We are publishing the first volume of this journal at a moment when Marxism as an integral world outlook appears to be comprehensively defeated. The much heralded “revival of Marxism” which characterised the last decade stopped at the assimilation of Marx to the pluralistic pantheon of petty bourgeois protest against injustice and demand for redistribution. It is the new “Marxists” themselves who are the first to conciliate with sociology and postmodernism, nationalism and feminism and to protest that they would never dream of negating en bloc the validity of the apologia and mystification which a decadent imperialism peddles as “science” and “critique”.

more...

The moralism of the ruling class and its mouthpieces aside, this article will try to present the political situation on Croatia’s parliamentary left as it is: the ideological roots of the three parliamentary parties, paying particular attention to the phenomenon of “democratic socialism” emulated in this part of the world; the class structure of the parties’ voter base, and their prospects and plans for the future. The overarching issue will of course be how those of us who consider ourselves communist, that is, who actively strive towards a global planned economy and the abolition of wage labor, should relate to the Green Left.

more...

The dossier assembles a selection of internal documents concerning the military policy of the KPD between the end of 1923 and the beginning of 1924. These texts illustrate an essential problem of the post 1917 revolutionary period: the absence of ideologico-political preparation for military conflict within the West European workers movement. The Bolsheviks adapted a realistic perspective on the inevitability of armed struggle from early on. Their activity was tempered not only by illegality but five years of partisan operations in one of the major asymmetric conflicts of the early 20^th century. During the same period West European socialists mostly evaded engagement with military policy.

more...

We are in fact of the opinion that such organisational independence is necessary today and that operation within social democratic political organisations diffuses rather than concentrates forces around the communist program in the current adverse situation. However our focus below will be whether organised “left” currents in DSA are practicing a policy of communist entryism however misguided or rather a policy of capitulation to social democracy and petty bourgeois radical incoherence.

To this end we will briefly examine the publicly available documents of several tendencies within DSA which assert a challenge to the leadership of the organisation from the left.

more...

Today in our post Soviet and by necessary extension post political era, nominally Marxist thought has become detached from revolutionary strategy and vacillates between impotent “critical criticism” and aspirations to a renewed reformist integration. In this environment nothing is more appealing than the argument that the Marxist classics lack a theory of the state or of the political. The obvious untruth of such an assertion is more than compensated for by its immense “use value” to those who seek to harmonise a revolutionary doctrine with the “lived experience” of a long restoration.

more...