and the plan of production, but that the working class had been politically expropriated by a new ruling caste. Against those who saw this bureaucracy as a new ruling class, Trotsky argued that it was a parasitic growth resting on the economic base of a workers' state, and not a class.

As has already been mentioned in the introduction, there are many more articles and documents written by Ted Grant than could ever be contained in a single volume. Moreover, a section on the 'Marxist method' could, with justification, have included any or all of these contributions to socialist theory. Whatever the selection made, there would always be some glaring omissions. The three items included do not easily fit into any of the previous chapters, but the editors feel that each one is worthy of inclusion in its own right.

The end of the war brought about an entirely novel situation in Europe, presenting the Marxists with difficult and unforeseen theoretical problems. The revolutionary wave in Western Europe did indeed manifest itself in the election of left governments and the strident demands of the workers for concrete reforms and social change. But the full impact of the workers' movement was blunted by the Communist and Socialist Party leaderships, acting as a brake on developments. The precise characterisation of the post-war regimes in Western Europe and the perspectives for these countries were the subjects of intense debate within the Trotskyist movement.

In the debates about likely international developments - whether the post-war economy was heading for slump or boom, how long the post-war boom would last, whether or not capitalism had learnt to 'overcome' cyclical crises, and so on - Ted Grant often drew on the immediate experience and the statistical data of political and economic developments in Britain, for obvious reasons. In these cases, the intention was, nevertheless, to illustrate those processes that affected the advanced capitalist countries as a whole. But in addressing activists in the British labour movement it is also essential to point to those features and characteristics which, among the advanced countries, are

The most important feature of the entire post-war epoch, overshadowing and influencing all other factors, was the long, 25-year economic upswing. This represented the greatest explosion in investment, production, trade, science and technique in the whole of human history and it put its stamp on political developments in all the different parts of the world. In the advanced capitalist countries, as prosperity reached and then easily surpassed pre-war levels, it rekindled illusions in capitalism as a viable and 'natural' economic system. These illusions were transmitted to and articulated in the labour movement by the theoreticians of the right, who were indistinguishable from the

By 1938, while the rest of Europe was hurtling towards another carnage even more bloody than the last, in Spain the civil war was drawing inexorably towards defeat for the Republic.

The Spanish working class had taken the election of the Popular Front government in 1936 as the beginning of the socialist revolution and had moved spontaneously to occupy mines, offices, factories and the land. It was only the movement of the working class, arming itself and mobilising independently of the Popular Front government, that prevented a complete and immediate victory for the rebellion of General Franco in July 1936.

But what began as a civil war between a fascist regime and an

The purpose of this book is twofold. It is, firstly, to show that the modern ideas of Marxism have their direct roots in the working out of ideas in the previous period. Secondly, it is to show the central and unique role played by Ted Grant in the development of these ideas since the death of Trotsky in 1940.

This is the speech made by Ted Grant at Labour Party annual conference in 1983, appealing against his expulsion by the National Executive Committee in February of the same year. The NEC had begun an 'enquiry' into the newspaper Militant, on the urging of the capitalist press and Tory ministers, who goaded Michael Foot, the Labour leader, with having 'extremists' in his party.

These are relatively brief extracts from discussion documents, dealing with world perspectives in the post-boom period. The Marxists had not been able to predict the long duration of the post-war boom, but what was clear was that the first recession to affect all the advanced capitalist economies simultaneously, in 1974-5, marked the end of one epoch and the beginning of another. Later than may have been anticipated, events nevertheless vindicated the correct stand that had been made by Ted Grant on the fundamentals of capitalist economics.

In 1978, a radical faction of the Afghan Communist Party seized power in a military coup. The 'Saur Revolution' carried out a whole series of progressive measures. The government passed decrees abolishing the selling of brides and giving equality to women. It announced a land reform and the cancellation of farmers’ debts. These measures met with the ferocious opposition of the powerful land owners and moneylenders. This article by Ted Grant, published in 1978, contains an analysis of the revolution, as well as the phenomena of colonial revolutions and proletarian bonapartism more generally.

This is a discussion paper on Perspectives for Britain, written in 1977. There are literally scores of articles, speeches, documents and notes written by Ted Grant on political and economic developments in Britain throughout this period, but the 1977 document adequately sums up the general position of British capitalism in its long and debilitating decline.

These are relatively brief extracts from discussion documents, dealing with world perspectives in the post-boom period. The Marxists had not been able to predict the long duration of the post-war boom, but what was clear was that the first recession to affect all the advanced capitalist economies simultaneously, in 1974-5, marked the end of one epoch and the beginning of another. Later than may have been anticipated, events nevertheless vindicated the correct stand that had been made by Ted Grant on the fundamentals of capitalist economics.

This is a document, dictated in 1966, in defence of the basic tenets of Trotskyism. It was a reply to an Irish socialist, Brendan Clifford, who put the classic Stalinist position, using garbled and one-sided quotations from Lenin to show how Trotskyism was a 'counter-revolutionary trend' opposed to the ideas and methods of 'Leninism'.