History
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 Z. 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.
This week in history: July 15-21
15 July 2019
This Week in History provides brief synopses of important historical events whose anniversaries fall this week.
Charité at War: A chilling portrayal of Nazism and its crimes
By Joanne Laurier, 11 July 2019
Charité at War is a German television drama, set in the years 1943 to 1945 at Berlin’s Charité hospital, one of the most prominent in Europe. The series depicts life under Nazi rule.
Britain: Gang convicted of running “extensive and prolific” modern slavery network
By Richard Tyler, 9 July 2019
According to the International Labour Office, there are 40.3 million people in conditions of modern slavery across the world, including 10 million children .
Paul Hanebrink’s A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism
Part 2: Stalinism, communism and anti-Semitism
By Clara Weiss, 9 July 2019
Hanebrink’s false equation of Stalinism with communism leads to a significant and misleading omission in his discussion of the reemergence of anti-Semitism in Eastern Europe after World War II and internationally today.
Part 1: Counter-revolution and anti-Semitism
Paul Hanebrink’s A Specter Haunting Europe: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism
By Clara Weiss, 8 July 2019
Hanebrink’s book focuses on examining the relationship between the fear of the “specter of communism” haunting Europe—to which Marx and Engels famously alluded in their Communist Manifesto of 1847—and of anti-Semitism.
This week in history: July 8-14
8 July 2019
This Week in History provides brief synopses of important historical events whose anniversaries fall this week.
American Independence Day 2019: From the “asylum for mankind” to the land of concentration camps
By Tom Mackaman, 4 July 2019
The principles of 1776 of open immigration and birthright citizenship are under attack.
This week in history: July 1-7
1 July 2019
This Week in History provides brief synopses of important historical events whose anniversaries fall this week.
Ten years since the US-backed coup in Honduras
By Bill Van Auken, 28 June 2019
While Democrats posture as defenders of immigrants, Obama, the “deporter-in-chief” presided over a coup that devastated Honduras, driving its people from the country.
San Francisco School Board votes to destroy left-wing murals they claim are “racist” and “white supremacist”
By Toby Reese, 28 June 2019
On Tuesday evening, the San Francisco Unified School Board voted unanimously to destroy or cover over the historic 1936 “Life of George Washington Murals” at a district high school. The vote is a reactionary decision that marks a new stage in the censorship drive that began last December.
”We can’t erase history to suit people’s feelings”
San Francisco residents voice opposition to censorship of George Washington High School murals
By Evan Blake and Alex Gonzalez, 28 June 2019
Numerous residents spoke out against the destruction of art and the need to contextualize the murals for a younger audience.
Destroyed 1923 pamphlet on Red Army, commissioned by Trotsky, reprinted in Russia
By Clara Weiss, 27 June 2019
The reprint makes available, after almost 100 years, an important historical document, the fate of which reflects the violent repression by Stalinism of genuine Marxist thought and politics, represented within the Soviet Union by Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition.
Destroyed 1923 pamphlet on Red Army, commissioned by Trotsky, reprinted in Russia
By Clara Weiss, 26 June 2019
The reprint makes available, after almost 100 years, an important historical document whose fate reflects the violent repression by Stalinism of genuine Marxist thought and politics, represented within the Soviet Union by Leon Trotsky and the Left Opposition.
“The Short Films of Raymundo Gleyzer”: Works by left-wing filmmaker murdered by Argentine military junta
By Kevin Martinez, 26 June 2019
Abducted and murdered by the Argentine junta in 1976, the documentarian made numerous films about the working class that have sadly been forgotten. Their strengths and weaknesses deserve to be considered.
This week in history: June 24-30
24 June 2019
This Week in History provides brief synopses of important historical events whose anniversaries fall this week.
Whitewashing Canadian capitalism’s crimes:
Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women’s inquiry issues final report
By Roger Jordan and Keith Jones, 21 June 2019
The MMIW report shifts the blame for the oppression of the native people from Canadian capitalism and its state to a racist “colonialist” mindset and “white society.”
This week in history: June 10-16
10 June 2019
25 years ago: Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman murderedOn June 13, 1994, the wife of former professional football player and movie actor OJ Simpson, Nicole Brown Simpson, was found brutally murdered outside her Brentwood, Los Angeles, home, along with her friend Ron Goldman. The pair had been stabbed to death the night before.
The Tiananmen Square massacre, 30 years on
By Peter Symonds, 8 June 2019
What was lacking in the 1989 protests was not determination, audacity and courage, nor numbers, but revolutionary leadership—the essential problem facing the international working class in the 20th century.
The 75th anniversary of D-Day and the rising threat of imperialist war
By Bill Van Auken, 7 June 2019
Behind the speeches delivered Thursday—as with D-Day itself—lay the calculations of politicians seeking to further the imperialist interests of their respective countries.
From the archives
Ten years since the Tiananmen Square massacre
Political lessons for the working class
By James Cogan, 7 June 2019
The article confirms the essential analysis of the ICFI in 1989 that the terror unleashed by the Stalinist bureaucracy was above all directed against the working class that had risen in revolt against its policies of capitalist restoration.
From the archives:
Trotskyism and the Chinese Revolution
By Editorial of the Fourth International magazine, 6 June 2019
The following editorial in the January-June 1989 edition of the Fourth International magazine on the Tiananmen Square massacre is an indictment of Stalinism and its opportunist apologists from the standpoint of orthodox Trotskyism.
From the archives:
Stop Stalinist Terror Against Chinese Workers
Statement of the International Committee of the Fourth International, 5 June 2019
The ICFI statement entitled “Stop Stalinist Terror Against Chinese Workers” was issued on June 22, 1989, as the scope of the police dragnet and repression against workers and students expanded following the Tiananmen Square massacre.
WSWS republishes ICFI statements on Tiananmen Square massacre on June 4, 1989
4 June 2019
Thirty years after the brutal military crackdown on unarmed workers and students in Beijing, these documents contain the essential political lessons for the revolutionary struggles ahead.
This week in history: June 3-9
3 June 2019
This Week in History provides brief synopses of important historical events whose anniversaries fall this week.
This week in history: May 27-June 2
27 May 2019
This Week in History provides brief synopses of important historical events whose anniversaries fall this week.
This week in history: May 20-26
20 May 2019
This Week in History provides brief synopses of important historical events whose anniversaries fall this week.
This week in history: May 13–19
13 May 2019
This Week in History provides brief synopses of important historical events whose anniversaries fall this week.
One hundred years since the May 4 movement in China—Part Two
By Peter Symonds, 6 May 2019
The Chinese Communist Party today distorts the significance of the events of May 4, 1919. It has long ago repudiated the democratic principles of the New Culture movement and the socialist internationalism upon which the party was founded.
This week in history: May 6-12
6 May 2019
This Week in History provides brief synopses of important historical events whose anniversaries fall this week.
One hundred years since the May 4 movement in China—Part One
By Peter Symonds, 4 May 2019
The May 4 movement which erupted in 1919 was part of a broader intellectual ferment, profoundly influenced by the Russian Revolution, that led to the establishment of the Chinese Communist Party in 1921.
New York Times column falsifies legacy of Eugene Debs
By Tom Mackaman, 30 April 2019
Isserman portrays the early American socialist as a moralistic reformer.
This week in history: April 29-May 5
29 April 2019
This Week in History provides brief synopses of important historical events whose anniversaries fall this week.
The burning of Notre-Dame cathedral in Paris
By Alex Lantier, 17 April 2019
The inferno was caused by a horrific breakdown of fire safety in restoration work, for which the French government and ruling elite bear the responsibility.
An assembly of political bankrupts: Historical Materialism and Jacobin host “Socialism in Our Time” conference
By Joseph Kishore, 16 April 2019
A more accurate title for the event would have been, “Democratic Party Politics in Our Time,” or, perhaps, “Socialism not now, not ever.”
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