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The bourgeois world at first tried to pretend not to notice the economic successes of the soviet regime -- the experimental proof, that is, of the practicability of socialist methods. The learned economists of capital still often try to maintain a deeply cogitative silence about the unprecedented tempo of Russiaʹs industrial development, or confine themselves to remarks about an extreme "exploitation of the peasantry". They are missing a wonderful opportunity to explain why the brutal exploitation of the peasants in China, for instance, or Japan, or India, never produced an industrial tempo remotely approaching that of the Soviet Union. Facts win out, however, in the end. The bookstalls of all civilized countries are now loaded with books about the Soviet Union. It is no wonder; such prodigies are rare. The literature dictated by blind reactionary hatred is fast dwindling. A noticeable proportion o the newest works on the Soviet Union adopt a favorable, if not even a rapturous, tone. As a sign of the improving international reputation of the parvenu state, this abundance of pro-soviet literature can only be welcomed. Moreover, it is incomparably better to idealize the Soviet Union than fascist Italy. The reader, however, would seek in vain on the pages of this literature for a scientific appraisal of what is actually taking place in the land of the October revolution. -- Description from http://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1936/revbet/intro.htm (April 12, 2012).
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.
Leon Trotsky has become one of the twentieth century's most enduring political legends. Joining the Bolsheviks on the eve of the 1917 revolution he played a vital role as Lenin's right-hand man in the insurrection and went on to lead the Red Army to victory in the ensuing civil war. Having lost to Stalin the struggle for power which followed Lenin's death, he became an implacable opponent of the dictator over the next three decades-a stance which cost him his political career, his citizenship and ultimately his life. A charismatic orator, a prolific author and a political philosopher whose ideas continue to resonate in the wake of the collapse of the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe, Trotsky made an indelible mark on world history. Ernest Mandel, one of the foremost leaders of the international movement which Trotsky founded before the Second World War and an influential economist and political theorist, is uniquely placed to review the life and work of Trotsky. In Trotsky as Alternative he presents a portrait of his subject which is appreciative yet critical. He shows that Trotsky's contribution to the history of the twentieth century was primarily political rather than sociological, and this in a practical as well as a theoretical sense. He locates Trotsky's theory of uneven and combined development as a crucial tool whose explanatory power of the mechanisms of world imperialism is as relevant to the late capitalism of the 1990s as it was to the first three decades of the century when it was formulated. Ranging across Trotsky's struggles against Stalin's bureaucracy, his formulation of an alternative economic strategy, his theories relating to the Third World, fascism and the national question, his extensive literary criticism, and concluding with a moving assessment of an extraordinary life, this book is a fitting testimony to a man who, in Mandel's words, "will be judged by history as the most important strategist for the socialist movement."
In this counter-historical novel, Leon Trotsky, the Russian revolutionary, survived the assassination attempt of August 1940. To prevent another such attempt, his protector, Mexican President Lázaro Cárdenas, had him moved to the small, isolated border town of Tijuana. There Trotsky, continues to write political analyses and books and attempts to lead his worldwide revolutionary organization, the Fourth International, though he is frustrated by his isolation from the center of developments in Europe. Watching over Trotsky, among others, are his bodyguard Ralph Bucek, a young leftist and baseball fan from Chicago, and the French-educated Mexican Army officer Colonel de la Fuente. Through them Trotsky learns about his new home, Tijuana, a surprisingly cosmopolitan town. Living with his wife Natalia and his grandson Sieva, served by secretaries and protected by bodyguards, Trotsky’s domestic circle is small and his life narrow. He is growing old and losing his sight. Then along come the Broadway theatrical agent Morrie Gold and his friend the stand-up comedienne Rachel Silberstein. Trotsky’s wife, Natalia, worried about his psychological well-being insists that he see the famous Freudian (and one-time Reichian) psychoanalyst Dr. David Bergman. While we observe Trotsky in exile, we also see Stalin in power, in his “Little Corner” in the Kremlin, in his dachas, with members of the Central Committee and with his daughter Svetlana. We see him planning the failed assassination of Trotsky in August 1940. In his reveries, we learn of his difficult life as a young man, his great love, his first child, his experiences in prison. We see Stalin carrying out the purges, executing the industrialization of Russia, dealing with Adolf Hitler, heading the Soviet Union in war. We watch as Stalin’s anti-Semitism drives the prosecution of Rudolf Slánsky for the supposed Tito-Trotsky plot in Czechoslovakia of as he goes after the Jewish doctors in the Soviet Union. As time goes on Trotsky is surprised that that his predictions for the post-war period don't seem to be working out. One day, Étienne, the Eastern European who worked for Trotsky’s International in Paris and who some believe may have murdered Trotsky’s son, appears in Tijuana, offering to serve as his Russian secretary. And Trotsky’s erstwhile ally Victor Serge visits and asks Trotsky to join him in an attempt to build a new socialist movement in post-war Europe. Meanwhile, Trotsky’s brilliant former secretary, the mathematician Jan van Heijenoort, has sworn to murder Stalin, but the odds are not good. With the coming of the Cold War, Senator Joseph McCarthy calls on Trotsky to testify before his committee. Was it a coincidence that Stalin and Trotsky died on the same day on the same day, March 5, 1953? Through all of this we see just what sort of a man Trotsky was.
U.S. Trotskyism 1928-1965. Part III: Resurgence: Uneven and Combined Development is the third of a documentary trilogy on a revolutionary socialist split-off from the U.S. Communist Party, reflecting Leon Trotsky’s confrontation with Stalinism in the global Communist movement. Spanning 1954 to 1965, this volume surveys the Cold War era, the civil rights and black liberation movements, the 'third wave' of feminism, and other social and cultural developments of the 1950s and 1960s. Documenting responses to a variety of anti-colonial and revolutionary insurgencies, the volume also surveys the crisis and decline of Stalinism. Attention is given to internal debates and splits, but also to the partial reunification of the international Trotskyist movement (the Fourth International), as well as substantial contributions to the study of history and the development of Marxist theory. Scholars and activists will find much of interest in these primary sources.
In the new edition of this definitive work on the history of the revolutionary socialist current in the United States that came to be identified as "American Trotskyism," Paul Le Blanc offers fresh reflections on this history for scholars and activists in the twenty-first century. Includes a preface written especially for the new edition of this distinctive work. Paul Le Blanc is a professor of History at La Roche College and author of Choice Award–winning book A Freedom Budget for All Americans.
This book by Ted Grant is a unique contribution to the history of British Trotskyism. It begins with the debate on Trotskyism in the British Communist Party in 1924 and ends with the break-up of the Revolutionary Communist Party in 1949 and the beginning of more than thirty years of work within the Labour Party. Ted Grant was the founder and political leader of the “Militant Tendency”, which haunted the Labour leadership, and was eventually expelled along with the Militant editorial board in 1983. A postscript by Rob Sewell, who was the national organiser for the Militant throughout the 1980s, brings this unique history up to date.
On 20th August 1940 Trotsky’s life was brutally ended when a Stalinist agent brought an ice pick crashing down on his head. Among the works left unfinished was the second part of his biography of Stalin. Trotsky’s Stalin is unique in Marxist literature in that it attempts to explain some of the most decisive events of the 20th century, not just in terms of epoch-making economic and social transformations, but in the individual psychology of one of the protagonists in a great historical drama. It is a fascinating study of the way in which the peculiar character of an individual, his personal traits and psychology, interacts with great events. How did it come about that Stalin, who began his political life as a revolutionary and a Bolshevik, ended as a tyrant and a monster? Was this something pre-ordained by genetic factors or childhood upbringing? Drawing on a mass of carefully assembled material from his personal archives and many other sources, Trotsky provides the answer to these questions. In the present edition we have brought together all the material that was available from the Trotsky archives in English and supplemented it with additional material translated from Russian. It is the most complete version of the book that has ever been published.