The Communist Manifesto today
1998 marked the 150th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto. Issued on the eve of Europe’s first co-ordinated wave of revolutionary struggles it remains an unparalleled exposition of the theory and practice of scientific socialism, writes Colin Lloyd
Why we need a revolutionary party
In February1917 the workers, soldiers, sailors and peasants of Russia revolted against the slaughter of the First World War and the tyrannical regime of Tsar Nicholas II. The workers, soldiers and sailors in the main cities organised themselves, spontaneously, in workers’ councils.
Russia: how the revolution was won in 1917
Kuldip Sandhu explains how and why the Bolsheviks were able to lead the first successful workers' revolution in October 1917.
Russia: how the Bosheviks fought for power in 1917
Richard Brenner shows how the Bolsheviks' understanding of the leading role of the revolutionary party helped steer the masses to victory in October.
Lenin's last struggle
Kate Foster explains how Lenin fought the rise of Stalin and the rise of the Soviet bureaucracy
The theory of permanent revolution
Globalisation strangles the Third World - but how can the working class of the world’s poorest countries come to the head of the struggle against it? Colin Lloyd explains the theory of permanent revolution.
Marxist theory of political economy
Marxist political economy is “a science dealing with the developing historical systems of social production”, especially the capitalist system.
The struggle over surplus value makes class and class struggle inevitable under capitalism: they can’t be abolished without abolishing the profit system itself.
Marxist philosophy
Materialism asserts the existence of the material world before all thinking beings. Marxism claims its methodology is scientific and applies it to the revolutionary liberation of the working class and all the oppressed.
Transition to communism
Capitalism creates the force, the working class, which is itself able to overthrow capitalism and build socialism. In the transition to a new society the capitalist state has to be smashed and a new form of state, a workers’ state, must be established. When the transition is completed society will no longer need a political force, a state of any sort, to organise production and distribution.
Marxism and the family
The family is fundamental to capitalism and plays a specific role for the capitalists. The family is the material basis for the social oppression of women, lesbians and gay men and youth.
Lenin and the theory of Imperialism
Imperialism combines both the concentration of capital into ever larger monopolies and their domination by finance capital. The hunger, disease and oppression in today’s world can be blamed on the domination of the multinationals and banks. Here Alison Hudson outlines how Lenin came to understand the imperialist epoch.
Socialism and "backward" countries
John McKee looks at the “three concepts of the Russian Revolution” that grew upin the debates prior to the outbreak of mass struggle in 1905