It’s been a long time coming – our last revamp was back in 2017 – but here, at last, is the new look marxist.com!
The timing couldn’t be more fortuitous. On the one hand, the world is wracked by chaos and unrest, and millions are looking for a way forward. On the other hand, this weekend marks the 109th anniversary of the most important event in human history, the October Revolution of 1917, the event that precisely lights the path forward today.
109 years ago, for the first time in human history, the workers and downtrodden masses overthrew their masters and seized power on the scale of a continent-spanning country, and to mark that event, we’ve featured some material on our brand-new front page, which we invite you to explore.
But before we say any more about what’s exciting and new, a word about how we got here, and what remains unchanged.
It’s been a long road getting here
Our International has had an online presence since the early days of the internet. The first website we ever had was an advert for Reason in Revolt: Marxist Philosophy and Modern Science by Alan Woods and Ted Grant back in 1996.
Realising the potential of the internet early on, in 1997 we took advantage of a free offer from our email provider (yes, you had to pay for an email address in those days) to host a website. The precursor to marxist.com was born.
Long before AI and ‘vibe-coding’, the website’s then-editor Jorge Martín was forced to learn HTML in order to upload daily articles. With its yellow text on black background and little gifs flashing the word, ‘NEW!’ next to every new article – it might not be much to look at today, but believe it or not, it was actually quite trendy back then!
By 1998 we had transferred to our present domain, marxist.com, which became the official website of our International. From the early days, marxist.com carried the title, In Defence of Marxism. That was the first task that we set ourselves: to defend genuine revolutionary Marxism at a time when the western ruling class was crowing over its victory over so-called ‘Communism’ in the Soviet Union, and when genuine Marxists represented a vanishingly small minority.
Very quickly, however, we started getting unexpected correspondence. From young revolutionaries in Indonesia, writing to us in 1998 during an ongoing revolutionary struggle that would bring down the Suharto dictatorship. From communists inside Serbia, writing to us from cities literally under NATO bombardment, amidst the break up of Yugoslavia.
The founder of our International, Ted Grant, was in his late 80s by then. But he immediately saw the significance of this for Marxists: the first break in the isolation that a difficult objective situation had placed on us. In fact, despite his advanced years, he insisted on learning how to use the internet!
Since then, marxist.com has gone from strength to strength. It has established for itself an enormous authority, and has been a lever for spreading the Revolutionary Communist International all over the globe.
Our mission statement remains the same, however: to be an unrivalled source of Marxist theory, and to publish the highest quality analysis in a timely manner.
And now for what’s new!
Two years ago, we issued a survey and put it to you, the readers, what did you want to see following a revamp? Many answers returned back to two things: text-to-speech functionality, and an improved search function.
We are proud to announce that we’ve implemented both of these excellent suggestions.
We will include text-to-speech for all new articles in English going forward, and will try to implement the same functionality for some of our most popular articles from the archive.
I personally think the important new functionality, however, is the search function. To date, we have uploaded over 13,000 articles on marxist.com – a real storehouse of ideas that the new search function allows us to save from oblivion. Take a look for yourself, and see what hidden gems you can find, exploring by author, topic, country, etc. We will also continuously endeavour to bring to light some of the best material from our archives.
But there is more!
In our effort to make marxist.com a one-stop-shop for most of your Marxist theory needs, we’ve introduced a revamped ‘Books’ section in partnership with Wellred Books, the publishing house of the RCI. Many of our most popular titles are now available to read online, with an in-browser e-reader that allows you to highlight text, take notes, and pick up where you left off. (Just a word of caution, that all this is stored in your browsing data, and will be deleted if you delete your browsing data and will be unavailable if you switch browser.)
Finally, some readers may not be aware that marxist.com is a multilingual website, which publishes in more than 35 languages every year, including daily or almost daily in Spanish and Chinese as well as English.
We are now proud to announce dedicated Spanish and Chinese language home pages, and a new functionality to toggle between all available translations on each article.
Once more, thank you for your loyalty to marxist.com over the years. We hope you like what we’ve done with the place. Three final things.
Firstly, there are many people we’d like to thank in getting marxist.com to where it is today, but special thanks at this time have to go out to comrades Myles and Sebastian for all the hard work they’ve put into this fabulous redesign.
Secondly, help make this relaunch the biggest possible success by sharing the new look website and our articles with comrades, friends, family, schoolmates and workmates.
And thirdly, if you haven’t already, join the growing movement for world communism: join the Revolutionary Communist International!
