Trotsky

For those wanting to make use of Marxism to understand and change the world, among the most important classical thinkers are, surely, Rosa Luxemburg and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin.

"October is still ground zero for arguments about fundamental, radical social change.

By Seiya Morita

March 5, 2021  — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal — Michael Löwy's article "Leon Trotsky, prophet of the October Revolution" in Imprecor[1], the French-language journal of the Fourth International, is an excellent piece overall. However, I would like to point out that his statement about Russian Marxism includes a couple of misunderstandings.

Read Part I - Trotsky’s Marxism and pre-revolutionary Spain, 1930-1931 here By Nathan Moore, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
Read Part II - Trotsky’s Marxism and the Test of Events, 1931-1935 here By Nathan Moore, Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal

By Doug Enaa Greene

May 13, 2019 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Cosmonaut — The argument that a “cultural revolution” is a necessary part of a socialist revolution is generally associated with Mao Zedong and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) that he initiated in China. However, Leon Trotsky, in a vastly different way than Mao, stated that Russia needed a cultural revolution. According to Trotsky, a cultural revolution was needed along with industrialization to construct socialism. Trotsky’s industrialization plan for Russia would increase the social weight of the proletariat. A cultural revolution would raise the masses’ cultural level by eradicating mass illiteracy and superstition and change their habits and customs, which would make the working class fit to rule society.

By Paul Le Blanc