Marxism and Stalinism

Marxist assessments of Stalinism. What was the class nature of the Stalin-Khrushchev-Brezhnev USSR? And of other countries modelled on it? What has been the legacy of Stalinism for the left?

China 1949: What about the workers?

The year 1949 is pivotal in modern Chinese history. The military victories of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP, who for brevity I will describe as the “Communists”, although in my view they were not communists in any sense used before the 1930s) and the foundation of the People’s Republic of China constitute key components in the “creation myth” of today’s China. The events furnish the current regime with its legitimacy. Many aspects of the Communist seizure of power in 1949 form part of the “furniture” of Chinese politics today. Graham Hutchings’ book, China 1949: Year of Revolution (2021)...

Moscow: the truth can't be hidden forever

Last week, more than thirty masked young men broke into a public meeting at the human rights NGO “Memorial” in Moscow. They shouted “Scum!”, “Fascists!” “Get out of Russia!”, and “There’s no room for foreign agents!” They ordered members of the audience to lie down on the floor. They were there to stop the showing of a film, “Mr. Jones”. The 2019 film tells the story of Gareth Jones, a Welsh journalist who stumbled upon the story of the 1932-33 Ukrainian famine in which millions died. At the time, the Soviet regime denied there was a famine and they were assisted in this by New York Times...

Kino Eye: Eisenstein's unmade films about Haiti

A first for Kino Eye — films you can’t see because they were never made! The Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein had always been fascinated with the slaves’ revolt on Haiti. It was one of his lifetime ambitions to make a film about this subject but, unfortunately, none ever materialised. The nearest he came was on an extended trip to the USA and Mexico in 1930. Arriving in Hollywood in May he read Black Majesty: The life of Christophe, King of Haiti , written by John W. Vandercook. Eisenstein wanted the black singer and actor Paul Robeson to play the leading role. However, Paramount Studios, who...

Letters: XR and the police; Vibes won't save us; The bureaucrats had choices; Other Afghanistan films

XR, the police and working-class politics The climate demonstrations organised by Extinction Rebellion and participated in by Workers Liberty saw multiple instances of authoritarian and violent policing not previously witnessed at mainstream environmental protests. The opening days of the two week long protest introduced the police’s van-mounted loud hailer belting out “Section 14” dispersal orders in central London, and by the Tuesday of the second week videos were circulating of police officers mounting an open-top-bus and swinging batons at protesters inside. This, in the context of the...

Reflections in a jaundiced eye

Reflections in a jaundiced eye: the history of British Trotskyism to 1944 as summarised by the Communist Party of Great Britain.

Stalinism, Islamism and the tragedy of Afghanistan

Originally published in 2002 as "Afghanistan and the shape of the 20th century" "Two conditions, at least, are necessary for a victorious social revolution - highly developed productive forces and a proletariat adequately prepared for it. But in 1871 both of these conditions were lacking. French capitalism was still poorly developed, and France was at that time mainly a petty-bourgeois country (artisans, peasants, shopkeepers, etc.). On the other hand, there was no workers' party; the working class had not gone through a long school of struggle and was unprepared, and for the most part did not...

Still glorifying Stalin over Barbarossa

Tuesday 22 June marked the eightieth anniversary of Operation Barbarossa — “When Soviets Turned The Tide Against Nazi Tyranny”, as that day’s Morning Star put it. Or to be simpler: when Hitler broke his pact with Stalin and invaded the USSR. The first thing to note is that although 22 June was the eightieth anniversary of German troops crossing the USSR’s border, the respected bourgeois historian Antony Beevor (in his 1998 book Stalingrad ) points out that it was on the morning of 21 June 1941 that Moscow became aware of huge military preparations along the frontiers from the Baltic to the...

Barbarossa and the left after 80 years

This week marks the eightieth anniversary of the Nazi German invasion of the Soviet Union on 22 June 1941. It was one of the most successful military operations of modern times. German forces advanced deep into Soviet territory and accepted the surrender of literally millions of Soviet troops. The responsibility for this defeat rests squarely on Stalin’s shoulders. Not only did Stalin kill off practically the entire leadership of the Red Army in the run-up to the war, but his policies — particularly in Ukraine — guaranteed that many Soviet citizens would welcome the Nazis as liberators. This...

Trotsky and “switching the points”

I agree with Eric Lee’s substantive argument ( Solidarity 593 ) that socialists must aim to reconstruct mass politics, not just hope for better “leaders”. But I think he gives a skewed picture of Trotsky’s 1938 declaration about “the crisis of the leadership of the proletariat”. Trotsky’s argument was not one about poor leadership in politics in general, for example in bourgeois governments, but a specific one about the labour movements at that time. The previous 50 years or so of educational and organising work by socialists of different sorts; of industrialisation and urbanisation; and of...

Alliances, "anti-monopoly" and other

Andrew Northall, in his reply to Jim Denham on the “Anti-Monopoly Alliance” in Solidarity 589 , writes: “Jim says... the Labour Party and unions are the arena for the debates and struggles that take place within the British working-class movement’. Really? So Black Lives Matter, Reclaim These Streets, the Sarah Everard protests, opposition to the Police Bill etc., are down to the Labour Party and the trade unions or not relevant to ‘the British working class movement’?” By contrast, Andrew writes: “The strategy of the BRS [ Britain’s Road to Socialism , the Communist Party of Britain program]...

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