Spectre of Communism

Ridley Scott’s recent biopic Napoleon has evoked much criticism for its shallow narrative and plethora of historical inaccuracies. But who was the real Napoleon Bonaparte? How did a young Corsican from a relatively modest background become the strongman behind an empire that would dominate Europe? This week’s episode of the Spectre of Communism Podcast welcomes Keelan Kellegher, a leading member o...

Many people think of the state as a huge collection of bureaucratic offices and institutions that have little to do with our daily lives. Some have illusions in the state as a neutral arbiter over society, operating on the basis of universal principles of ‘democracy’ and ‘rule of law’. But for countless workers and youths on the receiving end of police violence, legal victimisation or military opp...

The Chinese Communist Party and its defenders claim that China is building a successful socialist society, and is at the forefront of an anti-imperialist struggle against the West. But is China communist? Does the legacy of the Chinese Revolution live on today in the CCP? In reality, despite the enormous achievements of the Chinese Revolution, China today is one of the largest capitalist powers on...

Right-wingers claim that communism would be a dictatorial hellscape: nothing could be further from the truth. Communism means a society free from money, social classes, poverty and oppression, where people live “from each according to their ability, each according to their needs.” But what would such a society look like, and how do we get there? Capitalism has created a world of poverty and precar...

7 November (in the New Style calendar) marks the anniversary of the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. For communists, the Russian Revolution is the greatest event in human history. But for many right-wing, liberal and reformist critics of Lenin and the Bolsheviks, it was an anti-democratic catastrophe that condemned Russia to murderous dictatorship. It’s time we set the record straight. The worke...

On Saturday 7 October, Hamas forces in Gaza launched an unexpected attack on Israel, triggering an immediate response from the Israeli Defence Force. Fundamentally, this is a conflict between unequal forces, as the Palestinian masses have for decades been the victims of a regime of terror promoted by the likes of Netanyahu and Israel’s imperialist backers in the west. In this special episode, Inte...

PODCAST FINALE! Watch a video of the discussion on YouTube, premiering 2 August 15:00 British time: https://youtu.be/ew7oKxdvm5I  More and more workers and youth all over the world are being drawn to the ideas and banner of communism, much to the anger and anxiety of the bosses, bankers and bourgeois politicians.  With capitalism at a total impasse, and no end in sight to wars, economic hardship,...

A quick special announcement to inform our listeners that next week's episode of International Marxist Radio (released 2 August) Wednesday will be our last. As a send-off, the discussion, 'Why We Are Communists', has also been filmed. In addition to posting the audio here as usual, we will upload the video to In Defence of Marxism's YouTube channel! Keep an eye out! We would like to thank everyone...

The Roman Republic was a society characterised by great social and political upheaval. This is a period of well-documented and important class struggle, which has many parallels with the situation today. If we are to avoid making the mistakes of history, a close study of the past is absolutely crucial for all Marxists. This week’s episode of International Marxist Radio welcomes Alan Woods, writer,...

The Spanish Revolution and Civil War (which began this week in 1936) represent a profoundly heroic period of struggle by the Spanish working class and peasantry. The masses gave their all in the fight against Franco, only to be failed by their leadership. Both the anarchists and the Stalinists at the head of the fight against fascism failed to lead the workers and peasants to victory. Especially t...

David Graeber and David Wengrow’s anthropological opus, The Dawn of Everything, claims to offer an entirely new, radical view of the development of human society (implicitly: one that knocks down Marx and Engels’ historical materialism). This is no small task, but is the book as earth-shattering as the immodest title suggests? Despite making waves in certain left-wing circles, the book offers a th...

Last week, a French policeman shot an unarmed French-Algerian teenager (Nahel M.) in the chest after a traffic stop. Before pulling the trigger, Nahel was told “I will lodge a bullet in your head”. A video of the brutal slaying was uploaded to social media, resulting in a massive outpouring of rage that swept the country. Police violence in France is the worst in Western Europe, and this latest ou...

Last weekend, Yevgeny Prigozhin, chief of the infamous Russian mercenary company Wagner, led an apparent mutiny. After withdrawing his troops from the front line of the Ukraine War, Prigozhin took control of the military bases at Rostov-on-Don and began what he called “march for justice” (albeit a heavily armed one), heading towards Moscow. Within a day, it was all over, but what are we to make of...

175 years ago, a wave of revolutions swept across the European continent, in which the working class played a key role in challenging the might of the feudal order. From France to Germany to Italy, the masses led a struggle for democratic and economic demands, winning significant concessions from the decrepit ruling classes of Europe. Marx and Engels were not just passive witnesses to these events...

The relative decline of US imperialism is leaving a void that is starting to be filled by other powers. In recent years, this has led to a rise of rival imperialist nations such as China and Russia, which are increasingly trying to challenge the domination of the US. What are the implications of this for the class struggle? What are the tasks of communists in a so-called multipolar world? This wee...

The recent period in the USA has been highly eventful. From the Trump presidency, to the Sanders movement, to BLM and the George Floyd protests, to the storming of Capitol Hill, the ‘Land of the Free’ is more polarised than it has been for decades. Poverty, racism and inequality are rampant; and seemingly not a month passes without another terrible mass shooting. The American Dream has turned into...

Is human population growth to blame for poverty and climate change? Plenty of pundits and politicians on the right and left alike seem to think so. Knowingly or not, they repeat the reactionary ideas of the Reverend Thomas Malthus, whose economic and social theories Marx and Engels demolished nearly 200 years ago. Yet today, the spectre of Malthusianism still endures. This week’s episode of Intern...

This week’s episode of International Marxist Radio concludes our two-part series looking at the class struggle in Sub-Saharan Africa. This week, Ben Morken, a leading comrade of the International Marxist Tendency based in South Africa, discusses the broader context that has led to the current state of affairs across the continent. Historically ravaged by colonialism, Africa today continues to be c...

This week’s episode of International Marxist Radio is the first of a special two-part series looking at the class struggle in Sub-Saharan Africa. Ben Morken, a leading comrade of the International Marxist Tendency based in South Africa, discusses the current political situation in a number of African countries, which constitute a bubbling cauldron of class struggle. From the revival of radical tra...

This week’s episode of International Marxist Radio welcomes Daniel Morley, a leading comrade of Socialist Appeal, the British section of the International Marxist Tendency, to discuss so-called identity politics, and why Marxists oppose its influence on the class struggle. In many countries today, identity politics (i.e. the idea that one’s racial, sexual, gender identity etc., rather than social...

In this week’s episode of International Marxist Radio, Josh Holroyd, a leading comrade of the International Marxist Tendency and editor of In Defence of Marxism magazine (issue 41 available now), discusses the early life, works and revolutionary career of Karl Marx, whose 205th birthday we mark on Friday! Born on 5 May 1818 in Trier, Marx’s formative years were shaped by the explosive events of th...

This week on International Marxist Radio, Tom Trottier, a leading comrade of Socialist Revolution, the US section of the International Marxist Tendency, speaks about exciting developments in the labour movement in the United States of America! After a long period of relative inactivity, the US working class is beginning to move. As the ongoing crisis of capitalism continues to worsen living condit...

On this week’s episode of International Marxist Radio, Fred Weston, a leading comrade of the International Marxist Tendency, discusses the historical roots of women’s oppression. While we are often told that the oppression of women is innate to human relations, this could not be further from the truth. In reality, in pre-class societies, hunter-gatherer men and women generally existed in an egalit...

This week’s episode welcomes Adam Pal, leading comrade of Lal Salaam, the Pakistani section of the International Marxist Tendency, to discuss the ongoing turmoil in Pakistan.  In the midst of a deep political crisis, the Pakistani ruling class is split, with different factions leaning on sections of the military high command to maintain their position. This has led to the immense social instabilit...

This week’s episode welcomes back Niklas Albin Svensson, a leading member of the International Marxist Tendency, to discuss the ongoing turmoil in the global banking system. A few weeks ago, Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) collapsed, but the failure of SVB was not the end of the story. Rather, what we have seen is a sudden flurry of bank collapses, which has so far culminated in the forced merger of Cre...