Marxism Alive

Lenin’s last struggle, the first battle against Stalinism In the Central Committee of October 6, 1922 Lenin was absent. Stalin presents a text that strongly limits the state monopoly on foreign trade, which is approved. A few days later Lenin sends a letter to the CC with a hard criticism of its decision. On December […]

This article was published on the IWL’s theoretical magazine Marxism Alive n. 16 in 2007, as part of the 90th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. In military terms, the construction of the Red Army is one of the most spectacular events of the history of mankind.

This article was published on the IWL’s theoretical magazine Marxism Alive n. 16 in 2007, as part of the 90th anniversary of the Russian Revolution. A massacre to wipe away the example of the Parisian workers In the annals of the years preceding the Paris Commune, massacres similar to the one that bourgeoisie carried out ferociously after the […]

November 7 (October 25 according to the old Russian calendar) is the 97th anniversary of the October Revolution that would create the first workers’ state in history. 

On January 21, 1924 Lenin, the great leader of the Russian Revolution of 1917, died. We present a text of Leon Trotsky, his comrade and co-leader of the Revolution, written in homage to Lenin a day after his death.

The leading party of the socialist revolution that expropriated the bourgeoisie in 1949 went through countless transformations since the capitalist restoration in China. Being at first a Stalinist Party heading a bureaucratized Workers’ State it went on to lead a bourgeois State under the regime of a counterrevolutionary dictatorship. This metamorphosis of the CP began […]

China has astonished the world with its fast economic development. On occasion of the 17th Congress of the Communist Party (CPC), president Hu Jintao stated, “Thirty years ago, Popular Republic of China started its experience of opening and reforms. Initiated in 1978, it has been crucial decisions what determined the fate of contemporary China. Historic […]

On the 14th March this year, Lhasa, the capital of Tibet served as scenery for massive demonstrations initiated by about 100 Buddhist monks, who commemorated the 49th anniversary of the 1959 uprising against Chinese occupation. After the police repression, which may have claimed as many as 203 lives according to the Tibetan government in exile, […]

The Bolshevik party was born as part of “only one entity”, the II International. In 1902 Lenin wrote: “Social democratic movement is naturally international… That means also that a budding movement in a young country can develop successfully provided it can put into use the experience of other countries…”1

The topic of construction of a revolutionary party and the discussion hinging round this pivot abound among socialists. The character of a Leninist party has been attacked from all kinds of angles.

Class struggle involves periods of calm and periods of turbulence, periods of relative peace and periods of insurrection. Those who admit the principle of a division of society by social class and the struggle between them must admit that a civil war is something natural. With this understanding Lenin declared: “The dictatorship of proletariat is […]

During World War 1, while the parties of the Second International were all busy “defending their fatherland”, Lenin and the Bolsheviks were trying to transform the imperialist war into a civil war. This was the position of the Second International but it was there on paper only. But the Bolsheviks took advantage of war and […]

The power of the state is a fundamental issue in every revolution. The fundamental discussion hinging round this issue in the early XX century was between Lenin and Kautsky and reflected two contrary concepts.

Marx studied capitalism thoroughly but he did not live to see its transformation into imperialism. Lenin’s greatest contribution to Marxist theory is the research into and characterization of this particular, higher stage of capitalism. Practically all the great strategies of Leninism derive from this analysis of reality.

Beginning with the introduction below, we will be presenting in the next few weeks a dossier on Lenin’s work, published in the ninth issue of the theoretical magazine of IWL-FI, Marxism Alive, in 2004, when it was completed 80 years of Lenin’s death. The original title of this article was: “80 years after Lenin’s death, […]

Originally published in Marxism Alive # 11, 2005 Islamism has become a world phenomenon influencing masses of countries where imperialism is more aggressive today. This phenomenon is an essential part of the process of workers’ reorganization in the Middle East, Asia, Magreb, and also among the immigrant workers in imperialist countries.