History
Bernard Bailyn, historian of American colonial and revolutionary periods, 1922–2020
By Tom Mackaman, 13 August 2020
Bailyn leaves behind a significant body of work that broadened the understanding of the intellectual conceptions that found expression in the American Revolution.
75 years since the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
By Bill Van Auken, 6 August 2020
The anniversary’s significance has never been greater. Behind the backs of the people of the United States and the world, US imperialism is steadily building up a massive nuclear arsenal and pursuing a doctrine of aggressive nuclear war.
#Anne Frank Parallel Stories: The young victim of the Nazis
By Joanne Laurier, 18 July 2020
#Anne Frank Parallel Stories is a documentary streaming on Netflix that retraces the life of Anne Frank, as well as five living women who survived the Nazi concentration camps in World War II.
“Palace letters” point to the plotting behind the 1975 constitutional coup in Australia
By Mike Head, 17 July 2020
Together with the military coup in Chile in 1973, the Labor government’s dismissal was one of the first acts in what became an international counter-offensive against the working class.
An interview with Ed Achorn, author of Every Drop of Blood: The Momentous Second Inauguration of Abraham Lincoln
By Shannon Jones, 10 July 2020
In a recent conversation with the WSWS, Achorn discussed his book on Lincoln’s Second Inaugural address and weighed in on efforts to slander the president who won the Civil War and destroyed slavery in the United States.
Democrats’ denunciation of America’s revolutionary heritage provides an opening for Trump
By Niles Niemuth, 7 July 2020
The campaign waged by the Democratic Party to discredit Jefferson, Lincoln and other leaders of America’s two revolutions allows Trump to package his extreme right-wing policies as a defense of democratic traditions.
The significance of the July 4 online discussion, “The Place of the Two American Revolutions: Past, Present and Future”
By David Walsh, 6 July 2020
The World Socialist Web Site marked the 244th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence by hosting a discussion with five significant historians: Victoria Bynum, Clayborne Carson, Richard Carwardine, James Oakes and Gordon Wood.
SEP (Australia) July 7 online lecture
A new period of socialist revolution and the tasks of the Fourth International
4 July 2020
The lecture will outline the contemporary significance of the Trotskyist movement’s fight for socialism internationalism, amid a breakdown of capitalism and an upsurge of the class struggle.
Hands off Lincoln and the Emancipation Memorial! Defend the legacy of the Civil War!
By Niles Niemuth, 3 July 2020
The unanimous decision of the Boston Art Commission to remove the statue of Abraham Lincoln and a freed slave which memorializes emancipation is a reactionary assault on the progressive legacy of the Civil War.
SEP (Australia) June 30 online lecture
The 1985–86 split with the WRP and the renaissance of Marxism
27 June 2020
The split ranks among the most crucial strategic experiences of the Trotskyist movement and the international working class.
Hands off the monuments to Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln and Grant!
By Tom Mackaman and Niles Niemuth, 22 June 2020
The justifiable demand for the removal of monuments to defenders of slavery and inequality has been unfairly accompanied by attacks against memorials to the men who led the American Revolution and the Civil War.
Yellow Star, Red Star
Capitalist counterrevolution and the rise of fascism in southeastern Europe since 1989
By Clara Weiss, 20 June 2020
Though fatally flawed by its equation of Stalinism with communism, and the author’s reluctance to discuss the social character of the restoration of capitalism, the book exposes the close relationship between capitalist counterrevolution and the rise of fascist forces.
SEP (Australia) June 23 online lecture
The ICFI and the war against Pabloism
19 June 2020
The lecture will review the international political context of the emergence of Pabloism, a national-opportunist tendency within the Fourth International.
This week in history: June 15-21
15 June 2020
25 years ago: Chechen rebels release hostagesOn June 20, 1995, Chechen rebel gunmen released the last of more than 1,000 people held hostage for five days in the Russian city of Budyonnovsk and returned to Chechnya under an agreement negotiated with Russian Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin. At least 120 people died during the government’s siege of the hospital, most of them killed when Russian troops tried to storm the building.
True History of the Kelly Gang: Little resemblance to the real story
By Jason Quill and Richard Phillips, 13 June 2020
Justin Kurzel’s film is the 16th about the late 19th century Australian bushranger and anti-establishment outlaw.
Russian court keeps historian of Stalinist massacres jailed amid COVID-19 outbreak
By Clara Weiss, 12 May 2020
The vendetta against Dmitriev is part of the campaign by Russia’s state and ruling oligarchy to suppress all efforts to uncover the truth about the crimes of Stalinism.
This week in history: May 11-17
11 May 2020
25 years ago: Ebola outbreak deaths rise to 170On May 12, 1995, the Associated Press reported that the death toll from the Ebola virus outbreak in Zaire (now the Democratic Republic of the Congo) increased to 170. The outbreak was centered in the city of Kikwit, capital of Kivu Province, about 500 km east of the capital, Kinshasa.
The Times’ 1619 Project is damned with faint praise
Hannah-Jones receives Pulitzer Prize for personal commentary, not historical writing
By Tom Mackaman and David North, 9 May 2020
The Pulitzer awards took no notice of the New York Times’ pretentious claims that the 1619 Project is an important contribution to the understanding of American history. It granted Hannah-Jones an award for “Commentary.”
Fifty years since the massacre of students at Kent State
By Patrick Martin, 4 May 2020
The killing of four students by National Guard soldiers touched off an unprecedented national wave of antiwar protests involving millions of youth.
Dorothea Lange: Words and Pictures: An exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art
By Clare Hurley, 2 May 2020
Lange’s turn to documentary photography was spurred by the Great Depression as she sought to address economic inequality and social injustice through activism and the lens of her camera.
Resistance and The Resistance Banker: Dramas of the struggle against Nazism
By Joanne Laurier, 1 May 2020
The crimes of the Nazis, the greatest ever committed against humanity, generated some of the noblest and most self-sacrificing actions in the struggle against their barbarism.
One Hundred and Fifty Years Since the Birth of Lenin
By David North, 22 April 2020
Today marks the 150th anniversary of the birth of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov in the Russian city of Simbirsk on April 22, 1870. Known in history under the name of Lenin, he was the founder of the Bolshevik Party, leader of the 1917 October Revolution and, undoubtedly, a towering figure in the political and intellectual history of the twentieth century.
American Historical Review publishes letter on 1619 Project by Tom Mackaman and David North
20 April 2020
The letter was a reply to AHR Editor Alex Lichtenstein, who previously wrote a column defending the 1619 Project.
Brendan McGeever’s Antisemitism and the Russian Revolution: Distorting history in the service of identity politics
Part two
By Clara Weiss, 13 April 2020
This is the second part of a two-part review.
Brendan McGeever’s Antisemitism and the Russian Revolution: Distorting history in the service of identity politics
Part one
By Clara Weiss, 11 April 2020
This is the first part of a two-part review. The second part will be posted on Monday, April 13.
Grand jury records in notorious 1946 US lynching case to remain sealed
By Fred Mazelis, 10 April 2020
The heinous crime near the Moore’s Ford Bridge in Georgia sparked wide outrage which contributed to the emergence of the civil rights movement.
One hundred years since Germany’s Kapp Putsch
How the Social Democratic Party supported the far-right
By Peter Schwarz, 2 April 2020
The Kapp Putsch is of burning contemporary relevance at a time when Germany’s bourgeoisie is once again turning to militarism, a right-wing extremist party is represented in the federal parliament and all state parliaments, and far-right terrorist networks operate unhindered within the state apparatus and the army.
Shusenjo: The Main Battleground of the Comfort Women Issue: Documentary about war crimes and historical revisionism in Japan
By Isabel Roy, 20 March 2020
Miki Dezaki interviews revisionists from far-right circles in Japan, politicians and historians who have studied “comfort women,” as well as activists working for the recognition of the victimised women.
Tom Mackaman interviewed on 1619 Project by history podcast
18 February 2020
John Fea interviewed Mackaman on his podcast “The Way of Improvement Leads Home.”
An examination of the anti-immigrant campaign in early 20th century America
The Guarded Gate, by Daniel Okrent (Scribner, 2019)
By Fred Mazelis, 3 February 2020
A century after the imposition of racist immigration quotas in the US, xenophobia, anti-Semitism and racism are once again on the rise in the US and around the world.
A reply to the American Historical Review’s defense of the 1619 Project
By David North and Tom Mackaman, 31 January 2020
The disrespect expressed by editor Alex Lichtenstein toward leading historians reveals the extent to which racialist mythology, which has provided the “theoretical” foundation of middle-class identity politics, has been accepted, and even embraced, by a substantial section of the academic community as a legitimate basis for the teaching of American history.
My Response to Alex Lichtenstein Regarding the 1619 Project
By Victoria Bynum, 31 January 2020
Bynum, one of the many academics who have raised fundamental criticisms of the New York Times’ 1619 Project, wrote this letter to the editor of the American Historical Review in reply to his defense of the project published online last week.
Seventy-five years since the liberation of Auschwitz
By Christoph Vandreier, 27 January 2020
Auschwitz was at the heart of the machinery of industrialised mass murder that spanned the entire continent. Jews, Sinti, political opponents of the Nazi regime and others were deported to the death camp from every part of occupied Europe.
An interview with Auschwitz survivor Esther Bejarano
the editorial board, 27 January 2020
The 95-year-old Esther Bejarano was among the few who survived the living hell of Auschwitz.
Pence, Netanyahu use Holocaust event in Israel to rail against Iran
By Bill Van Auken, 24 January 2020
The slander of Iranian “anti-Semitism” and unfounded claims that Tehran is seeking nuclear weapons are propaganda to justify a steady buildup toward war.
This week in history: January 20-26
20 January 2020
25 years ago: Nuclear war scare caused by Norwegian rocket On January 25, 1995, the Russian military mistook a Black Brant XII rocket—launched by a team of Norwegian and US scientists to research the northern lights over Svalbard—as an incoming Trident missile launched as a high-altitude nuclear attack by the US Navy. It was the first time a Russian leader used the nuclear briefcase in a real alert.
“The saddest part of this is that the response of the Times is simply to defend their project”
An interview with historian Clayborne Carson on the New York Times’ 1619 Project
By Tom Mackaman, 15 January 2020
Professor Carson is professor of history at Stanford University and director of its Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute. He is the author and editor of numerous books on King and the civil rights movement.
This week in history: December 23-29
23 December 2019
25 years ago: Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi resignsOn December 23, 1994, Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi resigned rather than see his government fall to a no-confidence resolution introduced by several opposition parties. Berlusconi’s three-party coalition of his personal political party Forza Italia, the right-wing separatist Northern League, and the neofascist National Alliance, lost its majority in the lower house when Northern League leader Umberto Bossi announced he would introduce his own no-confidence resolution.
Historian Victoria Bynum replies to the New York Times
A historian’s critique of the 1619 Project
By Victoria Bynum, 22 December 2019
Historian Victoria Bynum, author of Free State of Jones and distinguished emerita professor of history at Texas State University, wrote the following reply to the New York Times’ 1619 Project.
Vadim Rogovin’s Bolsheviks against Stalinism 1928–1933: Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition
A magnificent account of Stalin’s opponents in the USSR
By Andrea Peters, 21 December 2019
Stalin’s rise was neither foreordained nor a natural outgrowth of the October Revolution. The Great Russian chauvinist and bureaucrat secured power in ferocious conflict with the proletariat, peasantry and cadre of the revolutionary socialist movement.
“Reinventing the past to suit the purposes of the present”
An interview with political scientist Adolph Reed, Jr. on the New York Times’ 1619 Project
By Tom Mackaman, 20 December 2019
The World Socialist Web Site recently spoke with Professor Reed at his University of Pennsylvania office.
“I don’t believe this stuff about ‘intrinsic differences’ between people”
Workers respond to New York Times’ 1619 Project’s claim of an unbridgeable racial divide in US
By our reporters, 17 December 2019
In contrast to the Times’ dystopian portrayal of American society as riven by different races with unbridgeable differences, workers who spoke to the World Socialist Web Site expressed a broad striving for unity.
This week in history: December 16-22
16 December 2019
On December 20, 1994, the Mexican peso was devalued, sending shock waves throughout the structure of world capitalism. Mexico had been touted for a decade as proof that the profit system was capable of developing the oppressed semi-colonial countries and transforming them into modern industrialized societies. Its collapse led to a generalized loss of confidence in “emerging markets” from Brazil to Poland.
This week in history: December 9-15
9 December 2019
25 years ago: Yeltsin launches First Chechen WarOn December 11, 1994, Russian President Boris Yeltsin ordered troops into Chechnya, a province in the Caucuses that had been part of the Russian Federation but had declared independence in 1991 amidst the breakup of the Soviet Union. By the end of the evening, Russian forces had advanced against several thousand Chechen defenders to the outskirts of the capital, Grozny, population 400,000. Thousands of civilians were killed in the initial week-long artillery and bombing campaign.
Mehring Books Holiday Sale feature
Bolsheviks Against Stalinism 1928-1933: Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition—Translator’s Foreword
6 December 2019
During its Holiday Sale, Mehring Books is offering this volume at a sharply reduced price of $15 for the black and white version or $20 for the color version.
On the centenary of the composer Mieczysław Weinberg (1919–1996)
By Clara Weiss, 6 December 2019
The music of Polish-Jewish composer Mieczysław Weinberg (1919–1996), who spent much of his life in the Soviet Union, has been recently rediscovered. It counts among the most significant bodies of work produced in the 20th century.
This week in history: December 2-8
2 December 2019
25 years ago: Over 300 killed in fire in ChinaOn December 8, 1994, a fire in a crowded theater in the northwest Chinese oil town of Karamay in Xinjiang province took the lives of 323 school children and their teachers. A further 100 people were injured. The blaze erupted as 800 teachers, children and parents were inside the theater for a celebration of a literacy campaign in the minority Uighur community.
“When the Declaration says that all men are created equal, that is no myth”
An interview with historian Gordon Wood on the New York Times’ 1619 Project
By Tom Mackaman, 28 November 2019
Gordon Wood is professor emeritus at Brown University and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book The Radicalism of the American Revolution, as well as Empire of Liberty: A History of the Early Republic, 1789–1815.
This week in history: November 25–December 1
25 November 2019
25 years ago: US House passes General Agreement on Tariffs and TradeOn November 30, 1994, the US House of Representatives passed the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) by a 288 to 146 vote. The lame-duck meeting of the Democratic-controlled House sent President Bill Clinton’s legislation to implement an expanded GATT to the Senate for a final vote. Majorities of both Democrats and Republicans supported the trade pact.
IYSSE holds meeting on “Race, Class, and the fight for Socialism” at New York University
By Owen Mullan and Sandy English, 21 November 2019
The meeting was addressed by socialist scholar Tom Mackaman who responded to the historical falsifications put forward by the New York Times’ 1619 Project.
The Unwanted: 80 years since the tragic odyssey of the MS St. Louis
By Verena Nees, 21 November 2019
The German television drama The Unwanted: The Odyssey of the St. Louis recounts the story of the ship with more than 900 Jewish refugees on board fleeing Nazi Germany, prevented from landing by the Cuban, American and Canadian governments.
Federal court strips citizenship from US-born woman held in Syrian detention camp
By Tom Carter, 18 November 2019
Handing a victory to the far-right campaign to undermine the Fourteenth Amendment, a federal judge found that Hoda Muthana is not a citizen despite the fact that the State Department twice issued a passport listing her nationality as “United States of America.”
An interview with historian James Oakes on the New York Times’ 1619 Project
By Tom Mackaman, 18 November 2019
The World Socialist Web Site recently spoke to James Oakes, Distinguished Professor of History and Graduate School Humanities Professor at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, on the New York Times’ 1619 Project.
This week in history: November 18-24
18 November 2019
25 years ago: Hurricane Gordon dissipates after two weeks of destruction On November 21, 1994, Hurricane Gordon dissipated over South Carolina after nearly two weeks of destruction throughout the Atlantic and Caribbean. The hurricane hit parts of Central America, the Cayman Islands, Jamaica, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Cuba, the Turks and Caicos islands, the Bahamas, and the southeastern US coast for nearly two weeks.
David North introduces Turkish-language edition of In Defense of Leon Trotsky at Istanbul Book Fair
By our reporter, 11 November 2019
Mehring Yayıncılık announced the publication of five major works by the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) at its Istanbul Book Fair stall, including two authored by David North.
This week in history: November 11-17
11 November 2019
25 years ago: Memoirs of Soviet Left Oppositionist Nadezhda Joffe published in English On November 15, 1994, the US Trotskyist publishing house Labor Publications released Back In Time: My Life, My Fate, My Epoch, the memoirs of Soviet Left Oppositionist Nadezhda Joffe. The daughter of Adolf Abramovich Joffe, a leading figure in the October Revolution and close friend of Leon Trotsky, Nadezhda herself was a partisan of the Left Opposition and an active participant in the struggle against the Stalinist bureaucracy.
The “Irrepressible Conflict:” Slavery, the Civil War and America’s Second Revolution
By Eric London, 9 November 2019
The following is the second in a series of three lectures delivered in response to the New York Times’ “1619 Project,” which presents a falsified, racialist interpretation of American history.
Thirty years since the fall of the Berlin Wall
By Peter Schwarz, 9 November 2019
Thirty years ago, the fall of the Berlin Wall marked the end of the GDR. Republished below is an article by Peter Schwarz that first appeared on the WSWS five years ago, on November 8, 2014, under the headline, “25 years since the fall of the Berlin Wall.”
Britain: 180 years since the Newport Rising—Part 2
By Paul Bond, 5 November 2019
Over weeks of careful preparation, workers were recruited across the Welsh valleys from Tredegar to Pontypool. Some 10,000 workers then marched, arms in hand, on Newport.
Britain: 180 years since the Newport Rising—Part 1
By Paul Bond, 4 November 2019
The Newport Rising, as it has become known, marked an historic point in the development of the class struggle and the organisation of the working class in Britain.
This week in history: November 4-10
4 November 2019
25 years ago: Republican Party wins control of US House for the first time in 40 yearsOn November 8, 1994, the Republican Party won majorities in both the US House of Representatives and the Senate in the midterm congressional election, picking up eight seats in the Senate and netting a gain of 54 seats in the House. It was the first time in 40 years that the Republicans had won control of the House, and only the second time Republicans controlled the Senate over that 40-year stretch of near-total Democratic Party domination of Congress.
100 years since the founding of the Bauhaus art school and movement: “A New Era”
By Sybille Fuchs, 2 November 2019
The question arises: what was so special about this school, which existed for just 14 years (1919-1933) and was forced to change its location three times in Germany due to the hostile reaction of conservative and nationalist forces?
Slavery and the American Revolution: A Response to the New York Times 1619 Project
By Tom Mackaman, 1 November 2019
This is the text of the lecture delivered by Tom Mackaman at the University of Michigan on October 22, 2019 as part of a series on the New York Times' "Project 1619."
Video: 70 years after the Chinese Revolution—How the struggle for socialism was betrayed
31 October 2019
The following lecture was delivered by Peter Symonds at eight campuses in Australia and at meeting in Wellington, New Zealand.
Australian and New Zealand students speak after lecture on 70th anniversary of Chinese Revolution
By our reporters, 31 October 2019
“The real root ideas of socialism were not implemented in China from the bottom-up. I learnt that Trotskyism is internationalism, but Mao did not agree with that perspective.”
An interview with the author of The Free State of Jones
Historian Victoria Bynum on the inaccuracies of the New York Times 1619 Project
By Eric London, 30 October 2019
Bynum is an expert on the attitude of Southern white yeomen farmers and the poor toward slavery.
Alexander Reznik’s Trotsky and Comrades: A false account of the emergence and politics of the Left Opposition
By Clara Weiss, 29 October 2019
Reznik’s book, while containing some useful information, constitutes a willful distortion of the history of the Trotskyist Left Opposition, undermining its prolonged and principled struggle against the Stalinist degeneration of the 1917 October Revolution.
This week in history: October 28-November 3
28 October 2019
25 years ago: Susan Smith confesses to killing her childrenOn November 3, 1994, Susan Smith confessed to murdering her three-year-old and one-year-old sons, Michael and Alexander, in South Carolina. Smith, who was white, had previously told police that she was carjacked at a red light by an armed black man who drove away in the vehicle with her children. Her impassioned pleas were broadcast across national media outlets for nine days during an extensive search operation until she admitted to fabricating the story and driving her children into a lake, where their bodies were found drowned in her vehicle.
70 years after the Chinese Revolution: How the struggle for socialism was betrayed
By Peter Symonds, 24 October 2019
This lecture was delivered at eight campuses in Australia and New Zealand to meetings organised by the International Youth and Students for Social Equality (IYSSE) between September 26 and October 17.
This week in history: October 14- 20
14 October 2019
25 years ago: Hamas terrorist attack kills 22 On October 19, 1994, 22 civilians were killed and 50 more were injured in a suicide bombing in Tel Aviv by the Palestinian Islamic fundamentalist group Hamas. The attack came on the eve of the signing of the Israel-Jordan Treaty of Peace and was coupled with two other terrorist acts the same week.
Introduction to the 1955 SWP resolution “The Third Chinese Revolution and its Aftermath”
By Peter Symonds, 9 October 2019
The SWP resolution summed up the lengthy discussion within the Trotskyist movement of the significance of 1949 Chinese Revolution and its deformation under the Stalinist leadership of the Chinese Communist Party.
From the archives
SWP resolution: The Third Chinese Revolution and its Aftermath
9 October 2019
On the 70th anniversary of the Chinese Revolution, the World Socialist Web Site is republishing the resolution adopted in 1955 by the Socialist Workers Party, then the Trotskyist party in the United States, on the issues raised by the revolution and its aftermath.
This week in history: October 7-13
7 October 2019
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Chinese 70th anniversary parade testifies to a crisis-stricken regime
By James Cogan, 2 October 2019
Beside repression, the regime’s only answer to the rising unrest over widening social inequality is to promote reactionary Chinese nationalism, hoping that appeals to “national unity” will contain irreconcilable class antagonisms.
Seventy years since the Chinese Revolution
Draw the political lessons from the bankruptcy of Maoism
By Peter Symonds, 1 October 2019
The political heirs of Mao Zedong cannot explain how and why the aspirations of working people for a socialist future, for which so many sacrificed 70 years ago, have resulted in the dead end of capitalism today.
From the archive of the World Socialist Web Site
Eighty-two years since the victory of the Flint sit-down strike
By Jerry White, 1 October 2019
With 48,000 GM workers engaged in the longest nationwide auto strike in nearly a half century, it is valuable to study the heroic struggle by GM workers during the 1936-37 sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan.
The Peterloo Massacre and Shelley
Part 2: Shelley’s politics and his Peterloo poems
By Paul Bond, 1 October 2019
Shelley’s commitment to revolutionary change was “more than the vague striving after freedom in the abstract,” as Eleanor Marx and Edward Aveling wrote in 1888.
This week in history: September 30- October 6
30 September 2019
25 years ago: UAW sells out Flint Buick City strikeOn October 1, just three days after 11,500 General Motors workers walked off the job at Buick City in Flint, the United Auto Workers (UAW) betrayed the strike and reached an agreement with the company that neither addressed nor resolved either of the main demands of workers over declining full-time jobs and speed-up.
From the archive of the World Socialist Web Site
Why are trade unions hostile to socialism?
By David North, 28 September 2019
Today we are posting the text of a lecture by David North, chairman of the Socialist Equality Party in the United States and of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site, made to the International Summer School on Marxism and the Fundamental Problems of the 20th Century in January 1998.
One hundred years since the Great Steel Strike
By Tom Mackaman, 25 September 2019
The Great Steel Strike of 1919 and its defeat hold crucial strategic lessons for workers as they enter into struggle.
This week in history: September 23–29
23 September 2019
25 years ago: MS Estonia wreck kills 852 in the Baltic Sea On September 28, 1994, the cruise ferry MS Estonia sank in the Baltic Sea as it carried passengers from Tallinn, Estonia, to Stockholm, Sweden. It was the worst cruise liner disaster since the sinking of the Titanic in 1912. The vessel was operated by Estline, a joint Swedish-Estonian firm.
The World Capitalist Crisis and the Tasks of the Fourth International: An analysis of the ICFI Perspectives resolution of 1988
By Andre Damon, 20 September 2019
This lecture was delivered to the Socialist Equality Party (US) Summer School on July 23, 2019 by Andre Damon, regular writer for the World Socialist Web Site and leading member of the Socialist Equality Party in the US.
A major exhibition at New York City’s Museum of Jewish Heritage
The story of Auschwitz
By Fred Mazelis, 17 September 2019
The fundamental lesson of a study of the Holocaust is that the alternatives before humanity remain those of socialism or barbarism.
This week in history: September 16-22
16 September 2019
25 years ago: Clinton orders US invasion of HaitiOn September 19, 1994, the Clinton administration launched “Operation Uphold Democracy” in Haiti, sending troops to occupy the Caribbean island under the guise of fighting against dictatorship in an effort to restore ousted Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the presidency. The intervention marked the fifth time in less than a decade that US troops were ordered to invade another country in its bid to reassert global hegemony.
China: Thirty years since the Tiananmen Square massacre
By Peter Symonds, 10 September 2019
This lecture was delivered by Peter Symonds at the Socialist Equality Party (US) Summer School on July 25, 2019. Symonds is a member of the International Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site and national WSWS editor of the Socialist Equality Party (Australia).
“1619” and the myth of white unity under slavery
Book review: Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South by Keri Leigh Merritt
By Eric London, 9 September 2019
Merritt’s research refutes the New York Times’ Project 1619 claim that poor whites benefited from slavery.
IYSSE lecture series in Australia
Seventy years after the Chinese Revolution: How the struggle for socialism was betrayed
9 September 2019
While the revolution vastly transformed international relations and class relations within China, the Communist Party, based on the Stalinist program of “Socialism in One Country,” deformed the newly-created state from the outset.
This week in history: September 9-15
9 September 2019
25 years ago: Castro bows to imperialism on immigrationOn September 9, 1994, the Castro and Clinton governments signed an agreement to halt further uncontrolled immigration to the United States from Cuba. The deal marked a further step in the capitulation to imperialism by the bourgeois-nationalist Castro regime.
Eighty years since the outbreak of World War II
By Bill Van Auken, 31 August 2019
The official ceremony marking the most barbaric event in world history is a celebration of the kind of militarism and right-wing nationalism that accompanied its outbreak.
The Causes and Consequences of World War II
By David North, 31 August 2019
David North, the chairman of the WSWS international editorial board, delivered the following lecture at San Diego State University on October 5, 2009, marking the 70th anniversary of the beginning of the Second World War.
Preview the new publication from Mehring Books
Author’s introduction to Bolsheviks Against Stalinism 1928-1933: Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition
By Vadim Rogovin, 30 August 2019
Today we present the Introduction, written by the late Marxist historian and sociologist, Vadim Z. Rogovin, to the new English translation of the second volume of his seven-volume work, Was There an Alternative to Stalinism?
On the 79th anniversary of the assassination of Leon Trotsky
By Bill Van Auken, 21 August 2019
Seventy-nine years after his assassination at the hands of a Stalinist agent, Trotsky remains a towering historical figure with immense contemporary political relevance.
This week in history: August 19-25
19 August 2019
This Week in History provides brief synopses of important historical events whose anniversaries fall this week.
200 years since the Peterloo Massacre
By Paul Bond, 16 August 2019
A savage attack by sword-wielding cavalry on a crowd of protesters in Manchester, England in August 1819 resulted in at least 18 people being killed and some 700 injured.
This week in history: August 12-18
12 August 2019
This Week in History provides brief synopses of important historical events whose anniversaries fall this week.
This week in history: August 5-11
5 August 2019
This Week in History provides brief synopses of important historical events whose anniversaries fall this week.
Modern art in Germany and the Nazis Part 2: The Die Brücke painters
By Sybille Fuchs, 26 July 2019
The exhibition at the Brücke Museum represents a welcome change in favour of art appreciation based on a critical examination of contemporary history.
The Bretton Woods Agreement 75 years on
By Nick Beams, 22 July 2019
The participants at the conference were acutely conscious of the fact that what was at stake in their deliberations to establish a new world economic order was nothing less than the survival of their rule.
This week in history: July 22-28
22 July 2019
25 years ago: Strikes break out in South AfricaOn July 26, 1994, a strike wave of over 100,000 workers broke out in South Africa. Mining, steel, telecommunications and postal unions declared official disputes with employers, giving effective strike notice. The Council of Mining Unions, representing white workers, followed the lead of the National Union of Mineworkers, representing black workers, in declaring a dispute with the main diamond and gold mining companies. About 300,000 autoworkers in the region scheduled to take a strike ballot by the end of the month.
Fifty years since the first Moon landing
By Patrick Martin, 20 July 2019
The first Moon landing remains an epoch-making scientific, technical and organizational achievement.
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