Marxist Voice

In this talk from Revolution Festival 2019, Fred Weston (editor of www.marxist.com) discusses the crisis in Israel-Palestine, which is back on the agenda thanks to Trump's proposed 'peace plan'.

For decades, the conflict in Israel-Palestine has been one of imperialism’s most blatant and persistent acts of oppression. The world watches on as Palestine shrinks and shrinks; settlement after settlement gets built; and bomb after bomb falls on innocent men, women, and children. But, as Marx said, a nation that oppresses another is not free itself.

The oppression of the Palestinian people has dragged on for so long, that many ask: is it even possible for a solution to be found? Negotiations, ceasefires, and accords - nothing seems to work. Further talks clearly won’t achieve anything.

Under capitalism, there is no way out. A one-state 'solution' would be an apartheid state, with Arabs as second-class citizens. Trump's so-called 'peace plan', meanwhile, has demonstrated that a two-state solution is a utopia.

Fred Weston explains how Marxists have a radically different proposal to solve the question - a solution which is not based on nationalism, but on class politics: the revolutionary mobilisation of the masses of the Middle East against capitalism and imperialism.

In this talk from the main rally at Revolution Festival 2019, Alan Woods - editor of In Defence of Marxism - discusses his new book on the revolutionary movement that overthrew the Franco regime in Spain in the 1970s.

Based on his own personal experiences and involvement, Alan explains how the movement to overthrow the Franco regime was a modern-day revolution, with the working class providing the motor force for change.

And as with any revolutionary movement, Alan discusses, this period is full of vital lessons for a new generation coming into political activity today.

The remnants of the Franco regime live on still inside the modern bourgeois Spanish state. In this respect, as Alan concludes, "it is our duty to ensure that this unfinished revolution will be carried to a successful conclusion".

Get your copy of this fantastic historical account of a modern revolutionary movement from Wellred Books: https://wellredbooks.net/spain-s-revolution-against-franco-the-great-betrayal.html

In this talk from last year's Revolution Festival, Daniel Morley (writer for Socialist Appeal) looks back at the events leading up to the 1949 Chinese Revolution, explaining why the revolution played out as it did, and discussing the process that has unfolded since: from revolution to Tiananmen to capitalism.

After the 1917 Russian Revolution, as Daniel discusses, the Chinese Revolution of 1949 is the most significant event in history. Fighting first Japanese occupation and then Chiang Kai-shek's Kuomintang, the Chinese Communists took power and swept away the old relics of landlordism and feudalism in China.

Under the threat of counter-revolution and US imperialist aggression, Mao and his Red Army went even further, abolishing capitalism and establishing a planned economy.

But, unlike the revolution in Russia, the working class had not played the leading role in the Chinese Revolution. As a result, the new state that was set up was riddled with contradictions from the beginning, taking as its model the totalitarian Stalinist regime that was firmly cemented by now in the Soviet Union. This, in turn, led to the disastrous policies implemented by Chairman Mao, such as the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution.

By the 1980s, after the death of Mao, the bureaucracy had begun to reintroduce capitalism into China, paving the way for the rapid transformation of the country seen in the last two decades.

But now a new revolution is brewing in China, as the largest working class in the world begins to flex its muscles. And when this sleeping giant begins to move, it will send tremors across the whole world.

Hamid Alizadeh, editor of www.marxist.com, discusses the recent confrontation between American and Iran, and explains why the left and the labour movement must oppose US imperialist aggression.

The current sabre-rattling, as Hamid states, escalated on 3 January with the killing of the Iranian military general, Qassem Soleimani - one of the top figures in the Iranian regime.

This was a clear provocation by Trump, designed as a chest-beating exercise to distract from the problems the US President faces back home, and also with his reactionary foreign allies in Saudi Arabia and Israel.

The result, however, has been to push ordinary people in the Middle East behind the Iranian rulers, in opposition to US imperialism, thus cutting across the class struggles and revolutionary movements that have been developing in Iran, Iraq, and Lebanon in recent months.

It is the duty of all socialists to oppose the warmongers in Washington and London, and to fight to overthrow our own imperialist ruling classes.

Alan Woods - editor of In Defence of Marxism - analyses last week's UK election results, explaining the real reasons behind Labour's dramatic defeat.

In doing so, Alan answers the lies of the establishment media and the Blairites, who have falsely attempted to place all the blame for Labour's election loss on Jeremy Corbyn.

In reality, however, it is not Corbynism that has failed, but Blairism, liberalism, and the centre ground. The areas that have abandoned Labour are those that have been left behind by capitalism; those that voted Leave as a rejected of the broken status quo.

It is vital to learn the lessons of this election defeat. But Labour activists must now regroup to kick the right-wingers and careerists out of the PLP, to fight Boris Johnson and the Tories, and to continue the struggle for socialism.

In this talk from Revolution Festival 2019, Adam Booth - editor of www.socialist.net - compares and contrasts the economic ideas of Karl Marx, John Maynard Keynes, and MMT.

The crash of 2008 brought all the established neoliberal economic ideas into question. As Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman told an audience at the London School of Economics in the wake of the financial crisis: “Most work in macroeconomics in the past 30 years has been useless at best and harmful at worst.”

Over a decade on, and mainstream capitalist economists still have no answers or solutions.

Some on the left have attempted to fill the vacuum with alternative economic theories. These include old ideas, such as those of John Maynard Keynes; and new concepts, such as 'Modern Monetary Theory'.

Neither of these tendencies, however, provide a genuine, scientific analysis of capitalism. Instead, both seek to patch up and reform the broken capitalist system.

In this talk, Adam looks at these economic ideas - old and new - and explains why only a Marxist perspective can offer a way out of capitalism's crisis for the left and the labour movement.

In this talk from Revolution Festival 2019, Ben Curry (of the Socialist Appeal editorial board)discusses the Marxist philosophy of dialectical materialism and its application to the natural world.

Dialectics is a philosophy of change, explaining that all matter is in a state of motion and flux. But how does this change take place?

Using a number of examples from science - from thermodynamics, to evolution, to chaos theory - Ben demonstrates one of the basic principles of dialectics: that change occurs through a process of 'quantity and quality'.

In other words, the gradual accumulation of small quantitative changes eventually leads to the qualitative transformation of a system to a new equilibrium state.

Such 'tipping points' are seen all around us in nature - and, Ben stresses, in society also, in the form of capitalist crises and revolutions.

This is why an understanding of dialectics is so vital for all Marxists and revolutionary activists today.

In this talk from Revolution Festival 2019, Jorge Martin - editor of American Socialista and writer for www.marxist.com - discusses the recent revolutionary developments in Latin America, including in Chile, Ecuador, and Haiti.

Until recently, commentary about Latin American politics was full of pessimism and talk about a swing to the right, with the election of the Macri and Bolsonaro governments in Argentina and Brazil, respectively; and with Trump's attempted coup against the Maduro government in Venezuela.

But now the pendulum has begun to swing in the opposite direction, with a revolutionary wave sweeping across the continent. Uprisings, insurrections, and mass movements have erupted onto the streets in Ecuador, Chile, Haiti, Honduras, and elsewhere.

Meanwhile, Macri has been defeated in the Argentinian elections; AMLO remains popular amongst the masses in Mexico; and workers and youth have come out en masse against Bolsonaro's reactionary programme.

Jorge examines these revolutionary processes developing across the Americas, explaining the way forward in the fight against imperialism and capitalism - and for socialism.

In this talk from the recent Revolution Festival, Marie Frederiksen - editor of the Danish Marxist paper 'Revolution' - discusses the impact of the Berlin Wall, which was broken apart 30 years ago, on 9th November 1989.

This marked the beginning of the end for the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. Subsequently, liberal commentators declared that these events marked the final victory of capitalism over Communism.

As Marie explains, however, what collapsed was not genuine Communism, but a deformed caricature of Communism, strangled and suffocated by the growth of an enormous bureaucracy.

Despite this, enormous gains were made as a result of the planned economy. And vice-versa, huge falls in living standards were experienced in Russia and Eastern Europe following the collapse into capitalism.

The task for Marxists today is to counter the hysteria of the liberal establishment, and to understand why the Russian Revolution degenerated into Stalinism.

Above all, as Marie emphasises, we must stress that - 30 years on - it is now capitalism that is collapsing across the world, and workers and youth are looking towards the revolutionary ideas of Marxism.

Speaking at a day school in Manchester earlier this year, Josh Holroyd of Socialist Appeal discusses the events surrounding the Peterloo massacre of 16th August 1819, when thousands of protestors demanding political rights were brutally repressed by local representatives of the ruling class.

As Josh explains, the Peterloo massacre marked a turning point for the working class in England. In the years that followed, powerful trade unions were forged in order to fight back against the attacks of the capitalists. And within decades, mass political movements such as the Chartists were on the rise, striking fear into the hearts of the bourgeoisie.

200 years on, we stand on the shoulders of giants as we attempt to build on these revolutionary traditions - fighting for socialism in Britain and internationally.