Imperialism

The Vietnam War: eye-opening documentary shows full horror of imperialism

The Vietnam War - a 17-hour US documentary spread over ten episodes, recently broadcast in Britain in a truncated form on the BBC - may well be the best such film yet produced on this still-controversial subject.

Introduction to the new Mexican edition of Lenin’s Imperialism

The publication of the Mexican edition of Lenin’s Imperialism, could scarcely come at a more appropriate time. No book has ever explained the phenomena of modern capitalism better that this. All of Lenin’s predictions concerning the concentration of capital, the dominance of the banks and finance capital, the growing antagonism between nation states and the inevitability of war arising out of the contradictions of imperialism have been shown to be true by the entire history of the last 100 years.

Mariátegui and the Permanent Revolution – Part Two

It is in his writings on Peru and Latin America that Mariátegui’s analysis on revolution in colonial countries really stands out. As he pointed out in 1928, “The Latin American Revolution will be nothing more and nothing less than a stage, a stage of the world revolution. It will simply and clearly be the socialist revolution.” [Part One]

Mariátegui and the Permanent Revolution – Part One

José Carlos Mariátegui was founder and general secretary of the Peruvian Socialist Party, set up in 1928, that later became the Communist Party. There is much mythology on the left about him. Here José Pereira puts the record straight explaining how this great Latin American Marxist, in spite of some errors, had reached the same general conclusions as Lenin and Trotsky on the fundamental questions facing the revolution in colonial countries. (First published in America Socialista, No. 6, August 2012)

Slavery abolished! But 200 years later the struggle continues

The slave trade inflicted tremendous suffering on millions of people. For the rising bourgeoisie, the slave trade played a pivotal role in the expansion of the global market and the creation of modern world capitalism. In the words of Marx, capitalism was born "dripping with blood from every pore."

Mexico and British Imperialism

In the 1930s Mexican president Cardenas came into conflict with imperialism because of several measures he introduced, including land reform and the nationalisation of the oil industry. In this conflict Trotsky emphasised that it was the duty of workers, especially in countries like Britain, to side with the Mexican people against the imperialists.

The Slave Revolution – Saint-Domingue 1791-1803

After twelve years of upheavals, war, carnage and betrayals, the revolution that broke out in 1791 in Saint-Domingue finally abolished slavery and brought independence to Haiti. Its successive stages, marked by numerous shocks and setbacks, were largely determined by the ebbs and flow of the revolution in France.

China, America and the Pacific

The clash between China and the USA over the crashed spy plane has thrown into sharp relief the tensions between the great powers in Asia. The incident in itself was an accident. But dialectics explains that necessity can be expressed through accident. Underlying the immediate incident lie fundamental contradictions between China and the USA.

The misconceptions of the past - A Critique of "Theses for The Theory of Socialist Commodity Production"

During the four decades of "the building of socialism" in the former Yugoslavia there had been formulated more economic theories of socialism than in all the other self-proclaimed "socialist" countries of Eastern Europe and elsewhere. Dragan Draca explains the bureaucratic motives behind this to justify every U-turn in economic policy during that period. (February 23, 2002) This is the English version of the Serbo-croatian original ZABLUDE PROŠLOSTI published by the Yugoslavian Marxist website Pobunjeni Um.

The Empire does not exist - a critique of Toni Negri's ideas

We are replublishing a 2003 critique of Toni Negri and Michael Hardt's Empire, which takes up the key ideas of the authors that are still fashionable among those who today wish to deny the essence of Marxism while at the same disguising themselves as Marxists.

Marxism and the Struggle Against Imperialism: Third World in Crisis

It is nearly seven years since George Bush, the then president of the US, made his famous "New World Order" speech. This was in 1991. In the build-up to the Gulf War the main imperialist power on earth promised a world without wars, without dictatorships and, of course, a world firmly under the control of a single all-powerful world policeman--the US. After the fall of Stalinism, US imperialism really thought that the world would be firmly under their command and they would be able to dictate the destiny of each and every country. Now all these dreams have been reduced to rubble. In this document Ted Grant and Alan Woods make an in-depth analysis of the history of the imperialist domination of the Third World. Written in June 1998.

Imperialism

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