Marxist Audio Archive

Fightback activist Renu Brar discusses Marx's labour theory of value, and its explaination for how workers are exploited.

Capitalism is on the brink. An entire generation has known only crisis, cutbacks, and climate catastrophe. Everywhere we look there is war, poverty, and exploitation. And yet, the rich have seen their wealth grow enormously. People all across the country are starting to draw the correct conclusion that the root of the problem is capitalism itself. More than one million young people in Canada now believe that communism is the ideal economic system. This week, Joel is joined by Fightback and La Riposte socialiste editor Julien to discuss these developments and how Fightback/La Riposte is building a Marxist party to fight for communism!

What is the place of humans in history, and how can we play a role in deciding our fate? In this talk, Fightback editor Joel Bergman provides a Marxist critique of the book The Dawn of Everything by David Graeber and David Wengrow, and discusses the relationship between free will and determinism.

Joel has also written an article on this topic, which is in the latest issue of In Defence of Marxism. You can subscribe here. You can also listen to Joel discuss the book with Joe Attard on the International Marxist Radio podcast.

This week, Joel is joined by Fightback editor Laine to discuss the outcome of the Alberta election. Why did Danielle Smith and the UCP hold on to power? What can we learn from the election? And what can the working class do about it?

Why do Marxists want to abolish the family? Engels described the emergence of the patriarchal family as humanity’s first counterrevolution. In this talk, Fred Weston, editor of marxist.com, presents a Marxist perspective on the family and its origins.

This week Joel is joined by editor of La Riposte socialiste, Julien Arseneau, to bring a Marxist analysis to the largest PSAC strike in 30 years. What are the demands the workers are fighting for? What is the significance of the strike for the Canadian class struggle? And how do the workers win?

The assassination of Trotsky in August 1940 dealt a devastating blow to the young and untested forces of the Fourth International. Unfortunately, the leaders of the Fourth were not up to the level of the tasks posed by history. Deprived of Trotsky's leadership they made a series of fundamental mistakes. Only the leadership of the RCP in Britain was able to readjust to the new situation on a world scale after 1945. This was the result of the theoretical capabilities of Ted Grant. His writings on economics, war, the colonial revolution, and particularly Stalinism, were, and still remain, classics of modern Marxism.

In the 1950s the Indonesian economy was failing, with the division between rich and poor increasing sharply. At the same time the PKI, the Communist Party of Indonesia, grew to the third largest Communist Party in the world, with three million paid members and the support of ten million trade unionists and organized peasants. Sadly this explosive combination ended in the massacre of 1 million communists in 1965. Indonesia is a graphic example of how mistakes in theory have dire consequences.

In this talk from the 2023 Montreal Marxist Winter School, IMT activist Mike Leiden discusses the lessons of the Indonesian Revolution.

This week, Joel is joined by International Marxist Tendency activist Ted Sprague to talk about so-called "Chinese interference" in Canadian election, actual CSIS interference in Canadian politics, and growing imperialist rivalry between China and western capitalist powers.