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Almost 80 years after Leon Trotsky founded the Fourth International, there are now Trotskyist organizations in 57 countries, including most of Western Europe and Latin America. Yet no Trotskyist group has ever led a revolution or built an enduring mass, political party. Contemporary Trotskyism looks in detail at the influence, resilience and weaknesses of the British Trotskyist movement, from the 1970s to the present day. The book argues that to understand and explain the development, resilience and influence of Trotskyist groups, we need to analyse them as bodies that comprise elements of three types of organization: the political party, the sect and the social movement. It is the properties of these three facets of organization and the interplay between them that gives rise to the most characteristic features of the Trotskyist movement: frenetic activity, rampant divisions, inter-organizational hostility, authoritarian and charismatic leadership, high membership turnover and ideological rigidity. Trotskyist groups have been involved in a wide range of important social movements including trade unions, student unions, anti-war, anti-racist and anti-fascist groups. While their energy and activity in civil society have had some success, their influence has never been reflected in votes or seats at elections even after the financial crisis. Drawing on extensive archival research, as well as interviews with many of the leading protagonists and activists within the Trotskyist milieu, this is essential reading for students, activists and researchers with an interest in the far left, social movements and contemporary British political history.
The essays in this volume deal with various aspects of the history of the revolutionary socialist current in United States that came to be identified as "American Trotskyism. " One of the most dynamic currents in the U.S. Left from the late 1920s to the 1980s, deeply committed to working-class democracy and internationalism, it had an intellectual and political impact well beyond the number of its members. The essays offer the most definitive history of that movement to be produced so far, giving a sense of some of its most colorful personalities and outstanding achievements - as well as it serious limitations. This work is an essential starting point, offering an ample bibliography for those who wish to carry out further research. More than this, the authors develop interpretations that confront the meaning of revolutionary politics in the United States, as they relate the efforts of the Trotskyists to the broader developments of the twentieth century.
During the twentieth century the problem of post-revolutionary bureaucracy emerged as the most pressing theoretical and political concern confronting Marxism. No one contributed more to the discussion of this question than Leon Trotsky. In Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy, Thomas M. Twiss traces the development of Trotsky’s thinking on this issue from the first years after the Bolshevik Revolution through the Moscow Trials of the 1930s. Throughout, he examines how Trotsky’s perception of events influenced his theoretical understanding of the problem, and how Trotsky’s theory reciprocally shaped his analysis of political developments. Additionally, Twiss notes both strengths and weaknesses of Trotsky’s theoretical perspective at each stage in its development.
"A smart, readable history of the Democrats that reminds us of the party's allegiance to capital."—Indypendent
After visiting Russia in 1921, the journalist Lincoln Steffens famously declared, ”I have seen the future, and it works.” Steffens referred to the social experiment of technological utopianism he found in the Soviet Union, where subway cars and farm tractors would carry the worker and peasant—figuratively and literally—into the twentieth century. Believing that socialism and technology together created a brave new world, Boleslaw Bierut of Poland and Kim Il Sung of North Korea—and other leaders—joined Russia’s Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky in embracing big technology with a verve and conviction that rivaled the western world's. Paul R. Josephson here explores these utopian visions of technology—and their unanticipated human and environmental costs. He examines the role of technology in communist plans and policies and the interplay between ideology and technological development. He shows that while technology was a symbol of regime legitimacy and an engine of progress, the changes it spurred were not unequivocally positive. Instead of achieving a worker’s paradise, socialist technologies exposed the proletariat to dangerous machinery and deadly pollution; rather than freeing women from exploitation in family and labor, they paradoxically created for them the dual—and exhausting—burdens of mother and worker. The future did not work. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 marked the end of communism’s self-proclaimed glorious quest to "reach and surpass" the West. Josephson’s intriguing study of how technology both helped and hindered this effort asks new and important questions about the crucial issues inextricably linked with the development and diffusion of technology in any sociopolitical system.
This book presents an historical analysis of Trotsky, his role, and actions prior to the October Revolution in Russia and after the revolution. It shows the roots of Trotskyism and points out clearly its Anti-Leninist character. Throughout this work, Olgin breaks down the fundamentally wrong position of Trotsky on the basic questions of the proletarian revolution, socialist construction in the U.S.S.R. and the revolutionary movements in the colonies.Olgin lays bare the nondialectical, schematic approach of Trotsky to such questions as the social forces in the proletarian revolution and the role of the Communist Party. He also exposes Trotsky's theory of "permanent revolution" as a distortion of the Marxist-Leninist concept.
An important contribution to our understanding of twentieth-century Marxism During the first decades of the twentieth century, Rosa Luxemburg was the leader of the workers’ movement in Poland and Germany. She made a remarkable contribution to socialist theory and practice, yet her legacy remains in dispute. In this book Norman Geras interrogates and refutes the myths that have developed around her work. She was an opponent of socialist participation in the First World War and, as Geras shows, her views on socialist strategy in Russia were closer to Lenin’s than any other leader’s. Geras explores the development of Luxemburg’s critique in the period following the war and demonstrates how her thought is distinct from the social democratic or anarchist theories into which it is often subsumed. Geras brings new light to bear on one of the most misrepresented figures in radical history, illustrating her inspiring lack of complacency and her commitment to questioning those in authority on both the Right and the Left.
The theory and practice of communism today does not adhere rigidly to the dogma of the Communist Party. This book provides a systematic comparison of Trotsyist and Maoist politics in theory and practice. Pulling together material from widely scattered sources into a comprehensive framework, Trotskyism and Maoism follows the development of the Trotskyist and Maoist movements in France and in the United States from the 1930s to the present. Scholars of political theory, Western European studies, and social history will applaud its publication.