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Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by Leon Trotsky. Trotsky considered himself an orthodox Marxist and Bolshevik-Leninist, which included his support for the establishment of a vanguard party of the working-class. His politics differed sharply from those of Stalinism, most prominently in opposing Socialism in One Country, which he argued was a break with proletarian internationalism, and in his belief in what he argued was a more authentic dictatorship of the proletariat based on working-class self-emancipation and mass democracy, rather than the unaccountable bureaucracy he saw as having developed after Lenin's death.

V. I. Lenin and Trotsky were close both ideologically and personally during the Russian Revolution of 1917 and its aftermath, and some call Trotsky its "co-leader".^[1] However, Lenin also criticized Trotsky's ideas and intra-Party political habits. Trotsky was also the paramount leader of the Soviet Red Army in the direct aftermath of the Revolutionary period.

Trotsky originally opposed some aspects of Leninism. In his 1914 article “Disruption of Unity”, Lenin wrote, "Under cover of ‘non-factionalism’ Trotsky is championing the interests of a group abroad which particularly lacks definite principles and has no basis in the working-class movement in Russia. All that glitters is not gold. There is much glitter and sound in Trotsky’s phrases, but they are meaningless."^[2] Later, Trotsky judged that unity between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks was impossible and joined the Bolsheviks. Trotsky played a leading role with Lenin in the revolution. Assessing Trotsky, Lenin wrote, "Trotsky long ago said that unification is impossible. Trotsky understood this and from that time on there has been no better Bolshevik."^[3]

Trotsky's Fourth International was established in France in 1938 when Trotskyists argued that the Comintern or Third International had become irretrievably "lost to Stalinism" and thus incapable of leading the international working class to political power.^[4] In contemporary English language, an advocate of Trotsky's ideas is often called a "Trotskyist"; a Trotskyist can be called a "Trotskyite" or "Trot", especially by a critic of Trotskyism.^[5]

Definition[link]

The leaders of the Trotskyist Left Opposition in Moscow, 1927. Sitting: Leonid Serebryakov, Karl Radek, Leon Trotsky, Mikhail Boguslavsky, and Yevgeni Preobrazhensky. Standing: Christian Rakovsky, Yakov Drobnis, Alexander Beloborodov, and Lev Sosnovsky.

American Trotskyist leader James P. Cannon, in his 1942 book History of American Trotskyism, wrote that "Trotskyism is not a new movement, a new doctrine, but the restoration, the revival of genuine Marxism as it was expounded and practiced in the Russian revolution and in the early days of the Communist International." However, Trotskyism can be distinguished from other Marxist theories by five key elements.

• Support for the strategy of permanent revolution, in opposition to the Two Stage Theory of his opponents;^[6]
• Criticism of the post-1924 leadership of the Soviet Union, analysis of its features^[7] and after 1933, support for political revolution in the Soviet Union and in what Trotskyists term the deformed workers' states;
• Support for social revolution in the advanced capitalist countries through working class mass action;
• Support for proletarian internationalism.^[8]
• Use of a 'transitional' programme of demands that bridge between day to day struggles of the working class and the 'maximal' ideas of the socialist transformation of society^[9]

On the political spectrum of Marxism, Trotskyists are considered to be on the left. They supported democratic rights in the USSR,^[10] opposed political deals with the imperialist powers, and advocated a spreading of the revolution throughout Europe and the East.

Theory[link]

Theory of Permanent Revolution[link]

Trotsky (raising hand) with troops at the Polish front, during the Polish-Soviet War, 1919

In 1905, Trotsky formulated a theory that became known as the theory of Permanent Revolution. It is one of the defining characteristics of Trotskyism. Until 1905, Marxism only claimed that a revolution in a European capitalist society would lead to a socialist one. According to the original theory it was impossible for such to occur in more backward countries such as early 20th century Russia. Russia in 1905 was widely considered to have not yet established a capitalist society, but was instead largely feudal with a small, weak and almost powerless capitalist class.

The theory of Permanent Revolution addressed the question of how such feudal regimes were to be overthrown, and how socialism could be established given the lack of economic prerequisites. Trotsky argued that in Russia only the working class could overthrow feudalism and win the support of the peasantry. Furthermore, he argued that the Russian working class would not stop there. They would win its own revolution against the weak capitalist class, establish a workers' state in Russia, and appeal to the working class in the advanced capitalist countries around the world. As a result, the global working class would come to Russia's aid, and socialism could develop worldwide.

The capitalist or bourgeois-democratic revolution[link]

Revolutions in Britain in the 17th century and in France in 1789 abolished feudalism and established the basic requisites for the development of capitalism. Trotsky argued that these revolutions would not be repeated in Russia.

In Results and Prospects, written in 1906, Trotsky outlines his theory in detail, arguing: "History does not repeat itself. However much one may compare the Russian Revolution with the Great French Revolution, the former can never be transformed into a repetition of the latter."^[11] In the French Revolution of 1789, France experienced what Marxists called a "bourgeois-democratic revolution" – a regime was established wherein the bourgeoisie overthrew the existing French feudalistic system. The bourgeoisie then moved towards establishing a regime of democratic parliamentary institutions. However, while democratic rights were extended to the bourgeoisie, they were not generally extended to a universal franchise. The freedom for workers to organise unions or to strike was not achieved without considerable struggle.

Trotsky argues that countries like Russia had no "enlightened, active" revolutionary bourgeoisie which could play the same role, and the working class constituted a very small minority. By the time of the European revolutions of 1848, "the bourgeoisie was already unable to play a comparable role. It did not want and was not able to undertake the revolutionary liquidation of the social system that stood in its path to power."

Theory of permanent revolution[link]

Leon Trotsky in exile in Siberia 1900

The theory of Permanent Revolution considers that in many countries, which are thought under Trotskyism to have not yet completed a bourgeois-democratic revolution, the capitalist class oppose the creation of any revolutionary situation. They fear stirring the working class into fighting for its own revolutionary aspirations against their exploitation by capitalism. In Russia, the working class, although a small minority in a predominantly peasant based society, were organised in vast factories owned by the capitalist class, and into large working class districts. During the Russian Revolution of 1905, the capitalist class found it necessary to ally with reactionary elements such as the essentially feudal landlords and ultimately the existing Czarist Russian state forces. This was to protect their ownership of their property—factories, banks, etc.-- from expropriation by the revolutionary working class.

Therefore, according to the theory of Permanent Revolution, the capitalist classes of economically backward countries are weak and incapable of carrying through revolutionary change. As a result, they are linked to and rely on the feudal landowners in many ways. Thus, Trotsky argues, because a majority of the branches of industry in Russia were originated under the direct influence of government measures—sometimes with the help of Government subsidies—the capitalist class was again tied to the ruling elite. The capitalist class were subservient to European capital.^[12]

The working class steps in[link]

Instead, Trotsky argued, only the 'proletariat' or working class were capable of achieving the tasks of that 'bourgeois' revolution. In 1905, the working class in Russia, a generation brought together in vast factories from the relative isolation of peasant life, saw the result of its labour as a vast collective effort, and the only means of struggling against its oppression in terms of a collective effort also, forming workers councils (soviets), in the course of the revolution of that year. In 1906, Trotsky argued:

The factory system brings the proletariat to the foreground... The proletariat immediately found itself concentrated in tremendous masses, while between these masses and the autocracy there stood a capitalist bourgeoisie, very small in numbers, isolated from the 'people', half-foreign, without historical traditions, and inspired only by the greed for gain. – Trotsky, Results and Prospects^[13]

The Putilov Factory, for instance, numbered 12,000 workers in 1900, and, according to Trotsky, 36,000 in July 1917.^[14] The theory of Permanent Revolution considers that the peasantry as a whole cannot take on this task, because it is dispersed in small holdings throughout the country, and forms a heterogeneous grouping, including the rich peasants who employ rural workers and aspire to landlordism as well as the poor peasants who aspire to own more land. Trotsky argues: "All historical experience... shows that the peasantry are absolutely incapable of taking up an independent political role."^[15]

Trotskyists differ on the extent to which this is true today, but even the most orthodox tend to recognise in the late twentieth century a new development in the revolts of the rural poor, the self-organising struggles of the landless, and many other struggles which in some ways reflect the militant united organised struggles of the working class, and which to various degrees do not bear the marks of class divisions typical of the heroic peasant struggles of previous epochs. However, orthodox Trotskyists today still argue that the town and city based working class struggle is central to the task of a successful socialist revolution, linked to these struggles of the rural poor. They argue that the working class learns of necessity to conduct a collective struggle, for instance in trade unions, arising from its social conditions in the factories and workplaces, and that the collective consciousness it achieves as a result is an essential ingredient of the socialist reconstruction of society.^[16]

Although only a small minority in Russian society, the proletariat would lead a revolution to emancipate the peasantry and thus "secure the support of the peasantry" as part of that revolution, on whose support it will rely.^[17] But the working class, in order to improve their own conditions, will find it necessary to create a revolution of their own, which would accomplish both the bourgeois revolution and then establish a workers' state.

International revolution[link]

According to classical Marxism, revolution in peasant-based countries, such as Russia, prepares the ground ultimately only for a development of capitalism since the liberated peasants become small owners, producers and traders which leads to the growth of commodity markets, from which a new capitalist class emerges. Only fully developed capitalist conditions prepare the basis for socialism.

Trotsky agreed that a new socialist state and economy in a country like Russia would not be able to hold out against the pressures of a hostile capitalist world, as well as the internal pressures of its backward economy. The revolution, Trotsky argued, must quickly spread to capitalist countries, bringing about a socialist revolution which must spread worldwide. In this way the revolution is "permanent", moving out of necessity first, from the bourgeois revolution to the workers’ revolution, and from there uninterruptedly to European and worldwide revolutions.

This was the position, contrary to that of "Classical Marxism" which by that time had been further illuminated by active life, shared by Trotsky and Lenin and the Bolsheviks until 1924 when Joseph Stalin, who along with Kamenev in February 1917 had taken the Menshevik position of first the bourgeois revolution, only to be confronted by Lenin and his famous April Thesis on Lenin's return to Russia, after the death of Lenin and seeking to consolidate his growing bureaucratic control of the Bolshevik Party began to put forward the slogan of "Socialism in one country".

An internationalist outlook of permanent revolution is found in the works of Karl Marx. The term "permanent revolution" is taken from a remark of Marx from his March 1850 Address: "it is our task", Marx said,

to make the revolution permanent until all the more or less propertied classes have been driven from their ruling positions, until the proletariat has conquered state power and until the association of the proletarians has progressed sufficiently far – not only in one country but in all the leading countries of the world – that competition between the proletarians of these countries ceases and at least the decisive forces of production are concentrated in the hands of the workers. – Marx, Address of the Central Committee to the Communist League^[18]

History[link]

Origins[link]

According to Trotsky, the term 'Trotskyism' was coined by Pavel Milyukov, (sometimes transliterated as 'Paul Miliukoff'), the ideological leader of the Constitutional Democratic party (Kadets) in Russia. Milyukov waged a bitter war against 'Trotskyism' "as early as 1905".^[19]

Trotsky was elected chairman of the St. Petersburg Soviet during the 1905 Russian Revolution. He pursued a policy of proletarian revolution at a time when other socialist trends advocated a transition to a "bourgeois" (capitalist) regime to replace the essentially feudal Romanov state. It was during this year that Trotsky developed the theory of Permanent Revolution, as it later became known (see below). In 1905, Trotsky quotes from a postscript to a book by Milyukov, The elections to the second state Duma, published no later than May 1907:

Those who reproach the Kadets with failure to protest at that time, by organising meetings, against the 'revolutionary illusions' of Trotskyism and the relapse into Blanquism, simply do not understand… the mood of the democratic public at meetings during that period." – The elections to the second state Duma by Pavel Milyukov^[20]

Milyukov suggests that the mood of the "democratic public" was in support of Trotsky's policy of the overthrow of the Romanov regime alongside a workers' revolution to overthrow the capitalist owners of industry, support for strike action and the establishment of democratically elected workers' councils or "soviets".

Trotskyism and the 1917 Russian Revolution[link]

Lenin speaking at a meeting in Sverdlov Square in Moscow on 5 May 1920. Original photo with Trotsky and Kamenev standing on the steps of the platform. Later, this photo was censored to remove Trotsky and Kamenev.

During his leadership of the Russian revolution of 1905, Trotsky argued that once it became clear that the Tsar's army would not come out in support of the workers, it was necessary to retreat before the armed might of the state in as good an order as possible.^[21] In 1917, Trotsky was again elected chairman of the Petrograd soviet, but this time soon came to lead the Military Revolutionary Committee which had the allegiance of the Petrograd garrison, and carried through the October 1917 insurrection. Stalin wrote:

All practical work in connection with the organization of the uprising was done under the immediate direction of Comrade Trotsky, the President of the Petrograd Soviet. It can be stated with certainty that the Party is indebted primarily and principally to Comrade Trotsky for the rapid going over of the garrison to the side of the Soviet and the efficient manner in which the work of the Military Revolutionary Committee was organized. – Stalin, Pravda, November 6, 1918^[22]

As a result of his role in the Russian Revolution of 1917, the theory of Permanent Revolution was embraced by the young Soviet state until 1924.

The Russian revolution of 1917 was marked by two revolutions: the relatively spontaneous February 1917 revolution, and the 25 October 1917 seizure of power by the Bolsheviks, who had gained the leadership of the Petrograd soviet.

Before the February 1917 Russian revolution, Lenin had formulated a slogan calling for the 'democratic dictatorship of the proletariat and the peasantry', but after the February revolution, through his April theses, Lenin instead called for "all power to the Soviets". Lenin nevertheless continued to emphasise however (as did Trotsky also) the classical Marxist position that the peasantry formed a basis for the development of capitalism, not socialism.^[23]

But also before February 1917, Trotsky had not accepted the importance of a Bolshevik style organisation. Once the February 1917 Russian revolution had broken out Trotsky admitted the importance of a Bolshevik organisation, and joined the Bolsheviks in July 1917. Despite the fact that many, like Stalin, saw Trotsky's role in the October 1917 Russian revolution as central, Trotsky says that without Lenin and the Bolshevik party the October revolution of 1917 would not have taken place.

As a result, since 1917, Trotskyism as a political theory is fully committed to a Leninist style of democratic centralist party organisation, which Trotskyists argue must not be confused with the party organisation as it later developed under Stalin. Trotsky had previously suggested that Lenin's method of organisation would lead to a dictatorship, but it is important to emphasise that after 1917 orthodox Trotskyists argue that the loss of democracy in the Soviet Union was caused by the failure of the revolution to successfully spread internationally and the consequent wars, isolation and imperialist intervention, not the Bolshevik style of organisation.

Lenin's outlook had always been that the Russian revolution would need to stimulate a Socialist revolution in western Europe in order that this European socialist society would then come to the aid of the Russian revolution and enable Russia to advance towards socialism. Lenin stated:

We have stressed in a good many written works, in all our public utterances, and in all our statements in the press that… the socialist revolution can triumph only on two conditions. First, if it is given timely support by a socialist revolution in one or several advanced countries. – Lenin, Speech at Tenth Congress of the RCP(B)^[24]

This outlook matched precisely Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution. Trotsky's Permanent Revolution had foreseen that the working class would not stop at the bourgeois democratic stage of the revolution, but proceed towards a workers' state, as happened in 1917. The Polish Trotskyist Isaac Deutscher maintains that in 1917, Lenin changed his attitude to Trotsky's theory of Permanent Revolution and after the October revolution it was adopted by the Bolsheviks.^[25]

Lenin was met with initial disbelief in April 1917. Trotsky argues that:

up to the outbreak of the February revolution and for a time after Trotskyism did not mean the idea that it was impossible to build a socialist society within the national boundaries of Russia (which "possibility" was never expressed by anybody up to 1924 and hardly came into anybody’s head). Trotskyism meant the idea that the Russian proletariat might win the power in advance of the Western proletariat, and that in that case it could not confine itself within the limits of a democratic dictatorship but would be compelled to undertake the initial socialist measures. It is not surprising, then, that the April theses of Lenin were condemned as Trotskyist. – Leon Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution^[26]

The 'legend of Trotskyism'[link]

"Bolshevik freedom" with nude of Leon Trotsky. Polish propaganda poster - Polish-Soviet War 1920

In The Stalin School of Falsification, Trotsky argues that what he calls the "legend of Trotskyism" was formulated by Grigory Zinoviev and Lev Kamenev in collaboration with Stalin in 1924, in response to the criticisms Trotsky raised of Politburo policy.^[27] Orlando Figes argues that "The urge to silence Trotsky, and all criticism of the Politburo, was in itself a crucial factor in Stalin's rise to power."^[28]

During 1922–24, Lenin suffered a series of strokes and became increasingly incapacitated. Before his death in 1924, Lenin, while describing Trotsky as "distinguished not only by his exceptional abilities – personally he is, to be sure, the most able man in the present Central Committee", and also maintaining that "his non-Bolshevik past should not be held against him", criticized him for "showing excessive preoccupation with the purely administrative side of the work", and also requested that Stalin be removed from his position of General Secretary, but his notes remained suppressed until 1956.^[29] Zinoviev and Kamenev broke with Stalin in 1925 and joined Trotsky in 1926 in what was known as the United Opposition.^[30]

In 1926, Stalin allied with Nikolai Bukharin who then led the campaign against "Trotskyism". In The Stalin School of Falsification, Trotsky quotes Bukharin's 1918 pamphlet, From the Collapse of Czarism to the Fall of the Bourgeoisie, which was re-printed by the party publishing house, Proletari, in 1923. In this pamphlet, Bukharin explains and embraces Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, writing: "The Russian proletariat is confronted more sharply than ever before with the problem of the international revolution … The grand total of relationships which have arisen in Europe leads to this inevitable conclusion. Thus, the permanent revolution in Russia is passing into the European proletarian revolution." Yet it is common knowledge, Trotsky argues, that three years later, in 1926, "Bukharin was the chief and indeed the sole theoretician of the entire campaign against 'Trotskyism', summed up in the struggle against the theory of the permanent revolution."^[31]

Trotsky wrote that the Left Opposition grew in influence throughout the 1920s, attempting to reform the Communist Party. But in 1927 Stalin declared "civil war" against them:

During the first ten years of its struggle, the Left Opposition did not abandon the program of ideological conquest of the party for that of conquest of power against the party. Its slogan was: reform, not revolution. The bureaucracy, however, even in those times, was ready for any revolution in order to defend itself against a democratic reform.

In 1927, when the struggle reached an especially bitter stage, Stalin declared at a session of the Central Committee, addressing himself to the Opposition: “Those cadres can be removed only by civil war!” What was a threat in Stalin’s words became, thanks to a series of defeats of the European proletariat, a historic fact. The road of reform was turned into a road of revolution. – Trotsky, Leon, Revolution Betrayed, p279, Pathfinder (1972)

Defeat of the European working class led to further isolation in Russia, and further suppression of the Opposition. Trotsky argued that the "so-called struggle against 'Trotskyism' grew out of the bureaucratic reaction against the October Revolution [of 1917]".^[32] He responded to the one sided civil war with his Letter to the Bureau of Party History, (1927), contrasting what he claimed to be the falsification of history with the official history of just a few years before. He further accused Stalin of derailing the Chinese revolution, and causing the massacre of the Chinese workers:

In the year 1918, Stalin, at the very outset of his campaign against me, found it necessary, as we have already learned, to write the following words:

“All the work of practical organization of the insurrection was carried out under the direct leadership of the Chairman of the Petrograd Soviet, comrade Trotsky…” (Stalin, Pravda, Nov. 6, 1918)

With full responsibility for my words, I am now compelled to say that the cruel massacre of the Chinese proletariat and the Chinese Revolution at its three most important turning points, the strengthening of the position of the trade union agents of British imperialism after the General Strike of 1926, and, finally, the general weakening of the position of the Communist International and the Soviet Union, the party owes principally and above all to Stalin. – Trotsky, Leon, The Stalin School of Falsification, p87, Pathfinder (1971)

Trotsky was sent into internal exile and his supporters were jailed. Victor Serge, for instance, first "spent six weeks in a cell" after a visit at midnight, then 85 days in an inner GPU cell, most of it in solitary confinement. He details the jailings of the Left Opposition.^[33] The Left Opposition, however, continued to work in secret within the Soviet Union.^[34] Trotsky was eventually exiled to Turkey. He moved from there to France, Norway, and finally to Mexico.^[35]

After 1928, the various Communist Parties throughout the world expelled Trotskyists from their ranks. Most Trotskyists defend the economic achievements of the planned economy in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 1930s, despite the "misleadership" of the soviet bureaucracy, and what they claim to be the loss of democracy.^[36] Trotskyists claim that in 1928 inner party democracy, and indeed soviet democracy, which was at the foundation of Bolshevism,^[37] had been destroyed within the various Communist Parties. Anyone who disagreed with the party line was labeled a Trotskyist and even a fascist.

In 1937, Stalin again unleashed what Trotskyists say was a political terror against their Left Opposition and many of the remaining 'Old Bolsheviks' (those who had played key roles in the October Revolution in 1917), in the face of increased opposition, particularly in the army.^[38]

Founding of the Fourth International[link]

Trotsky with Lenin and soldiers in Petrograd

Trotsky founded the International Left Opposition in 1930. It was meant to be an opposition group within the Comintern, but anyone who joined, or was suspected of joining, the ILO, was immediately expelled from the Comintern. The ILO therefore concluded that opposing Stalinism from within the Communist organizations controlled by Stalin's supporters had become impossible, so new organizations had to be formed. In 1933, the ILO was renamed the International Communist League (ICL), which formed the basis of the Fourth International, founded in Paris in 1938.

Trotsky said that only the Fourth International, basing itself on Lenin's theory of the vanguard party, could lead the world revolution, and that it would need to be built in opposition to both the capitalists and the Stalinists.

Trotsky argued that the defeat of the German working class and the coming to power of Hitler in 1933 was due in part to the mistakes of the Third Period policy of the Communist International and that the subsequent failure of the Communist Parties to draw the correct lessons from those defeats showed that they were no longer capable of reform, and a new international organisation of the working class must be organised. The Transitional demand tactic had to be a key element.

At the time of the founding of the Fourth International in 1938 Trotskyism was a mass political current in Vietnam, Sri Lanka and slightly later Bolivia. There was also a substantial Trotskyist movement in China which included the founding father of the Chinese Communist movement, Chen Duxiu, amongst its number. Wherever Stalinists gained power, they made it a priority to hunt down Trotskyists and treated them as the worst of enemies.

The Fourth International suffered repression and disruption through the Second World War. Isolated from each other, and faced with political developments quite unlike those anticipated by Trotsky, some Trotskyist organizations decided that the Soviet Union no longer could be called a degenerated workers state and withdrew from the Fourth International. After 1945 Trotskyism was smashed as a mass movement in Vietnam and marginalised in a number of other countries.

The International Secretariat of the Fourth International (ISFI) organised an international conference in 1946, and then World Congresses in 1948 and 1951 to assess the expropriation of the capitalists in Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia, the threat of a Third World War, and the tasks for revolutionaries. The Eastern European Communist-led governments which came into being after World War II without a social revolution were described by a resolution of the 1948 congress as presiding over capitalist economies. By 1951, the Congress had concluded that they had become "deformed workers' states." As the Cold War intensified, the ISFI's 1951 World Congress adopted theses by Michel Pablo that anticipated an international civil war. Pablo's followers considered that the Communist Parties, insofar as they were placed under pressure by the real workers' movement, could escape Stalin's manipulations and follow a revolutionary orientation.

The 1951 Congress argued that Trotskyists should start to conduct systematic work inside those Communist Parties which were followed by the majority of the working class. However, the ISFI's view that the Soviet leadership was counter-revolutionary remained unchanged. The 1951 Congress argued that the Soviet Union took over these countries because of the military and political results of World War II, and instituted nationalized property relations only after its attempts at placating capitalism failed to protect those countries from the threat of incursion by the West.

Pablo began expelling large numbers of people who did not agree with his thesis and who did not want to dissolve their organizations within the Communist Parties. For instance, he expelled the majority of the French section and replaced its leadership. As a result, the opposition to Pablo eventually rose to the surface, with an open letter to Trotskyists of the world, by Socialist Workers Party leader James P. Cannon.

The Fourth International split in 1953 into two public factions. The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) was established by several sections of the International as an alternative centre to the International Secretariat, in which they felt a revisionist faction led by Michel Pablo had taken power. From 1960, a number of ICFI sections started to reunify with the IS. After the 1963 reunification congress, the French and British sections maintained the ICFI. Other groups took different paths and originated the present complex map of Trotskyist groupings.

Trotskyist movements[link]

Latin America[link]

Trotskyist progapanda in Brazil.

Trotskyism has had some influence in some recent major social upheavals, particularly in Latin America.

The Bolivian Trotskyist party (Partido Obrero Revolucionario, POR) became a mass party in the period of the late 1940s and early 1950s, and together with other groups played a central role during and immediately after the period termed the Bolivian National Revolution.^[39]

In Brazil, as an officially recognised platform or faction of the PT until 1992, the Trotskyist Movimento Convergência Socialista (CS), which founded the United Socialist Workers' Party (PSTU) in 1994, saw a number of its members elected to national, state and local legislative bodies during the 1980s.^[40] Today the Socialism and Freedom Party (PSOL) is described as Trotskyist. Its presidential candidate in the 2006 general elections, Heloísa Helena is termed a Trotskyist who was a member of the Workers Party of Brazil (PT), a legislative deputy in Alagoas and in 1999 was elected to the Federal Senate. Expelled from the PT in December 2003, she helped found PSOL, in which various Trotskyist groups play a prominent role.

During the 1980s in Argentina, the Trotskyist party founded in 1982 by Nahuel Moreno, MAS, (Movimiento al Socialismo, Movement Toward Socialism), claimed to be the "largest Trotskyist party" in the world, before it broke into a number of different fragments in the late 1980s, including the present-day MST, PTS, MAS, IS, PRS, FOS, etc. In 1989 in an electoral front with the Communist Party and Christian nationalists groups, called "Izquierda Unida" (united left), obtained 3,49% of the electorate, representing 580.944 voters.^[41] Today the Workers' Party in Argentina has an electoral base in Salta Province in the far north, particularly in the city of Salta itself, and has become the third political force in the provinces of Tucuman, also in the north, and Santa Cruz, in the south.

Venezuelan president Hugo Chávez declared himself to be a Trotskyist during his swearing in of his cabinet two days before his own inauguration on 10 January 2007.^[42] Venezuelan Trotskyist organizations do not regard Chávez as a Trotskyist, with some describing him as a bourgeois nationalist^[43] and other considering him an honest revolutionary leader who has made major mistakes because he lacks a Marxist analysis.^[44]

Asia[link]

In Indochina during the 1930s, Vietnamese Trotskyism led by Ta Thu Thau was a significant current, particularly in Saigon.^[45]

In Sri Lanka, the Lanka Sama Samaja Party (LSSP) expelled its pro-Moscow wing in 1940, becoming a Trotskyist-led party. It was led by South Asia's pioneer Trotskyist, Philip Gunawardena and his colleague NM Perera. In 1942, following the escape of the leaders of the LSSP from a British prison, a unified Bolshevik-Leninist Party of India, Ceylon and Burma (BLPI) was established in India, bringing together the many Trotskyist groups in the subcontinent. The BLPI was active in the Quit India movement as well as the labour movement, capturing the second oldest union in India. Its high point was when it led the strikes which followed the Bombay Mutiny. After the war, the Sri Lanka section split into the Lanka Sama Samaja Party and the Bolshevik Samasamaja Party (BSP). The Indian section of the BLPI later fused with the Congress Socialist Party. In the general election of 1947 the LSSP became the main opposition party, winning 10 seats, the BSP winning a further 5. It joined the Trotskyist Fourth International after fusion with the BSP in 1950, and led a general strike (Hartal) in 1953.^[46][47][48]

In 1964 a section of the LSSP split to form the LSSP (Revolutionary) and joined the Fourth International after the LSSP proper was expelled. The LSSP (R) later split into factions led by Bala Tampoe and Edmund Samarakkody. The LSSP joined the coalition government of Sirimavo Bandaranaike, three of its members, NM Perera, Cholmondely Goonewardena and Anil Moonesinghe, becoming the first Trotskyist cabinet ministers in history.

In 1974 a secret faction of the LSSP, allied to the Militant Tendency in the UK emerged. In 1977 this faction was expelled and formed the Nava Sama Samaja Party, led by Vasudeva Nanayakkara.

Europe[link]

Graffiti in the Basque Country: James P. Cannon, founder of American Trotskyism.

In France, 10% of the electorate voted in 2002 for parties calling themselves Trotskyist.^[49]

In Britain during the 1980s, the entrist Militant tendency won three members of parliament and effective control of Liverpool City Council while in the Labour Party. Described as "Britain's fifth most important political party" in 1986^[50] it played a prominent role in the 1989–1991 mass anti-poll tax movement which was widely thought to have led to the downfall of British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.^[51][52] Almost all of the large far left parties in Britain are led by Trotskyists, including the Socialist Workers Party (Britain), the Socialist Party (England and Wales), Respect – The Unity Coalition and the Scottish Socialist Party.

The Socialist Party in Ireland was formed in 1990 by members who had been expelled by the Irish Labour Party's leader Dick Spring. It has had a sizable amount of support in the Fingal electoral district and has a Member of the European Parliament, Paul Murphy, representing Dublin and two Members of the Irish Parliament (Dáil Éireann), Clare Daly, representing Dublin North and Joe Higgins, representing Dublin West.^{[citation needed]}

In Portugal's September 2009 parliamentary election, the Left Bloc won 558.062 votes, which translated into 9,82% of the expressed votes and the election of 16 (out of 230) deputies to the national parliament.^[53] Although founded by several leftist tendencies, it still expresses much of the Trotskyist thought upheld and developed by its current leader, Francisco Louçã.

In Turkey, there are some organizations which are IST's section (Revolutionary Workers' Socialist Party), CRFI's section (Revolutionary Workers' Party), Permanent Revolution Movement(SDH), Socialism Magazine(sympathizers of the ICFI) and several small groups.

International[link]

The Fourth International derives from the 1963 reunification of the two public factions into which Fourth International split in 1953: the International Secretariat of the Fourth International (ISFI) and the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI). It is often referred to as the United Secretariat of the Fourth International, the name of its leading committee before 2003. It is widely described as the largest contemporary Trotskyist organisation with sections and sympathizing organizations in over 50 countries. [1] Its best known section has been the Ligue Communiste Revolutionnaire of France, but today there are also sizeable and influential sections in Portugal, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Pakistan and several other countries.

The Committee for a Workers' International (CWI) was founded in 1974 and now has sections in over 35 countries. Before 1997, most organisations affiliated to the CWI sought to build an entrist Marxist wing within the large social democratic parties. Since the early 1990s it has argued that most social democratic, as indeed socialist parties have moved so far to the right that there is little point trying to work within them. Instead the CWI has adopted a range of tactics, mostly seeking to build independent parties, but in some cases working within other broad working-class parties.

In France, the LCR is rivalled by Lutte Ouvrière. That group is the French section of the Internationalist Communist Union (UCI). UCI has small sections in a handful of other countries. It focuses its activities, whether propaganda or intervention, within the industrial proletariat.

The founders of the Committee for a Marxist International (CMI) claim they were expelled from the CWI, when the CWI abandoned entryism. The CWI claims they left and no expulsions were carried out. Since 2006, it has been known as the International Marxist Tendency (IMT). CMI/IMT groups continue the policy of entering mainstream social democratic, communist or radical parties.

Currently, International Marxist Tendency (IMT) is headed by Alan Woods and Lal Khan. The list of Trotskyist internationals shows that there are a large number of other multinational tendencies that stand in the tradition of Leon Trotsky. Some Trotskyist organisations are only organized in one country.

Criticism[link]

Trotskyism has been criticised by adherents of theoretically rival forms of Marxism and socialism, in particular those who have adhered to Stalinism, Maoism, left communism and outside marxism by anarchism.

In 1935, a Marxist-Leninist named Moissaye J. Olgin published a book entitled Trotskyism: Counter-Revolution in Disguise in which he put forward the idea that Trotskyism was "the enemy of the working class" and that it "should be shunned by anybody who has sympathy for the revolutionary movement of the exploited and oppressed the world over."^[54] The notable African-American Marxist-Leninist Harry Haywood, who spent much time in the Soviet Union during the 1920s and 30s, stated that although he had been somewhat interested in Trotsky’s ideas when he was young, he came to see it as "a disruptive force on the fringes of the international revolutionary movement" which eventually developed into "a counter-revolutionary conspiracy against the Party and the Soviet state." He continued to put forward his belief that:

Trotsky was not defeated by bureaucratic decisions or Stalin's control of the Party apparatus -- as his partisans and Trotskyite historians claim. He had his day in court and finally lost because his whole position flew in the face of Soviet and world realities. He was doomed to defeat because his ideas were incorrect and failed to conform to objective conditions, as well as the needs and interests of the Soviet people.^[55]

The way Trotskyists organise to promote their beliefs "Democratic Centralism" has been criticised, often by ex-members of their organisations. Tourish, a former member of the Committee for a Workers' International (CWI) asserts that these organisations typically value doctrinal orthodoxy over critical reflection, have illusions in the absolute correctness of their own party's analysis, a fear of dissent, the demonising of dissenters and critical opinion, overworking of members, a sectarian attitude to the rest of the left and the concentration of power among a small group of leaders.^[56]

Some left communists, such as Paul Mattick claim that the October Revolution was totalitarian from the start and therefore, Trotskyism has no real differences from Stalinism either in practice or theory.^[57]

In the United States Dwight Macdonald broke with Trotsky and left the trotskist Socialist Workers Party, by raising the question of the Kronstadt rebellion, which Trotsky as leader of the Soviet Red Army and the other Bolsheviks had brutally repressed. He then moved towards democratic socialism ^[58] and anarchism^[59]. A similar critique on Trotsky's role on the events around the Kronstadt rebellion was raised by the American anarchist Emma Goldman. In her essay "Trotsky Protests Too Much" she says "I admit, the dictatorship under Stalin's rule has become monstrous. That does not, however, lessen the guilt of Leon Trotsky as one of the actors in the revolutionary drama of which Kronstadt was one of the bloodiest scenes."^[60]

References[link]

Further reading[link]

• Alex Callinicos. Trotskyism (Concepts in Social Thought) University of Minnesota Press, 1990.
• Belden Fields. Trotskyism and Maoism: Theory and Practice in France and the United States Praeger Publishers, 1989.
• Alfred Rosmer. Trotsky and the Origins of Trotskyism. Republished by Francis Boutle Publishers, now out of print.
• Cliff Slaughter. Trotskyism Versus Revisionism: A Documentary History (multivolume work, now out of print)

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Trotskyism

• Encyclopedia of Trotskyism On-Line
• The Leon Trotsky Internet archive, containing a large number of Trotsky's written works
• The Lubitz TrotskyanaNet, dealing with Leon Trotsky, Trotskyism and Trotskyists
• Trotskyist archives in the United Kingdom

Irving Kristol (January 22, 1920 – September 18, 2009) was an American columnist, journalist, and writer who was dubbed the "godfather of neoconservatism".^[1] As the founder, editor, and contributor to various magazines, he played an influential role in the intellectual and political culture of the last half-century;^[2] after his death he was described by The Daily Telegraph as being "perhaps the most consequential public intellectual of the latter half of the 20th century".^[3]

Background[link]

Kristol as a senior in high school, 1936.

Kristol was born in Brooklyn, New York, the son of non-observant Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe.^[4][5] He received his B.A. from the City College of New York in 1940, where he majored in history and was part of a small but vocal Trotskyist anti-Soviet group who eventually became the New York Intellectuals. During World War II, he served in Europe in the 12th Armored Division as a combat infantryman.^[6]

Kristol was affiliated with the Congress for Cultural Freedom; he wrote in Commentary magazine from 1947 to 1952, under the editor Elliot Cohen (not to be confused with Elliot A. Cohen the writer of today's magazine); co-founder (with Stephen Spender) of the British-based Encounter from 1953 to 1958; editor of The Reporter from 1959 to 1960; executive vice-president of the publishing house Basic Books from 1961 to 1969; Henry Luce Professor of Urban Values at New York University from 1969 to 1987; and co-founder and co-editor (first with Daniel Bell and then Nathan Glazer) of The Public Interest from 1965 to 2002. He was the founder and publisher of The National Interest from 1985 to 2002. Following Ramparts' publication of information showing Central Intelligence Agency funding of the Congress, which was widely reported elsewhere, Kristol left in the late 1960s and became affiliated with the American Enterprise Institute.^[7]

Kristol was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, and a fellow emeritus at the American Enterprise Institute (having been an associate fellow from 1972, a senior fellow from 1977, and the John M. Olin Distinguished Fellow from 1988 to 1999). As a member of the board of contributors of the Wall Street Journal, he contributed a monthly column from 1972 to 1997. He served on the Council of the National Endowment for the Humanities from 1972 to 1977.

In July 2002, he received from President George W. Bush the Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor.

Kristol married historian Gertrude Himmelfarb in 1942. They had two children, Elizabeth Nelson and William Kristol, the editor of The Weekly Standard.

Kristol died aged 89 on September 18, 2009 at the Capital Hospice in Falls Church, Virginia from complications of lung cancer.^[8]

Ideas[link]

In 1973, Michael Harrington coined the term "neoconservatism" to describe those liberal intellectuals and political philosophers who were disaffected with the political and cultural attitudes dominating the Democratic Party and were moving toward a new form of conservatism.^[9] Intended by Harrington as a pejorative term, it was accepted by Kristol as an apt description of the ideas and policies exemplified by The Public Interest. Unlike liberals, for example, neoconservatives rejected most of the Great Society programs sponsored by Lyndon Johnson; and unlike traditional conservatives, they supported the more limited welfare state instituted by Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

In February 1979, Kristol was featured on the cover of Esquire. The caption identified him as "the godfather of the most powerful new political force in America -- Neoconservatism".^[10] That year also saw the publication of the book The Neoconservatives: The Men Who Are Changing America's Politics. Like Harrington, the author, Peter Steinfels, was critical of neoconservatism, but he was impressed by its growing political and intellectual influence. Kristol's response appeared under the title "Confessions of a True, Self-Confessed -- Perhaps the Only -- 'Neoconservative'".^[11]

Neoconservatism, Kristol maintains, is not an ideology but a "persuasion", a way of thinking about politics rather than a compendium of principles and axioms.^[12] It is classical rather than romantic in temperament, and practical and anti-Utopian in policy. One of Kristol's most celebrated quips defines a neoconservative as "a liberal who has been mugged by reality". As a former Trotskyist, Irving was indeed himself mugged by the "reality" of conservative philosophy and enfolded leftist policies such as a lack of objection to welfare programs, international "revolution" through nation-building/militarily imposed "democracy" and application of Fabian Socialism/Keynesianism coupled with a socially conservative viewpoint. These concepts lie at the core of neoconservative philosophy to this day.^[13]

That "reality", for Kristol, is a complex one. While propounding the virtues of supply-side economics as the basis for the economic growth that is "a sine qua non for the survival of a modern democracy", he also insists that any economic philosophy has to be enlarged by "political philosophy, moral philosophy, and even religious thought", which were as much the sine qua non for a modern democracy.^[14]

One of his early books, Two Cheers for Capitalism, asserts that capitalism, or more precisely bourgeois capitalism, is worthy of two cheers: One cheer, because "it works, in a quite simple, material sense", by improving the conditions of people. And a second cheer, because it is "congenial to a large measure of personal liberty". These are no small achievements, he argues, and only capitalism has proved capable of providing them. But it also imposes a great "psychic burden" upon the individual and the social order as well. Because it does not meet the individual's "'existential' human needs", it creates a "spiritual malaise" that threatens the legitimacy of that social order. As much as anything else, it is the withholding of that third cheer that is the distinctive mark of neoconservatism, as Kristol understands it.^[15]

Articles[link]

• "Men and Ideas: Niccolo Machiavelli," Encounter, December 1954.
• "American Intellectuals and Foreign Policy," Foreign Affairs, July 1967 (repr. in On the Democratic Idea in America).
• "Memoirs of a Cold Warrior," New York Times Magazine, February 11, 1968 (repr. in Reflections of a Neoconservative).
• "When Virtue Loses All Her Loveliness," The Public Interest, Fall 1970 (repr. in On the Democratic Idea in America and Two Cheers for Capitalism).
• "Pornography, Obscenity, and Censorship," New York Times Magazine, March 28, 1971 (repr. in On the Democratic Idea in America and Reflections of a Neoconservative).
• "Utopianism, Ancient and Modern," Imprimus, April 1973 (repr. in Two Cheers for Capitalism).
• "Adam Smith and the Spirit of Capitalism," The Great Ideas Today, ed. Robert Hutchins and Mortimer Adler, 1976 (repr. in Reflections of a Neoconservative).
• "Memoirs of a Trotskyist," New York Times Magazine, January 23, 1977 (repr. in Reflections of a Neoconservative).
• "The Adversary Culture of Intellectuals," Encounter, October 1979 (repr. in Reflections of a Neoconservative).

Books[link]

• On the Democratic Idea in America, New York: Harper, 1972 (ISBN 0060124679).
• Two Cheers for Capitalism, 1978 (ISBN 0-465-08803-1)
• Reflections of a Neoconservative: Looking Back, Looking Ahead, 1983 (ISBN 0-465-06872-3)
• Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, 1995 (ISBN 0-02-874021-1)
• The Neoconservative Persuasion: Selected Essays, 1942-2009, Basic Books, 2011 (ISBN 0465022235).

References[link]

External links[link]

Find more about Irving Kristol on Wikipedia's sister projects:
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• American Conservatism 1945-1995, by Irving Kristol
• On The Political Stupidity of the Jews, by Irving Kristol
• The Neoconservative Persuasion, by Irving Kristol
• Irving Kristol - Daily Telegraph obituary
• Irving Kristol Papers - Wisconsin Historical Society
• Booknotes interview with Kristol on Neoconservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea, September 24, 1995.
• Arguing the World, 1998 PBS documentary film featuring Nathan Glazer, Daniel Bell, Irving Howe, and Kristol

James R. Lobe (born January 4, 1949 in Seattle, Washington) is an American journalist and the Washington Bureau Chief of the international news agency Inter Press Service. He has also written for Foreign Policy In Focus, Oneworld.net, Alternet, TomPaine.com, Asia Times, and other internet news publications. Lobe is best known for his criticism of U.S. foreign policy, American militarism, with a particular focus on the neo-conservatives, their worldview, their relationship to other political tendencies, and their influence in the Bush administration.^{[citation needed]}

Career[link]

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In 1970, Lobe graduated magna cum laude from Williams College in Williamstown (Massachusetts), with highest honors in History. He received his Juris Doctor from Boalt Hall School of Law at the University of California, Berkeley in 1974.

Journalist[link]

Jim Lobe has served as the Washington D.C. correspondent and Bureau Chief of Inter Press Service (IPS)^[1] from 1980 to 1985, and again from 1989 to the present. IPS is an international news and feature agency that specializes in the coverage of events and issues of interest to or affecting developing countries. Since 2001, Lobe has served on the Foreign Policy in Focus Board of Advisors.

Lecturer[link]

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Lobe has lectured occasionally on U.S. Foreign Policy, Neo-conservative ideology, the Bush administration, and Foreign Policy and the U.S. Media at various colleges and universities around the United States, including: Jackson School of International Studies and School of Communications at the University of Washington, Seattle; Union College in Schenectady, New York; Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut; American University in Washington D.C.; University of San Francisco (USF); and New York University. He also lectured at the Institute of American Affairs, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, China; the Institute of International Relations in Hanoi, Vietnam; and the Graduate Institute of International Studies, Geneva, Switzerland (April, 2005). In 2004, he acted as defense attorney for the Project of the New American Century at the BRussells Tribunal in Brussels.

Coverage[link]

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Jim Lobe was the first journalist to cover the ties between the post-9/11 agenda pursued by the Bush administration and the recommendations of the neo-conservative-led Project for the New American Century.

He was the first to relate that agenda to the controversial Defense Policy Guidance (DPG) draft paper that was overseen by then-Undersecretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz and I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, and leaked to the New York Times in March, 1992.

Lobe was among the first to cover the split within the Bush administration between the coalition of hawks – neo-conservatives, aggressive nationalists, and the Christian Right – on the one hand and the “realists” centered in the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) on the other. Since 2001, many of his stories have dealt with the internal balance of power and its evolution over the six years in which Bush has been president.

Jim Lobe has written at some length on the general worldview of neo-conservatives, as well as of their policy agendas as they have evolved over time.

Interviews[link]

Lobe has been recognized by major international media for his expertise on the neo-conservative movement and foreign policy. He appeared on the BBC’s public-affairs program Panorama: “The War Party”, broadcast May 18, 2003;^[2] and was interviewed for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Four Corners public affairs program: “American Dreamers”, broadcast March 10, 2003.^[3]

Publications[link]

• Lobe, Jim and Oliveri, Adele; eds. (2003) I Nuovi Rivoluzionari: Il Pensiero dei Neoconservatori Americani. Milan: Feltrinelli. (Co-editor)
• Feffer, John; ed. (2003) Power Trip: U.S. Unilateralism and Global Strategy After September 11. New York: Seven Stories Press. (Contributor)
• Ackerman, S., Arkin, W., Marthoz, J., Wery, M.; eds., (2004) Les Etats-Unis a Contre-Courant: Critiques Americaines a L’Egard d’une Politique Etrangere Unilateraliste. Brussels: GRIP. (Contributor)

References[link]

1. ^ Lobelog Authors-Jim Lobe
2. ^ transcript of interview with bbc
3. ^ transcript of interview with abc

External links[link]

• Lobe’s stories on the neo-conservatives published by IPS Inter Press Service
• Jim Lobe’s blog Lobelog.com
• Interview by Jonathan Holmes for the ABC public affairs program Four Corners on 17 February 2003
• Lobe on “What is neo-conservative anyway?”, Asia Times (August 13, 2003)

Eustace Clarence Mullins, Jr. (March 9, 1923 – February 2, 2010)^[1] was a populist American political writer, biographer, and antisemite.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8]} His most famous work was The Secrets of The Federal Reserve. Along with Nesta Webster, he is generally regarded as one of the most influential authors in the genre of conspiracism.

Biography[link]

Eustace Clarence Mullins, Jr. was born in Roanoke, Virginia, the third child of Eustace Clarence Mullins (1899–1961) and his wife Jane Katherine Muse (1897–1971). His father was a salesman in a retail clothing store.

Eustace Mullins was educated at Washington and Lee University, New York University, the University of North Dakota and the Institute of Contemporary Arts (Washington, D.C.)

In December 1942, at Charlottesville, Virginia he enlisted in the military as a Warrant Officer. He was also a veteran of the United States Air Force, with thirty-eight months active service during World War II.

Mullins frequently visited poet Ezra Pound during his period of incarceration in St. Elizabeths Hospital for the Mentally Ill in Washington, D.C. between 1946 and 1959. According to Mullins it was Pound who set him on the course of research that led to his writing The Secrets of The Federal Reserve^[9]

Mullins was a researcher at the Library of Congress in 1950 and cooperated with Senator Joseph McCarthy in trying to discover who financed the Communist Party. He later stated that he believed McCarthy had "started to turn the tide against world communism".^[10] Shortly after his first book came out in 1952, he was discharged by the Library of Congress.^[11]

In the 1950s, Mullins wrote for Conde McGinley’s newspaper Common Sense, which promoted the second edition of his book on the Federal Reserve, entitled The Federal Reserve Conspiracy (1954). Around this time, he also wrote for Lyrl Clark Van Hyning's Chicago-based newsletter, Women's Voice. In 1995, he was writing for Criminal Politics.^[12] Around the end of his life, he would write for Willis Carto's magazine Barnes Review.

Mullins lived in Staunton, Virginia, in the house on Madison Place where he grew up, from the mid 1970s through the end of his life.^[13]

Writings[link]

In his Foreword to The Secrets of the Federal Reserve Mullins explains the circumstances by which he came to write his now famous investigation into the origins of the Federal Reserve System:

In 1949, while I was visiting Ezra Pound who was a political prisoner at St. Elizabeth’s Hospital, Washington, D.C. (a Federal institution for the insane), Dr. Pound asked me if I had ever heard of the Federal Reserve System. I replied that I had not, as of the age of 25. He then showed me a ten dollar bill marked "Federal Reserve Note" and asked me if I would do some research at the Library of Congress on the Federal Reserve System which had issued this bill. Pound was unable to go to the Library himself, as he was being held without trial as a political prisoner by the United States government. After he was denied broadcasting time in the U.S., Dr. Pound broadcast from Italy in an effort to persuade people of the United States not to enter World War II. Franklin D. Roosevelt had personally ordered Pound’s indictment...^[14]

After telling Pound that he had little interest in such a research project because he was working on a novel,

Pound offered to supplement my income by ten dollars a week for a few weeks. My initial research revealed evidence of an international banking group which had secretly planned the writing of the Federal Reserve Act and Congress’ enactment of the plan into law. These findings confirmed what Pound had long suspected. He said, "You must work on it as a detective story."^[15]

Mullins completed the manuscript during the course of 1950 when he began to seek a publisher. Eighteen publishers turned the book down without comment before the President of the Devin-Adair Publishing Company, Devin Garrett, told him, "I like your book but we can't print it...Neither can anybody else in New York. You may as well forget about getting the [...] book published."^[16]

Eventually the book was published by two of Pound's disciples, John Kasper and David Horton, under the title Mullins on the Federal Reserve.

In Mullins on the Federal Reserve (1952), (the updated edition published in 1983 was called Secrets of the Federal Reserve) Mullins argued that there was a conspiracy among Paul Warburg, Edward Mandell House, Woodrow Wilson, J.P. Morgan, Benjamin Strong, Otto Kahn, the Rockefeller family, the Rothschild family, and other European and American bankers which resulted in the founding of the U.S. Federal Reserve System. He argued that the Federal Reserve Act of 1913 defies Article 1, Section 8, Paragraph 5 of the United States Constitution by creating a "central bank of issue" for the United States. Mullins went on to claim that World War I, the Agricultural Depression of 1920, the Great Depression of 1929 were brought about by international banking interests in order to profit from conflict and economic instability. Mullins also cited Thomas Jefferson's staunch opposition to the establishment of a central bank in the United States.

In the 1983 edition of his book, he argued that Kuhn, Loeb & Co. and the House of Morgan were fronts for the Rothschilds. In this edition, he also outlined how financial interests connected to the J. Henry Schroder Company and the Dulles brothers financed Adolf Hitler (in contrast to the claims of his mentor, Ezra Pound, that Hitler was a sovereign who was completely against the interests of international finance^[17] ). He also alleged that the Rothschilds were world monopolists. He furthermore claimed that most of the stock of member banks that owned stock in the Federal Reserve was owned by City of London bankers, since they owned much of the stock of the member banks. He attempted to trace stock ownership, as it changed hands via mergers and acquisitions, from the inception of the Federal Reserve in 1913 to the early 1980s.^[18]

In the last chapter of the book, he noted various Congressional investigations, and criticized the immense degree of power that these few banks who owned majority shares in the Federal Reserve possessed. He also criticized the Bilderberg Group, attacking it as an international consortium produced by the Rockefeller-Rothschild alliance. In an appendix to the book, he delved further into the City of London, and criticized the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations, which he claimed helps to conduct psychological warfare on the citizens of Britain and the United States.

A central theme of Mullins' book is that the Federal Reserve allows bankers to monetize debt, creating it out of nothing by book entry, and thus they have enormous leverage over everyone else. Near the end of the book, he said of the Federal Reserve:

The Federal Reserve System is not Federal; it has no reserves; and it is not a system, but rather, a criminal syndicate. It is the product of criminal syndicalist activity of an international consortium of dynastic families comprising what the author terms "The World Order". The Federal Reserve system is a central bank operating in the United States. Although the student will find no such definition of a central bank in the textbooks of any university, the author has defined a central bank as follows: It is the dominant financial power of the country which harbors it. It is entirely private-owned, although it seeks to give the appearance of a governmental institution. It has the right to print and issue money, the traditional prerogative of monarchs. It is set up to provide financing for wars. It functions as a money monopoly having total power over all the money and credit of the people.

Eustace Mullins dedicated Secrets of the Federal Reserve to George Stimpson and Ezra Pound.

Mullins wrote a follow up to his work on the Federal Reserve in 1985, in a book called The World Order: A Study in the Hegemony of Parasitism,^[19] updated in 1992 as The World Order: Our Secret Rulers. He argued that the Federal Reserve and other central banks were tools of a "Rothschild World system", centered in the City of London, which extended its power through organizations like the Royal Institute of International Affairs, various foundations, corporate conglomerates, intelligence agencies, etc. He proposed that Nations were not really governing powers, but rather, that the world was parasitically controlled by this interlock of banks, foundations, and corporations, which acted as a unified force, tending towards World monopoly. He furthermore proposed that this oligarchical apparatus was controlled by corrupt, dynastic families that had accumulated their wealth through trade in gold, slaves, and drugs. He claimed that as this consortium furthered its monopolistic ambitions, it would seek the establishment of a World Culture, eradicate nationalism, impoverish everyone except themselves, and progressively turn the world into a police state.

In 1985, Mullins also wrote A Writ for Martyrs, in which he reproduced a large portion of his FBI file, which included a 1959 memo to J. Edgar Hoover from Alex Rosen, which suggested having Mullins forcibly committed for his political views. On this memo is a scribbled note from Hoover, saying the Mullins case was “top priority” and that FBI agents should “see that some action is taken.” It also produced facsimiles of his correspondence with the German and American governments regarding the burning of the German translation of his study of the Federal Reserve.

In 1988, Mullins wrote Murder by Injection, where he argued that much of the United States was controlled by the Rockefellers, and that the "medical monopoly" exercised a pernicious influence on American life, intentionally making people sick and deliberately introducing poisons, rather than healing people.

In 1989, Mullins wrote The Rape of Justice, where he argued that the United States legal system was fundamentally corrupt.

Antisemitism[link]

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Many of Mullins' writings show a preoccupation with the idea that the Jews of the world are in a state of war with Christianity and Western civilization, and that Communism, Zionism, and International finance were Jewish tools to subjugate gentile populations. He also believed that in general the interaction between Jews and gentiles was parasitic. He believed that gentiles like the Rockefellers were also parasitic, but that ultimately the World Order was controlled by Jews and that the end goal of this Jewish oligarchy is "World Zionism."^{[citation needed]}

He believed that the French Revolution and the Congress of Vienna were key events in which Jews, via conspiratorial machinations, overpowered Gentile governments.^{[citation needed]} He believed that other key moments in the establishment of Jewish power were the creation of the Federal Reserve, the Bolshevik Revolution, and the establishment of the state of Israel.^{[citation needed]}

Like Pound, he had sympathy for Fascism, because of its apparent anti-Usury and anti-Communist measures, though he later withdrew that sympathy, as he came to believe that without the Nazis, Zionism would never have been a powerful force, and that the Nazis were puppets of Jewish bankers, specifically Max Warburg, who he claimed financed them to build up the Nazi war machine, as well as the leaders of the J. Henry Schroeder Bank, who were facilitated by the Dulles brothers, and that Nazi opposition to these bankers, insofar as it went beyond rhetoric, occurred only well after they had ascended to power. In his book Secrets of the Federal Reserve, he also claimed that World War One was contrived and managed by a triumvirate consisting of Paul Warburg, Bernard Baruch, Eugene Meyer, and to a lesser extent, the leaders of Morgan banks, in the United States, and men like Max Warburg in Germany, so that they might increase their profit and power. He also claimed that these individuals would play a key role in financing the Bolshevik Revolution.^{[citation needed]}

His October, 1952 article "Adolf Hitler: An Appreciation" was mentioned in a report by the House Un-American Activities Committee.^[20] In it, he espoused anti-Semitic views and expressed the belief that America owes a debt to Hitler.^{[citation needed]}

In a tract called The Secret Holocaust, Mullins stated that the account of the Nazi extermination of the Jews is implausible, and that it is a cover story for the Soviet massacres of Christians, which he believed was led by a conspiracy of "international Jews" and instigated for the purpose of killing Gentiles.^{[citation needed]}

In 1968, Mullins authored the tract, The Biological Jew, which he claimed was an "objective" analysis of the forces behind the "decline" of Western Culture. He claimed that the main influence that people were overlooking in their analysis of world affairs was "parasitism". He began by describing parasitism in the animal kingdom. He then commented on the work of the macro-historians Oswald Spengler and Arnold Toynbee (who he said was a ripoff of Spengler and a "shabbez-goi historian"), and proposed that if we look at society as if it were an organism, then the Jews would be equivalent to parasites overtaking that organism. He states that Jews "instinctively" want to control the world. He spent the rest of the book attacking Americans for their supposed docility and subservience to the Jews, and predicting that America would be in total cultural decline by the 1980s.^{[citation needed]}

Michael Barkun describes Mullins' 1992 work The New World Order: Our Secret Rulers as "a more openly anti-Semitic version of the Illuminati theory". He writes:

Like his mentor [Ezra Pound], Mullins sees the world's evil as a product of financial manipulation, in which Jews play a central role. But as an explanation of world, as opposed to modern, history, his conspiracist vision makes the Illuminati merely a link in a much longer change that extends back to the ancient Near East and forward to the nascent communist movement of the early Marx. Weishaupt himself is portrayed as a mere figurehead... Mullins sees the Illuminati as really run by Jews...".^[8]

Death[link]

While on a speaking tour in Columbus, Ohio in January 2010, Mullins suffered a stroke. He died on February 2, 2010, aged 86, in Hockley, Texas.

Works[link]

Books[link]

• The Curse of Canaan: A Demonology of History, Revelation Books, Staunton, Virginia, 1987, 242 pages, ISBN 0-9786517-1-5 (2007)
• The Federal Reserve Conspiracy, Common Sense, Union, New Jersey, 1954, 144 pages
• Mullins' New History of the Jews, The International Institute of Jewish Studies, Staunton, Virginia, 1978, reprint of 1968 edition. Quoting from the introduction: "... throughout the history of civilization, one particular problem of mankind has remained constant. In all of the vast records of peace and wars and rumors of wars, one great empire after another has had to come to grips with the same dilemma ... the Jews."
• Murder by Injection: The Medical Conspiracy Against America, The National Council for Medical Research, Staunton, Virginia, ISBN 0-88060-694-0
• My Life in Christ, Faith and Service Books, Aryan League of America Staunton, Virginia, 1968, 90 pages
• The Rape of Justice: America's Tribunals Exposed, Staunton, Virginia: National Commission for Judicial Reform, 1989
• The Secret History of the Atomic Bomb
• The Secrets of the Federal Reserve, 1952. Reprinted John McLaughlin, 1983, 208 pages, ISBN 0-9656492-1-0
• The Sedition Case, Sons Of Liberty, 1985, Metairie, Louisiana, 1985, Trade Paperback
• This Difficult Individual: Ezra Pound, Fleet Publishing Corporation, (1961) reprint, Noontide Press, ISBN 0-317-53248-0
• This Difficult Individual: Ezra Pound, Angriff Press: Hollywood, California, 1961. With black & white photos of Ezra Pound taken while incarcerated, 388 pages, cloth reprint (exactly as Fleet Press edition; bootlegged?)
• War! War! War!, Sons of Liberty, 1984, ISBN 0-89562-100-2
• A Writ for Martyrs, OTU Christ Church, 1985, Soft Cover, 223 pages
• The World Order: A Study in the Hegemony of Parasitism, Staunton, Virginia: Ezra Pound Institute, 1985, 217 pages
• The World Order: Our Secret Rulers, Staunton, Virginia: Ezra Pound Institute, 1992, 294 pages

Pamphlets and other works[link]

• 27 Billion Dollar Rip Off; The Power Brokers
• America's New Robber Barons: Exclusive Report, pamphlet, 8 pages
• American Patriotism Means Loyalty to Israel, Says Jack, pamphlet, reprint, 2 pages
• Boycott: The Jewish Weapon
• Canada: A Financial Report For 1992
• The Celebration Of Rosh Hashanah
• The Coup That Never Was
• Criminals On Capitol Hill
• The Danger Of International Merger Mania
• The Day Is Here
• Death To The Peacemakers
• Easter
• Education For Death
• Education for Slavery
• Every Man A King
• FDR
• Federal Reserve Notes: Shackles Of Slavery
• General MacArthur The Man Who Refused to Lose
• Genocide In America
• George Sylvester Viereck: Roosevelt's Victim, pamphlet, 3 pages
• The Glorious Revolution, corner-stapled report, 4 pages
• The Hidden Hand Behind Televangelism
• The Holocaust Explained
• How The Media Is Manipulated
• How To Become A United States Senator
• Is There A New World Order?
• Jesse Jackson And The Jews'', corner-stapled report, 7 pages
• Jewish TV: Sick, Sick, Sick
• Jewish War Against The Western World
• Judges or Criminals?, pamphlet, 3 pages
• Khatyn Or Katyn?, pamphlet, 2 pages
• The Lindbergh Murders: Hauptman Was Innocent
• Marching through Georgia, pamphlet
• Murder
• Murder by Injection: The Great Swine Flu Massacre
• Murder On The Supreme Court
• New Israel
• New Look at Herzl, 2 pages, corner-stapled photocopied report. Reveals that Herzl's grandiose plans for Zionism resulted from VD.
• The New World Order
• None Dare Call Him Traitor: Larry Abraham The Israeli Connect, pamphlet, 8 pages
• Operation Desert Shield, corner-stapled report, 4 pages
• Our Identity
• The Plagues Of Pharaoh
• The Power Brokers Of Canada'
• Reagan's Final Surrender, corner-stapled report, 2 pages
• The Scandal Unveiled
• The Secret Holocaust, CPA Book Publishers, Boring, Oregon, small 34-page pamphlet
• Sigmund Freud: Anti-Christ Devil
• Supreme Court Burns Us Again
• The Trilaterals Are Back In The White House
• The Vietnam Wall
• The War Against Christianity
• There's A Gulag In Your Future
• Trotsky: Where Are You Now?
• The War Against Vietnam Veterans
• War Is The Only Way Out
• The Warburgs, An American Success Story, corner-stapled catalog, 7 pages.
• Warning: The Department Of Justice Is Dangerous To Americans
• Washington DC: City Of Fear
• What Are We Fighting To Preserve?
• What Made Sammy Run?: How Racial Hatred Creates Billion Dollar Fortunes, pamphlet, 10 pages
• Who Owns the TV Networks ?
• Why General Patton was Murdered, pamphlet, 4 pages
• You Can Stop the Threatened Depression!, leaflet, USA: Liberty Free Press, USA

Resources[link]

• 1900–1930 U.S. Federal Census
• World War I Draft Registration Card of Eustace Mullins, Jr.'s father
• World War II Military Enlistment Index

References[link]

External links[link]

• Eustace Mullins Memorial at Find A Grave

Albert Camus

Portrait from New York World-Telegram and the Sun Newspaper Photograph Collection, 1957
Born	(1913-11-07)7 November 1913 Dréan, El Taref, French Algeria
Died	4 January 1960(1960-01-04) (aged 46) Villeblevin, Yonne, Burgundy, France
Era	20th century philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Absurdism
Main interests	Ethics, Humanity, Justice, Love, Politics
Influenced by Plotinus, Augustine of Hippo, Søren Kierkegaard, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Karl Marx, Franz Kafka, Herman Melville, Friedrich Nietzsche, Simone Weil, Victor Hugo, Pascal Pia, George Orwell, André Gide, Max Stirner, Sigmund Freud, Lev Shestov, Jean-Paul Sartre
Influenced Thomas Merton, Jacques Monod, Jean-Paul Sartre, Orhan Pamuk, Mohsin Hamid, Richard Wright, Charles Bukowski, Paul Auster

Albert Camus (French pronunciation: [albɛʁ kamy] ( listen); 7 November 1913 – 4 January 1960) was a French author, journalist, and philosopher. His views contributed to the rise of the philosophy known as absurdism. He wrote in his essay "The Rebel" that his whole life was devoted to opposing the philosophy of nihilism while still delving deeply into individual freedom.

Although often cited as a proponent of existentialism, the philosophy with which Camus was associated during his own lifetime, he rejected this particular label.^[1] In an interview in 1945, Camus rejected any ideological associations: "No, I am not an existentialist. Sartre and I are always surprised to see our names linked..."^[2]

In 1949, Camus founded the Group for International Liaisons within the Revolutionary Union Movement, which was opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton.^[3]

Camus was awarded the 1957 Nobel Prize for Literature "for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times".^[4] He was the second-youngest recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature, after Rudyard Kipling, and the first African-born writer to receive the award.^[5] He is the shortest-lived of any Nobel literature laureate to date, having died in an automobile accident just over two years after receiving the award.

Early years[link]

Albert Camus was born on 7 November 1913 in Dréan (then known as Mondovi) in French Algeria to a Pied-Noir family.^[6] His mother was of Spanish descent and was half-deaf.^[7] His father Lucien, a poor agricultural worker, died in the Battle of the Marne in 1914 during World War I, while serving as a member of the Zouave infantry regiment. Camus and his mother lived in poor conditions during his childhood in the Belcourt section of Algiers.

In 1923, Camus was accepted into the lycée and eventually he was admitted to the University of Algiers. After he contracted tuberculosis (TB) in 1930, he had to end his football activities (he had been a goalkeeper for the university team) and reduce his studies to part-time. To earn money, he also took odd jobs: as private tutor, car parts clerk and assistant at the Meteorological Institute. He completed his licence de philosophie (BA) in 1935; in May 1936, he successfully presented his thesis on Plotinus, Néo-Platonisme et Pensée Chrétienne (Neo-Platonism and Christian Thought), for his diplôme d'études supérieures (roughly equivalent to an M.A. thesis).

Camus joined the French Communist Party in the spring of 1935, seeing it as a way to "fight inequalities between Europeans and 'natives' in Algeria." He did not suggest he was a Marxist or that he had read Das Kapital, but did write that "[w]e might see communism as a springboard and asceticism that prepares the ground for more spiritual activities."^[8] In 1936, the independence-minded Algerian Communist Party (PCA) was founded. Camus joined the activities of the Algerian People's Party (Le Parti du Peuple Algérien), which got him into trouble with his Communist party comrades. As a result, in 1937 he was denounced as a Trotskyite and expelled from the party. Camus went on to be associated with the French anarchist movement.

The anarchist André Prudhommeaux first introduced him at a meeting in 1948 of the Cercle des Étudiants Anarchistes (Anarchist Student Circle) as a sympathiser familiar with anarchist thought. Camus wrote for anarchist publications such as Le Libertaire, La révolution Proletarienne and Solidaridad Obrera (Workers' Solidarity, the organ of the anarcho-syndicalist CNT (National Confederation of Labor)). Camus stood with the anarchists when they expressed support for the uprising of 1953 in East Germany. He again allied with the anarchists in 1956, first in support of the workers’ uprising in Poznań, Poland, and then later in the year with the Hungarian Revolution.

In 1934, he married Simone Hie, a morphine addict, but the marriage ended as a consequence of infidelities on both sides. In 1935, he founded Théâtre du Travail (Worker's Theatre),^[9] renamed Théâtre de l'Equipe (Team's Theatre) in 1937. It lasted until 1939. From 1937 to 1939 he wrote for a socialist paper, Alger-Républicain. His work included an account of the peasants who lived in Kabylie in poor conditions, which apparently cost him his job. From 1939 to 1940, he briefly wrote for a similar paper, Soir-Republicain. He was rejected by the French army because of his TB.

In 1940, Camus married Francine Faure, a pianist and mathematician. Although he loved her, he had argued passionately against the institution of marriage, dismissing it as unnatural. Even after Francine gave birth to twins, Catherine and Jean, on 5 September 1945, he continued to joke to friends that he was not cut out for marriage. Camus conducted numerous affairs, particularly an irregular and eventually public affair with the Spanish-born actress Maria Casares. In the same year, Camus began to work for Paris-Soir magazine. In the first stage of World War II, the so-called Phoney War, Camus was a pacifist. In Paris during the Wehrmacht occupation, on 15 December 1941, Camus witnessed the execution of Gabriel Péri; it crystallized his revolt against the Germans. He moved to Bordeaux with the rest of the staff of Paris-Soir. In the same year he finished his first books, The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus. He returned briefly to Oran, Algeria in 1942.

Literary career[link]

During the war Camus joined the French Resistance cell Combat, which published an underground newspaper of the same name. This group worked against the Nazis, and in it Camus assumed the nom de guerre Beauchard. Camus became the paper's editor in 1943. He first met Sartre at the dress rehearsal of Sartre's play, The Flies, in June 1943. ^[10] When the Allies liberated Paris in August 1944, Camus witnessed and reported the last of the fighting. Soon after the event on 6 August 1945, he was one of the few French editors to publicly express opposition and disgust to the United States' dropping the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. He resigned from Combat in 1947 when it became a commercial paper. After the war, Camus began frequenting the Café de Flore on the Boulevard Saint-Germain in Paris with Sartre and others. He also toured the United States to lecture about French thought. Although he leaned left, politically, his strong criticisms of Communist doctrine did not win him any friends in the Communist parties and eventually alienated Sartre.

In 1949 his TB returned and Camus lived in seclusion for two years. In 1951 he published The Rebel, a philosophical analysis of rebellion and revolution which expressed his rejection of communism. Upsetting many of his colleagues and contemporaries in France, the book brought about the final split with Sartre. The dour reception depressed Camus; he began to translate plays.

Camus's first significant contribution to philosophy was his idea of the absurd. He saw it as the result of our desire for clarity and meaning within a world and condition that offers neither, which he expressed in The Myth of Sisyphus and incorporated into many of his other works, such as The Stranger and The Plague. Despite his split from his "study partner", Sartre, some^[who?] still argue that Camus falls into the existentialist camp. He specifically rejected that label in his essay "Enigma" and elsewhere (see: The Lyrical and Critical Essays of Albert Camus). The current confusion arises in part because many recent applications of existentialism have much in common with many of Camus's practical ideas (see: Resistance, Rebellion, and Death). But, his personal understanding of the world (e.g. "a benign indifference", in The Stranger), and every vision he had for its progress (e.g. vanquishing the "adolescent furies" of history and society, in The Rebel) undoubtedly set him apart.

In the 1950s Camus devoted his efforts to human rights. In 1952 he resigned from his work for UNESCO when the UN accepted Spain as a member under the leadership of General Franco. In 1953 he criticized Soviet methods to crush a workers' strike in East Berlin. In 1956 he protested against similar methods in Poland (protests in Poznań) and the Soviet repression of the Hungarian revolution in October.

The monument to Camus built in the small town of Villeblevin, France where he died in an automobile accident on 4 January 1960

Camus maintained his pacifism and resisted capital punishment anywhere in the world. He wrote an essay against capital punishment in collaboration with Arthur Koestler, the writer, intellectual and founder of the League Against Capital Punishment.

The bronze plaque on the monument to Camus in the town of Villeblevin, France. The plaque reads: "From the General Council of the Yonne Department, in homage to the writer Albert Camus whose remains laid in vigil at the Villeblevin town hall on the night of 4 to 5 January 1960."

When the Algerian War began in 1954, Camus was confronted with a moral dilemma. He identified with the pied-noirs such as his own parents and defended the French government's actions against the revolt. He argued that the Algerian uprising was an integral part of the 'new Arab imperialism' led by Egypt and an 'anti-Western' offensive orchestrated by Russia to 'encircle Europe' and 'isolate the United States'.^[11] Although favouring greater Algerian autonomy or even federation, though not full-scale independence, he believed that the pied-noirs and Arabs could co-exist. During the war he advocated a civil truce that would spare the civilians, which was rejected by both sides, who regarded it as foolish. Behind the scenes, he began to work for imprisoned Algerians who faced the death penalty.

From 1955 to 1956, Camus wrote for L'Express. In 1957 he was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature "for his important literary production, which with clear-sighted earnestness illuminates the problems of the human conscience in our times", not for his novel The Fall, published the previous year, but for his writings against capital punishment in the essay "Réflexions sur la Guillotine" (Reflections on the Guillotine). When he spoke to students at the University of Stockholm, he defended his apparent inactivity in the Algerian question; he stated that he was worried about what might happen to his mother, who still lived in Algeria. This led to further ostracism by French left-wing intellectuals.

Revolutionary Union Movement and Europe[link]

As he wrote in L'Homme révolté (in the chapter about "The Thought on Baxter"), Camus was a follower of the ancient Greek 'Solar Tradition' (la pensée solaire). In 1947–48 he founded the Revolutionary Union Movement (Groupes de liaison internationale – GLI)^[8] a trade union movement in the context of revolutionary syndicalism (Syndicalisme révolutionnaire). According to Olivier Todd, in his biography, 'Albert Camus, une vie', it was a group opposed to some tendencies of the Surrealist movement of André Breton. For more, see the book Alfred Rosmer et le mouvement révolutionnaire internationale by Christian Gras.

His colleagues were Nicolas Lazarévitch, Louis Mercier, Roger Lapeyre, Paul Chauvet, Auguste Largentier, Jean de Boë (see the article: "Nicolas Lazarévitch, Itinéraire d'un syndicaliste révolutionnaire" by Sylvain Boulouque in the review Communisme, n° 61, 2000). His main aim was to express the positive side of surrealism and existentialism, rejecting the negativity and the nihilism of André Breton.

From 1943, Albert Camus had correspondence with Altiero Spinelli who founded the European Federalist Movement in Milan—see Ventotene Manifesto and the book "Unire l'Europa, superare gli stati", Altiero Spinelli nel Partito d'Azione del Nord Italia e in Francia dal 1944 al 1945-annexed a letter by Altiero Spinelli to Albert Camus.

In 1944 Camus founded the "French Committee for the European Federation" (Comité Français pour la Féderation Européene – CFFE) declaring that Europe "can only evolve along the path of economic progress, democracy and peace if the nation states become a federation."

From 22–25 March 1945, the first conference of the European Federalist Movement was organised in Paris with the participation of Albert Camus, George Orwell, Emmanuel Mounier, Lewis Mumford, André Philip, Daniel Mayer, François Bondy and Altiero Spinelli (see the book The Biography of Europe by Pan Drakopoulos). This specific branch of the European Federalist Movement disintegrated in 1957 after Winston Churchill's ideas about the European integration rose to dominance.

Death[link]

Camus died on 4 January 1960 at the age of 46 in a car accident near Sens, in Le Grand Fossard in the small town of Villeblevin. In his coat pocket was an unused train ticket. He had planned to travel by train with his wife and children, but at the last minute he accepted his publisher's proposal to travel with him.^[12]

Albert Camus' gravestone

The driver of the Facel Vega car, Michel Gallimard, his publisher and close friend, also died in the accident.^[13] In August 2011, the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera reported a theory that the writer had been the victim of a Soviet plot, but Camus biographer Olivier Todd did not consider it credible.^[14] Camus was buried in the Lourmarin Cemetery, Lourmarin, Vaucluse, France.

He was survived by his wife and twin children, Catherine and Jean, who hold the copyrights to his work.

Two of Camus's works were published posthumously. The first, entitled A Happy Death (1970), featured a character named Patrice Mersault, comparable to The Stranger's Meursault. There is scholarly debate as to the relationship between the two books. The second was an unfinished novel, The First Man (1995), which Camus was writing before he died. The novel was an autobiographical work about his childhood in Algeria.

Summary of absurdism[link]

Many writers have addressed the Absurd, each with his or her own interpretation of what the Absurd is and what comprises its importance. For example, Sartre recognizes the absurdity of individual experience, while Kierkegaard explains that the absurdity of certain religious truths prevent us from reaching God rationally. Camus regretted the continued reference to himself as a "philosopher of the absurd". He showed less interest in the Absurd shortly after publishing Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus). To distinguish his ideas, scholars sometimes refer to the Paradox of the Absurd, when referring to "Camus' Absurd".

His early thoughts appeared in his first collection of essays, L'Envers et l'endroit (The Two Sides Of The Coin) in 1937. Absurd themes were expressed with more sophistication in his second collection of essays, Noces (Nuptials), in 1938. In these essays Camus reflects on the experience of the Absurd. In 1942 he published the story of a man living an absurd life as L'Étranger (The Stranger). In the same year he released Le Mythe de Sisyphe (The Myth of Sisyphus), a literary essay on the Absurd. He also wrote a play about Caligula, a Roman Emperor, pursuing an absurd logic. The play was not performed until 1945.

The turning point in Camus' attitude to the Absurd occurs in a collection of four letters to an anonymous German friend, written between July 1943 and July 1944. The first was published in the Revue Libre in 1943, the second in the Cahiers de Libération in 1944, and the third in the newspaper Libertés, in 1945. The four letters were published as Lettres à un ami allemand (Letters to a German Friend) in 1945, and were included in the collection Resistance, Rebellion, and Death.

Ideas on the Absurd[link]

This section needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. (November 2011)

In his writings Camus presented the reader with dualisms: happiness and sadness, dark and light, life and death, etc. His aim was to emphasize the fact that happiness is fleeting and that the human condition is one of mortality. He did this not to be morbid, but to reflect a greater appreciation for life and happiness. In Le Mythe, this dualism becomes a paradox: We value our lives and existence so greatly, but at the same time we know we will eventually die, and ultimately our endeavours are meaningless. While we can live with a dualism (I can accept periods of unhappiness, because I know I will also experience happiness to come), we cannot live with the paradox (I think my life is of great importance, but I also think it is meaningless). In Le Mythe, Camus was interested in how we experience the Absurd and how we live with it. Our life must have meaning for us to value it. If we accept that life has no meaning and therefore no value, should we kill ourselves?

In Le Mythe, Camus suggests that 'creation of meaning', would entail a logical leap or a kind of philosophical suicide in order to find psychological comfort. But Camus wants to know if he can live with what logic and lucidity has uncovered – if one can build a foundation on what one knows and nothing more. Creation of meaning is not a viable alternative but a logical leap and an evasion of the problem. He gives examples of how others would seem to make this kind of leap. The alternative option, namely suicide, would entail another kind of leap, where one attempts to kill absurdity by destroying one of its terms (the human being). Camus points out, however, that there is no more meaning in death than there is in life, and that it simply evades the problem yet again. Camus concludes, that we must instead 'entertain' both death and the absurd, while never agreeing to their terms.

Meursault, the absurdist hero of L'Étranger, has killed a man and is scheduled to be executed. Caligula ends up admitting his absurd logic was wrong and is killed by an assassination he has deliberately brought about. However, while Camus possibly suggests that Caligula's absurd reasoning is wrong, the play's anti-hero does get the last word, as the author similarly exalts Meursault's final moments.

Camus made a significant contribution to a viewpoint of the Absurd, and always rejected nihilism as a valid response.

"If nothing had any meaning, you would be right. But there is something that still has a meaning." Second Letter to a German Friend, December 1943.

Camus' understanding of the Absurd promotes public debate; his various offerings entice us to think about the Absurd and offer our own contribution. Concepts such as cooperation, joint effort and solidarity are of key importance to Camus, though they are most likely sources of 'relative' versus 'absolute' meaning.

Religious beliefs and absurdism[link]

While writing his thesis on Plotinus and Saint Augustine of Hippo, Camus became very strongly influenced by their works, especially that of St. Augustine. In his work, Confessions (consisting of 13 books), Augustine promotes the idea of a connection between God and the rest of the world. Camus identified with the idea that a personal experience could become a reference point for his philosophical and literary writings. Although he considered himself an atheist,^{[citation needed]} Camus later came to tout the idea that the absence of religious belief can simultaneously be accompanied by a longing for "salvation and meaning". This line of thinking presented an ostensible paradox and became a major thread in defining the idea of absurdism in Camus' writings.^[15]

Opposition to totalitarianism[link]

Throughout his life, Camus spoke out against and actively opposed totalitarianism in its many forms.^[16] Early on, Camus was active within the French Resistance to the German occupation of France during World War II, even directing the famous Resistance journal, Combat. On the French collaboration with Nazi occupiers he wrote: "Now the only moral value is courage, which is useful here for judging the puppets and chatterboxes who pretend to speak in the name of the people."^[17] After liberation, Camus remarked, "This country does not need a Talleyrand, but a Saint-Just."^[18] The reality of the bloody postwar tribunals soon changed his mind: Camus publicly reversed himself and became a lifelong opponent of capital punishment.^[18]

Camus' well-known falling out with Sartre is linked to this opposition to totalitarianism. Camus detected a reflexive totalitarianism in the mass politics espoused by Sartre in the name of radical Marxism. This was apparent in his work L'Homme Révolté (The Rebel) which not only was an assault on the Soviet police state, but also questioned the very nature of mass revolutionary politics. Camus continued to speak out against the atrocities of the Soviet Union, a sentiment captured in his 1957 speech, The Blood of the Hungarians, commemorating the anniversary of the 1956 Hungarian Revolution, an uprising crushed in a bloody assault by the Red Army.

Football[link]

Camus was once asked by his friend Charles Poncet which he preferred, football or the theatre. Camus is said to have replied, "Football, without hesitation."^[19]

Camus played as goalkeeper for Racing Universitaire d'Alger (RUA won both the North African Champions Cup and the North African Cup twice each in the 1930s) junior team from 1928–30.^[20] The sense of team spirit, fraternity, and common purpose appealed to Camus enormously.^[21] In match reports Camus would often attract positive comment for playing with passion and courage. Any aspirations in football disappeared at age 17, upon contracting tuberculosis—then incurable, Camus was bedridden for long and painful periods.

When Camus was asked in the 1950s by an alumni sports magazine for a few words regarding his time with the RUA, his response included the following:

After many years during which I saw many things, what I know most surely about morality and the duty of man I owe to sport and learned it in the RUA.^[19]

Camus was referring to a sort of simplistic morality he wrote about in his early essays, the principle of sticking up for your friends, of valuing bravery and fair-play. Camus' belief was that political and religious authorities try to confuse us with over-complicated moral systems to make things appear more complex than they really are, potentially to serve their own needs.

Works[link]

Novels[link]

• The Stranger (L'Étranger, often translated as The Outsider) (1942)
• The Plague (La Peste) (1947)
• The Fall (La Chute) (1956)
• A Happy Death (La Mort heureuse) (written 1936–1938, published posthumously 1971)
• The First Man (Le premier homme) (incomplete, published posthumously 1995)

Short stories[link]

• Exile and the Kingdom (L'exil et le royaume) (collection) (1957)
  • "The Adulterous Woman" ("La Femme adultère")
  • "The Renegade or a Confused Spirit" ("Le Renégat ou un esprit confus")
  • "The Silent Men" ("Les Muets")
  • "The Guest" ("L'Hôte")
  • "Jonas or the Artist at Work" ("Jonas ou l’artiste au travail")
  • "The Growing Stone" ("La Pierre qui pousse")

Non-fiction books[link]

• Christian Metaphysics and Neoplatonism (1935)
• Betwixt and Between (L'envers et l'endroit, also translated as The Wrong Side and the Right Side) (Collection, 1937)
• Nuptials (Noces) (1938)
• The Myth of Sisyphus (Le Mythe de Sisyphe) (1942)
• The Rebel (L'Homme révolté) (1951)
• Notebooks 1935–1942 (Carnets, mai 1935 — fevrier 1942) (1962)
• Notebooks 1943–1951 (1965)
• Notebooks 1951–1959 (2008) Published as "Carnets Tome III : Mars 1951 – December 1959" (1989)

Plays[link]

• Caligula (performed 1945, written 1938)
• Requiem for a Nun (Requiem pour une nonne, adapted from William Faulkner's novel by the same name) (1956)
• The Misunderstanding (Le Malentendu) (1944)
• The State of Siege (L' Etat de Siege) (1948)
• The Just Assassins (Les Justes) (1949)
• The Possessed (Les Possédés, adapted from Fyodor Dostoyevsky's novel by the same name) (1959)

Essays[link]

• Create Dangerously (Essay on Realism and Artistic Creation) (1957)
• The Ancient Greek Tragedy (Parnassos lecture in Greece) (1956)
• The Crisis of Man (Lecture at Columbia University) (1946)
• Why Spain? (Essay for the theatrical play L' Etat de Siege) (1948)
• Reflections on the Guillotine (Réflexions sur la guillotine) (Extended essay, 1957)
• Neither Victims Nor Executioners (Combat) (1946)

Collected essays[link]

• Resistance, Rebellion, and Death (1961) – a collection of essays selected by the author.
• Lyrical and Critical Essays (1970)
• Youthful Writings (1976)
• Between Hell and Reason: Essays from the Resistance Newspaper "Combat", 1944–1947 (1991)
• Camus at "Combat": Writing 1944–1947 (2005)
• Albert Camus Contre la Peine de Mort (2011)

References[link]