Socialism

How did Trotsky help organise international socialist struggle? Capitalism is a worldwide problem. Since the days of Karl Marx, socialists have worked towards a worldwide solution. But there have been multiple attempts to organise international associations of revolutionaries. Each rose and then fell for different reasons. What can we learn from their successes and failures? What was Trotsky’s par...

What is fascism and how can we fight it? In the 1930s, mass fascist movements smashed the workers’ organisations. Today, far-right and right-populist forces are again growing in prominence. So what can we learn from history? What exactly is fascism? Is a fascist dictatorship possible today? What distinguishes it from other authoritarian regimes? Do these political differences mean tactical differe...

How did Trotsky explain the rise of Stalinism? The Russian Revolution began as a mass movement with democratic control of society by the workers and poor. But it ended as a brutal police state which collapsed under its own inefficiency. What caused this complete reversal? Do revolutions inevitably end in treacherous dictatorship? Was the Soviet bureaucracy the same as a capitalist class? What are...

How did Trotsky fight for national liberation? Socialists aim for a world which doesn’t need borders and ends national divisions. But today, many national groupings are forced into larger states which repress their right to decide their own destiny. How do Marxists address the complexities of the so-called ‘national question’ - maximising international workers’ cooperation, while supporting the ri...

How did Trotsky view the relationship between the revolution and its party? Where countless other revolutions have failed, the workers of Russia succeeded in taking power in October 1917. The decisive factor was the Bolshevik Party. Leon Trotsky likened it to a “piston-box” which could channel the “steam” of mass revolutionary energy. Trotsky did not start out as a member of the Bolsheviks. But he...

What is Leon Trotsky’s theory of ‘permanent revolution’? In the early 20th century, Russia was still a mostly feudal country. Could it achieve socialism without passing through greater development of capitalism first? Even today, the economic and social advances promised by the capitalist democratic revolutions have not been fully achieved in any country. This is especially true in the ‘neocolonia...

What was Leon Trotsky's part in the Russian revolution? The events of 1917, and the years which immediately followed, were a political furnace. Failed parties and leaders melted away as hardened political forces and inspirational leaders were forged in white heat of revolution. There were huge leaps forward, and crushing setbacks. Through it all, Leon Trotsky was one of the political figures most...

80 years on from Trotsky’s assassination: can they kill his ideas? Lev Davidovich Bronstein, better known as Leon Trotsky, was killed on 21 August 1940. What was Stalin so afraid of? And why do capitalist commentators still try to bury Trotsky’s ideas today? This month, Socialism the Podcast will be answering those questions in a series on Trotsky and Trotskyism. What was his role in Russia’s revo...

What is scientific socialism, and what can it teach us about the fight for socialist change today? Labour’s left leadership failed to fight for the urgent political and democratic reforms needed in the party - a missed opportunity for working-class political representation. In politics, mistakes in tactics begin with mistakes in ideas. That’s why Marxists take ideas so seriously. As Karl Marx hims...

How will Covid-19’s political consequences compare to the aftermath of World War One? The pandemic crisis is frequently compared to a war. Marxists agree there are parallels for many reasons - not least the political revolts that follow. After the Great War, British capitalism entered a period of fast-changing economic and political crisis. Slump and mass unemployment; heroic strikes and mutinies;...

We need to fight for every job. But is such a fight possible? Thousands of new members are flooding into Britain’s trade unions. But thousands more are losing their jobs every day. Black Lives Matter and coronavirus inequalities have thrown racism into the spotlight too. Precarious work in the gig economy, and even sweatshop conditions in some areas, are pressing issues for more and more of the wo...

Why are the world's economies pulling apart? World capitalism in recent decades underwent a process often called ‘globalisation’. Competing national economies became more and more integrated and dependent on each other. Now, the wheels have come off. Trade wars, political disputes, even rumblings of armed conflict - already happening, but exacerbated by the coronavirus pandemic - have marked a pro...

Malcolm X said: “You can’t have capitalism without racism.” Why - and what can we learn from that? Heroic Black Lives Matter protests have swept the US, Britain and the world. Rivers of working-class young people, black and white, have taken up the struggle against racism and police violence. Sadly, police murder of black people is nothing new. Why has this movement exploded in this way right now?...

How can the working class defeat the far right? A magnificent mass movement, overwhelmingly young, working-class and black, but also very multiracial, has erupted in the US, Britain and internationally against racism. Its trigger was the racist police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis on 25 May 2020. But young people and workers are angry about years of systemic racism, as well as all the clas...

What do young people need today - and how can they fight for it? Massive, young, working-class protests have exploded around the world after the murder of George Floyd, racism and police violence. But it's not just these issues that have angered young people. In the US, Britain and around the world, the youth are suffering appalling conditions, and a future of crisis and uncertainty. But young peo...

While the influence of the US declines, China’s place in world seems to be rising. The Chinese economy is still nowhere near as powerful as the US, but it’s competing voraciously for international markets, investment, and political influence. With world capitalism slowing down, international tensions over profit and power are escalating. The trade wars between these two largest powers could well b...

Public confidence in the British government’s handling of the Covid-19 pandemic has nosedived. They’re split over how and when to bully workers back into unsafe workplaces to restart the capitalists’ profit engines. And they’re split over how and when to pay off the massive debts incurred by lockdown relief measures. Meanwhile, the Labour Party - under its new, pro-capitalist leader Keir Starmer -...

School workers and the government are set for a stand-off over reopening during coronavirus. The Tory government is combining absurdly unclear messages about "staying alert" with a rush to reopen more of the capitalist economy. While they are concerned only about restarting the profit machine, workers are concerned this premature, shambolic dash is a Covid-19 death sentence. The capitalists have o...

What are the lessons for today from Lenin's revolutionary life? 22 April 2020 was the 150th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanvov, better known as Lenin, the revolutionary workers’ leader and Marxist political theorist. In 1917, Lenin’s Bolshevik Party led the working class of Russia to overthrow the landlords and capitalists and establish the world’s first democratic workers’ state...

Chaos in the US presents two options: socialism or barbarism. In the United States, the capitalist class is faced with a shopping list of crises that are shaking their system almost to pieces. Like many capitalist economies, they’ve had to partly suspend production - and profit - in the face of the coronavirus pandemic. They’ve been forced to inject trillions of dollars into the economy to keep th...

Workers are furious, so why aren’t capitalist parties suffering? Capitalist governments across the planet are presiding over incompetent, inefficient, and inhuman responses to the Covid-19 pandemic. Nonetheless, most are riding high in opinion polls. This is true in Britain too, despite being on course for the worst death toll in Europe. While workers suffer and die on the front line or on furloug...

The capitalist economic system is dysfunctional and obsolete. In the US, 10 million workers filed unemployment claims in the last two weeks of March. In the UK, a million workers filed Universal Credit benefit claims in the last two weeks of March. Just over a decade after the ‘credit crunch’ and Great Recession, the Covid-19 pandemic is causing a ‘corona crunch’ and could pitch the world into a s...

Unprecedented state intervention - but still workers suffer? The British government has pledged hundreds of billions in funding during the Covid-19 pandemic. The US Congress has approved trillions. Capitalist governments in multiple countries seem to be abandoning privatisation and market competition for nationalisation and central coordination. It looks quite a lot like some of the policies socia...

How can workers look after their interests in the pandemic? Schools in Britain are part-closing, workers in almost every sector are being sent home with or without pay, and there are shortages of equipment for safe and hygienic working everywhere. The day after we recorded this podcast on 19 March 2020, the government was due to announce plans to support workers. But whatever is promised, the trac...

How can workers' action help overcome the Covid-19 crisis? The new coronavirus, Covid-19, is sweeping through the world's population - exposing capitalism for disastrous weaknesses in healthcare systems,social infrastructure, and the global economy. Capitalist politicians and the capitalist state are torn between protecting public health and defending private profit. The official number of cases i...