Workers Party/ ISL archive

Democracy and Revolution

IS THE modern socialist movement a "conspiracy"? Does socialist revolution imply the aim of conquest of power by a small minority of skilled insurrectionists who would seize the advantage in some kind of crisis and impose some improvised junta? This is in effect the picture which the government witch-hunters paint of Marxist socialism, in the course of their crusade against the Stalinists, though the latter have long ago abandoned both socialism and Marxism. This picture is a complete falsehood. Revolutionary socialists are distinguished from reformist social democrats, not because they...

Democracy under socialism

The future of democracy in the world depends on this: Can mankind learn to extend democracy into control of economic life? That is the basic idea of socialism. Under capitalist democracy, the people are allowed a say-so in decisions of the government, while the main control over people's lives is exercised not by the government but by the economic autocrats who own the wealth of the country and the main means of livelihood. By the same token, these capitalist rulers of industry and wealth, who hold the commanding heights of our society, also have the power to run the basic operations of the...

The 1930s: From the New Deal to the War Deal

It may be difficult to remember that the American economy ever fell to the bottom of the most severe and protracted depression in the history of capitalism, during the 1930s. The depression decade has almost been pushed into the backyard of history away from the loud and sustained paeans of adulations about the fabulous production of the 1950s. No wonder: it can hardly be pointed to as a strong argument in praise of American capitalism, especially since this was the last decade of a peacetime economy. The performance was scarcely impressive. "The Promise of American Life" has not been...

The Fair Deal Has Created the Climate in Which McCarthyism Flourishes - Does It Defend Democratic Rights?

Every spokesman and follower of the Fair Deal says and believes that one of its chief claims to the support of the American people and one of its most important objectives is its defense of, and efforts to extend, democratic rights. This is also one of the central aims of democratic socialism. What, then, separates and distinguishes the socialists, and specifically the Independent Socialist League, from the liberal Fair Dealers when it comes to the question of democratic rights? It would be wrong to question the personal sincerity of the Fair Dealers when they say that they are for democratic...

Introduction to "In an era of wars and revolutions"

Introduction to In an era of wars and revolutions , by the editor, Sean Matgamna That “one picture can be worth a thousand words” is true, but only up to a point. A photograph or a painting can not properly nail down, explain or explore ideas. A complicated piece of writing has no visual equivalent. Yet a well-done cartoon is a powerful political weapon. A few bold strokes by an artist can convey an idea more vividly and fix it more firmly in the viewer’s mind than would an editorial or an article. A cartoon is drawn to convey an idea, a point of view, an interpretation of what it depicts, and...

Review of "In an era of wars and revolutions"

Ed Strauss joined the YSL in 1954 When I first opened “In the era of wars and revolutions”, I was taken back sixty years, seeing again cartoons published by the Workers Party/Independent Socialist League (ISL) in its paper, Labor Action, which I always looked forward to receiving. But this not a simple reminiscence. I was struck again by the special power and sharp lessons taught by these cartoons. It is much more than a simple cartoon book. It is an excellent textbook on the history of revolutionary socialism between the mid-1920s and mid-1950s. The introduction is most moving and the...

Inspiration for the 21st century

Socialist propaganda, defined by the Russian Marxist Georgi Plekhanov, conveys many ideas to a few people, whereas agitation conveys only one or a few ideas to a whole mass of people. So what’s the point of socialist political cartoons? Pictures can sometimes convey ideas more vividly than a thousand words or a 10-minute speech. Cartoons are both valuable propaganda and effective agitation. This 300-page book of cartoons spans the end of the period of high imperialism, from the 1920s to the Second World War, and culminates in the mid-1950s at the beginning of post-war US hegemony. The first...

1960s and 70s American "third camp" socialist archives now online

The Marxists Internet Archive has uploaded the journals of the Independent Socialist Clubs and the International Socialists, organisations which continued the revolutionary "third camp" socialism of Max Shachtman and Hal Draper. In the late 1930s and early 40s, the Trotskyist movement (particularly in America) was split by a debate about whether the Soviet Union could be characterised as some form of "workers' state", or whether its society was based on exploitative class rule (variously characterised as "bureaucratic collectivist" or "state capitalist"). The "third camp" socialists were those...

Blitzkrieg and Revolution (May 1940)

I. IF HITLER WINS – PERSPECTIVE FOR SOCIAL REVOLUTION The fundamentals of Marxism have not changed. But the German blitzkrieg has radically altered the political situation. For years all informed persons, from Roosevelt to Trotsky, believed that the Germans would be defeated in the second imperialist war. Revolutionaries looked forward to this defeat as initiating an era of socialist revolution. The imperialist perspective was not very different. The bourgeoisie dreaded the exhaustion of both sides, followed by the revolt of the millions in Central Europe against the long drawn out slaughter...

Stalinist Terror: The First Sixteen Years, to the Murder of Trotsky

The Struggle Begins THE murder of Leon Trotsky culminated an epoch. It marked the end of the epoch of Old Bolsheviks, for Leon Trotsky was the lone survivor of that grand school of revolutionary Marxists. His murder at the same time was the final personal victory of Cain Stalin, and, if any more evidence was required, of the irrevocable counter-revolutionary degeneration of his bureaucracy in the Soviet Union and therewith the Communist International. The struggle in the Communist Party of the Soviet Union between the Russian Left Opposition and the Stalin regime was accompanied by the...

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