Soviet Union
The Soviet Union the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was a socialist state in Eurasia that existed from 1922 to 1991. Nominally a union of multiple national Soviet republics, its government and economy were centralized; the country was a one-party state, governed by the Communist Party with Moscow as its capital in its largest republic, the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic. Other major urban centres were Leningrad, Minsk, Alma-Ata, Novosibirsk, it spanned over 10,000 kilometres east to west across 11 time zones, over 7,200 kilometres north to south. It had five climate zones: tundra, steppes and mountains; the Soviet Union had its roots in the 1917 October Revolution, when the Bolsheviks, led by Vladimir Lenin, overthrew the Russian Provisional Government which had replaced Tsar Nicholas II during World War I. In 1922, the Soviet Union was formed by a treaty which legalized the unification of the Russian, Transcaucasian and Byelorussian republics that had occurred from 1918. Following Lenin's death in 1924 and a brief power struggle, Joseph Stalin came to power in the mid-1920s.
Stalin committed the state's ideology to Marxism–Leninism and constructed a command economy which led to a period of rapid industrialization and collectivization. During his rule, political paranoia fermented and the Great Purge removed Stalin's opponents within and outside of the party via arbitrary arrests and persecutions of many people, resulting in at least 600,000 deaths. In 1933, a major famine struck the country. Before the start of World War II in 1939, the Soviets signed the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, agreeing to non-aggression with Nazi Germany, after which the USSR invaded Poland on 17 September 1939. In June 1941, Germany broke the pact and invaded the Soviet Union, opening the largest and bloodiest theatre of war in history. Soviet war casualties accounted for the highest proportion of the conflict in the effort of acquiring the upper hand over Axis forces at intense battles such as Stalingrad and Kursk; the territories overtaken by the Red Army became satellite states of the Soviet Union.
The post-war division of Europe into capitalist and communist halves would lead to increased tensions with the United States-led Western Bloc, known as the Cold War. Stalin died in 1953 and was succeeded by Nikita Khrushchev, who in 1956 denounced Stalin and began the de-Stalinization; the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred during Khrushchev's rule, among the many factors that led to his downfall in 1964. In the early 1970s, there was a brief détente of relations with the United States, but tensions resumed with the Soviet–Afghan War in 1979. In 1985, the last Soviet premier, Mikhail Gorbachev, sought to reform and liberalize the economy through his policies of glasnost and perestroika, which caused political instability. In 1989, Soviet satellite states in Eastern Europe overthrew their respective communist governments; as part of an attempt to prevent the country's dissolution due to rising nationalist and separatist movements, a referendum was held in March 1991, boycotted by some republics, that resulted in a majority of participating citizens voting in favor of preserving the union as a renewed federation.
Gorbachev's power was diminished after Russian President Boris Yeltsin's high-profile role in facing down a coup d'état attempted by Communist Party hardliners. In late 1991, Gorbachev resigned and the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union met and formally dissolved the Soviet Union; the remaining 12 constituent republics emerged as independent post-Soviet states, with the Russian Federation—formerly the Russian SFSR—assuming the Soviet Union's rights and obligations and being recognized as the successor state. The Soviet Union was a powerhouse of many significant technological achievements and innovations of the 20th century, including the world's first human-made satellite, the first humans in space and the first probe to land on another planet, Venus; the country had the largest standing military in the world. The Soviet Union was recognized as one of the five nuclear weapons states and possessed the largest stockpile of weapons of mass destruction, it was a founding permanent member of the United Nations Security Council as well as a member of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, the World Federation of Trade Unions and the leading member of the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance and the Warsaw Pact.
The word "Soviet" is derived from a Russian word сове́т meaning council, advice, harmony and all deriving from the proto-Slavic verbal stem of vět-iti, related to Slavic věst, English "wise", the root in "ad-vis-or", or the Dutch weten. The word sovietnik means "councillor". A number of organizations in Russian history were called "council". For example, in the Russian Empire the State Council, which functioned from 1810 to 1917, was referred to as a Council of Ministers after the revolt of 1905. During the Georgian Affair, Vladimir Lenin envisioned an expression of Great Russian ethnic chauvinism by Joseph Stalin and his supporters, calling for these nation-states to join Russia as semi-independent parts of a greater union, which he named as the Union of Soviet Republics of Europe and Asia. Stalin resisted the proposal, but accepted it, although with Lenin's agreement changed the name of the newly proposed sta
Fourth International
The Fourth International is a revolutionary socialist international organisation consisting of followers of Leon Trotsky, or Trotskyists, with the declared goal of helping the working class overthrow capitalism and work toward international communism. The Fourth International was established in France in 1938 as Trotsky and his supporters, having been expelled from the Soviet Union, considered the Third International or Comintern to have become lost to Stalinism and incapable of leading the international working class to political power. Thus, Trotskyists founded their own competing Fourth International. Today, there is no longer a single cohesive Fourth International. Throughout the better part of its existence, the Fourth International was hounded by agents of the Soviet secret police, repressed by capitalist countries such as France and the United States and rejected by followers of the Soviet Union and Maoism as illegitimate, it struggled to maintain contact under these conditions of illegality and repression around much of the world during World War II because when workers' uprisings did occur they were under the influence of Soviet-inspired, social democratic, Maoist, or militant nationalist groups, leading to defeats for the FI and its Trotskyists, who gathered similar support.
Despite this, many parts of the world, including Latin America and Asia, continue to have large Trotskyist groupings who are attracted to its anti-Stalinist positions and its defense of workers' internationalism. Quite a few of these groups carry the label Fourth Internationalist either in their organisation's name, major political position documents, or both. In line with its Trotskyist underpinnings, the Fourth International tended to view the Comintern as worthy of conditional support considering its corruption and although it regarded its own ideas as more advanced and thus superior to those of the Third International, it did not seek the Comintern's destruction, it does not operate as a cohesive entity in the manner of the prior internationals. The FI suffered a major split in 1940 and an more significant split in 1953. A partial reunification occurred in 1963, but the international never recovered enough to re-emerge as a single transnational grouping. Trotskyists' response to that situation has been in the form of its many Internationals, with some divided over ideas of which organisation represents the true political continuity of the Fourth International.
Trotskyists regard themselves as working in opposition to Stalinism. Trotsky advocated proletarian revolution as set out in his theory of "permanent revolution", believed that a workers' state would not be able to hold out against the pressures of a hostile capitalist world unless socialist revolutions took hold in other countries as well; this theory was advanced in opposition to the view held by the Stalinists that "socialism in one country" could be built in the Soviet Union alone. Furthermore and his supporters harshly criticized the totalitarian nature of Joseph Stalin's rule, they argued. Thus, faced with the increasing lack of democracy in the Soviet Union, they concluded that it was no longer a socialist workers' state, but a degenerated workers' state. Trotsky and his supporters had been organised since 1923 as the Left Opposition, they opposed the bureaucratization of the Soviet Union, which they analysed as being caused by the poverty and isolation of the Soviet economy. Stalin's theory of socialism in one country was developed in 1924 as an opposition to Trotsky's Theory of Permanent Revolution, which argued that capitalism was a world system and required a world revolution in order to replace it with socialism.
Prior to 1924, the Bolsheviks' international perspective had been guided by Trotsky's position. Trotsky argued that Stalin's theory represented the interests of bureaucratic elements in direct opposition to the working class. Trotsky was sent into internal exile and his supporters were jailed. However, the Left Opposition continued to work in secret within the Soviet Union. Trotsky was exiled to Turkey in 1928, he moved from there to France, Norway and to Mexico. He was assassinated on Stalin's orders in Mexico in August 1940. A political international is an organisation of political parties or activists with the aim of co-ordinating their activity for a common purpose. There had been a long tradition of socialists organising on an international basis, Karl Marx had led the International Workingmen's Association, which became known as the "first international". After the International Workingmen's Association disbanded in 1876, several attempts were made to revive the organisation, culminating in the formation of the Socialist International in 1889.
This was disbanded in 1916 following disagreements over World War I. Although the organisation reformed in 1923 as the Labour and Socialist International, supporters of the October Revolution and the Bolsheviks had set up the Communist International, which they regarded as the Third International; this was organised on a democratic centralist basis, with component parties required to fight for policies adopted by the body as a whole. By declaring themselves the Fourth International, the "World Party of Socialist Revolution", the Trotskyists were publicly asserting their continuity with the Comintern, with its predecessors, their recognition of the importance of these earlier Internationals was coupled with a belief that they degenerated. Although the Socialist International and Comintern were still in existence, the Trotskyists did not believe those organisations were capable of supporting revolutionary socialism and international
Trotskyism
Trotskyism is the theory of Marxism as advocated by the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky. Trotsky identified as Bolshevik -- Leninist, he supported founding a vanguard party of the proletariat, proletarian internationalism and a dictatorship of the proletariat based on working class self-emancipation and mass democracy. Trotskyists are critical of Stalinism as they oppose Joseph Stalin's theory of socialism in one country in favor of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. Trotskyists criticize the bureaucracy that developed in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Vladimir Lenin and Trotsky were close both ideologically and during the Russian Revolution and its aftermath, some call Trotsky its "co-leader". Trotsky was the paramount leader of the Red Army in the direct aftermath of the Revolutionary period. Trotsky opposed some aspects of Leninism, but he concluded that unity between the Mensheviks and Bolsheviks was impossible and joined the Bolsheviks. Trotsky played a leading role with Lenin in the revolution.
Assessing Trotsky, Lenin wrote: "Trotsky long ago said. Trotsky understood this and from that time on there has been no better Bolshevik". Under Stalin's orders, Trotsky was removed from power, expelled from the Communist Party, exiled first to Alma-Ata, from the Soviet Union; as the head of the Fourth International, Trotsky continued from exile to oppose the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union. On 20 August 1940, Trotsky was attacked by Ramón Mercader, a Spanish-born NKVD agent, died the next day in a hospital, his murder is considered a political assassination. All of the Trotskyists within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union were executed in the Great Purges of 1937–1938 removing all of Trotsky's internal influence in the Soviet Union. Trotsky's Fourth International was established in France in 1938, when Trotskyists argued that the Comintern or Third International had become irretrievably "lost to Stalinism" and thus incapable of leading the international working class to political power.
In contemporary English language usage, an advocate of Trotsky's ideas is called a "Trotskyist". A Trotskyist can be called a "Trotskyite" or "Trot" by a critic of Trotskyism. American Trotskyist James P. Cannon wrote in his History of American Trotskyism that "Trotskyism is not a new movement, a new doctrine, but the restoration, the revival of genuine Marxism as it was expounded and practiced in the Russian revolution and in the early days of the Communist International". According to Trotsky, his program could be distinguished from other Marxist theories by five key elements: Support for the strategy of permanent revolution, in opposition to the two-stage theory of his opponents. Criticism of the post-1924 leadership of the Soviet Union, analysis of its features. Support for social revolution in the advanced capitalist countries through working class mass action. Support for proletarian internationalism. Use of a transitional programme of demands that bridge between daily struggles of the working class and the maximal ideas of the socialist transformation of society.
On the political spectrum of Marxism, Trotskyists are considered to be towards the left. In the 1920s they called themselves the Left Opposition, although today's left communism is distinct and non-Bolshevik; the terminological disagreement can be confusing because different versions of a left-right political spectrum are used. Anti-revisionists consider themselves the ultimate leftists on a spectrum from communism on the left to imperialist capitalism on the right, but given that Stalinism is labeled rightist within the communist spectrum and left communism leftist, anti-revisionists' idea of left is different from that of left communism. Despite being Bolshevik-Leninist comrades during the Russian Revolution and Russian Civil War and Stalin became enemies in the 1920s and thereafter opposed the legitimacy of each other's forms of Leninism. Trotsky was critical of the Stalinist Soviet Union for suppressing democracy and lack of adequate economic planning. In 1905, Trotsky formulated his theory of permanent revolution that became a defining characteristic of Trotskyism.
Until 1905, some revolutionaries claimed that Marx's theory of history positioned that only a revolution in a European capitalist society would lead to a socialist one. According to this position, it was impossible for a socialist revolution to occur in a backward, feudal country such as early 20th century Russia when it had such a small and powerless capitalist class; the theory of permanent revolution addressed the question of how such feudal regimes were to be overthrown and how socialism could be established given the lack of economic prerequisites. Trotsky argued that in Russia only the working class could overthrow feudalism and win the support of the peasantry. Furthermore, he argued, they would win their own revolution against the weak capitalist class, establish a workers' state in Russia and appeal to the working class in the advanced capitalist countries around the world. As a result, the global working class would come to Russia's aid and socialism could develop worldwide. Revolutions in Britain in the 17th century and in France in 1789 abolished feudalism and established the basic requisites for the development of capitalism.
Trotsky argued. In Results and Prospects, written in 1906, Trotsky outlines his theory in detail, arguing: "History does not repea
Anti-Stalinist left
The anti-Stalinist left comprises various kinds of left-wing politics critical of Joseph Stalin, of Stalinism as a political philosophy, of the actual system of governance Stalin implemented as dictator of the Soviet Union. It may refer to left-wing opposition to dictatorships, cults of personality and police states, features attributed to Stalinist regimes, such as Kim Il-sung, Enver Hoxha, Pol Pot, others, including in the former Eastern Bloc. Associates and followers of Leon Trotsky were organized in the Left Opposition within the Communist parties before they were purged in the Moscow Trials in the 1930s. Trotskyist differ from most other ideological manifestations on the "anti-Stalinist left" in that they, like Marxist-Leninists claim to be Leninists. Subsequently, his followers formed the Fourth International in opposition to the Stalinist Third International. Trotsky saw the Stalinist states as deformed workers' state, where a political structure gave most workers little power in decision making.
Trotsky and his followers were critical of the lack of internal debate among Stalinist organizations and societies and political repression enacted by Stalinist governments. Less orthodox Trotskyists and other critics of Stalin have seen it as a new form of class state, called bureaucratic collectivism or as state capitalist; the communist left was enthusiastic about the Bolshevik revolution, but lines of tension between the communist left and the leadership of the Communist International opened up soon. Left communists such as Sylvia Pankhurst and Rosa Luxemburg were among the first left-wing critics of Bolshevism. Left communists see communism as something that can only be achieved by the proletariat itself, not through the dictatorship of a vanguard party acting on its behalf. Anarchists like Emma Goldman were enthusiastic about the Bolsheviks after dissemination of Vladimir Lenin's pamphlet State and Revolution, which had painted Bolshevism in a libertarian light. However, the relations between the anarchists and the Bolsheviks soured in Soviet Russia.
Anarchists and Stalinist Communists were in armed conflict during the Spanish civil war. Anarchists are critical of the statist, totalitarian nature of Stalinism, as well as its cult of personality around Stalin. A significant current of the democratic socialist movement has defined itself in opposition to Stalinism; this includes George Orwell, H. N. Brailsford, Fenner Brockway, the Independent Labour Party in Britain. There were a number of anti-Stalinist socialists in France, including writers such as Simone Weil and Albert Camus as well as the group around Marceau Pivert. In America, the New York Intellectuals around the journals Partisan Review and Dissent saw Soviet Communism as a form of totalitarianism in some ways mirroring fascism. Another major split in the international Communist movement was that between Stalin and the Right Opposition, led by Nikolai Bukharin. In several countries parallel Communist parties were formed that either were rejected by the Comintern or distanced themselves from it.
Their criticism did in some ways become similar to positions raised by the Trotskyists, but as a tendency they were far less coherent. The Right Opposition developed contacts with other groups that did not fit into either the international Social democracy or Comintern, such as the Independent Labour Party in Britain; this tendency died out at the time of the Second World War. In other cases dissident Marxist trends developed outside of the established Communist movement, such as the Anushlian Marxists in India. At first, the Communist Party of Yugoslavia and the regime it established through the successful war of liberation against the Axis invaders by the partizans was modeled on that of Soviet Union, Tito was considered to be "Stalin's most faithful pupil". However, in 1948, the two leaders broke apart and Tito's aides began a theoretical effort to develop a new brand of Socialism that would be both Marxist–Leninist in nature and anti-Stalinist in practice; the result was the Yugoslav system of socialist workers' self-management known as Titoism, based on the organizing of every productive activities of society into "self-managed units".
Đilas wrote extensively against Stalinism and was radically critical of the bureaucratic apparatus built by Bolshevism in the Soviet Union. He grew critical of his own regime as well and became a dissident in Yugoslavia, he was imprisoned but pardoned. "Non-Communist Left", or NCL, was a designation used in the U. S. State Department and Central Intelligence Agency referring to leftist intellectuals who had become disillusioned by Stalin. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. highlighted the group's growing power in a popular 1948 essay titled "Not Right, Not Left, But a Vital Center". Another key publication
Leon Trotsky
Leon Trotsky was a Russian revolutionary, Marxist theorist, Soviet politician whose particular strain of Marxist thought is known as Trotskyism. Supporting the Menshevik-Internationalists faction within the Russian Social Democratic Labour Party, he joined the Bolsheviks just before the 1917 October Revolution becoming a leader within the Communist Party, he would go on to become one of the seven members of the first Politburo, founded in 1917 to manage the Bolshevik Revolution. During the early days of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic and the Soviet Union, he served first as People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs and as the founder and commander of the Red Army, with the title of People's Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs, he became a major figure in the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War. After leading a failed struggle of the Left Opposition against the policies and rise of Joseph Stalin in the 1920s and against the increasing role of bureaucracy in the Soviet Union, Trotsky was removed as Commissar for Military and Naval Affairs, removed from the Politburo, removed from the Central Committee, expelled from the Communist Party, exiled to Alma–Ata, exiled from the Soviet Union.
As the head of the Fourth International, Trotsky continued to oppose the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union while in exile. Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico City by a Spanish-born NKVD agent. On 20 August 1940, Mercader attacked Trotsky with an ice axe and Trotsky died the next day in a hospital. Mercader acted upon instruction from Stalin and was nearly beaten to death by Trotsky's bodyguards, spent the next 20 years in a Mexican prison for the murder. Stalin presented Mercader with an Order of Lenin in absentia. Trotsky's ideas formed the basis of Trotskyism, a major school of Marxist thought that opposes the theories of Stalinism, he was written out of the history books under Stalin, was one of the few Soviet political figures, not rehabilitated by the government under Nikita Khrushchev in the 1950s. Leon Trotsky was born Lev Davidovich Bronstein on 7 November 1879, the fifth child of a Ukrainian-Jewish family of wealthy farmers in Yanovka or Yanivka, in the Kherson governorate of the Russian Empire, a small village 24 kilometres from the nearest post office.
His parents were his wife Anna Lvovna. Trotsky's father was born in Poltava, moved to Bereslavka, as it had a large Jewish community; the language spoken at home was a mixture of Ukrainian. Trotsky's younger sister, who grew up to be a Bolshevik and a Soviet politician, married the prominent Bolshevik Lev Kamenev; some authors, notably Robert Service, have claimed that Trotsky's childhood first name was the Yiddish Leiba. The American Trotskyist David North said that this was an assumption based on Trotsky's Jewish birth, contrary to Service's claims, there is no documentary evidence to support his using a Yiddish name, when that language was not spoken by his family. Both North and Walter Laqueur in their books say that Trotsky's childhood name was Lyova, a standard Russian diminutive of the name Lev. North has compared the speculation on Trotsky's given name to the undue emphasis given to his having a Jewish surname; when Trotsky was eight, his father sent him to Odessa to be educated. He was enrolled in a German-language school, which became Russified during his years in Odessa as a result of the Imperial government's policy of Russification.
As Isaac Deutscher notes in his biography of Trotsky, Odessa was a bustling cosmopolitan port city unlike the typical Russian city of the time. This environment contributed to the development of the young man's international outlook. Although Trotsky spoke French and German to a good standard, he said in his autobiography My Life that he was never fluent in any language but Russian and Ukrainian. Raymond Molinier wrote. Trotsky became involved in revolutionary activities in 1896 after moving to the harbor town of Nikolayev on the Ukrainian coast of the Black Sea. At first a narodnik, he opposed Marxism but was won over to Marxism that year by his future first wife, Aleksandra Sokolovskaya. Instead of pursuing a mathematics degree, Trotsky helped organize the South Russian Workers' Union in Nikolayev in early 1897. Using the name'Lvov,' he wrote and printed leaflets and proclamations, distributed revolutionary pamphlets, popularized socialist ideas among industrial workers and revolutionary students.
In January 1898, more than 200 members of the union, including Trotsky, were arrested. He was held for the next two years in prison awaiting trial, first in Nikolayev Kherson Odessa, in Moscow. In the Moscow prison he came into contact with other revolutionaries and heard about Lenin and read Lenin's book, The Development of Capitalism in Russia. Two months into his imprisonment, on 1–3 March 1898, the first Congress of the newly formed Russian Social Democratic Labor Party was held. From on Trotsky identified as a member of the party. While in the prison in Moscow, in the summer of 1899, Trotsky married Aleksandra Sokolovskaya, a fellow Marxist; the wedding ceremony was performed by a Jewish chaplain. In 1900, he was sentenced to four years in exile in Siberia; because of their marriage and his wife were allowed to be exiled to the same location
Uneven and combined development
Uneven and combined development is a Marxist concept to describe the overall dynamics of human history. It was used by the Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky around the turn of the 20th century, when he was analyzing the developmental possibilities that existed for the economy and civilization in the Russian empire, the future of the Tsarist regime in Russia, it was the basis of his political strategy of permanent revolution, which implied a rejection of the idea that a human society developed through a uni-linear sequence of necessary "stages". Before Trotsky, Nikolay Chernyshevsky and Vasily Vorontsov proposed a similar idea; the concept is still used today by other Marxists concerned with world politics. Trotsky's concept was inspired by a series of articles by Alexander Helphand on "War and Revolution" in the Russian journal Iskra in 1904. At first, Trotsky intended this concept only to describe a characteristic evolutionary pattern in the worldwide expansion of the capitalist mode of production from the 16th century onwards, through the growth of a world economy which connected more and more peoples and territories together through trade and investment.
His focus was initially on the history of the Russian empire, where the most advanced technological and scientific developments co-existed with primitive and superstitious cultures. In the 1920s and 1930s, Trotsky generalised the concept of uneven and combined development to the whole of human history, to processes of evolutionary biology, as well as the formation of the human personality - as a general dialectical category; the concept played a certain role in the fierce theoretical debates during the political conflict between the supporters of Joseph Stalin and Trotsky's Left Opposition, a debate which ranged from the historical interpretation of the Russian revolution and economic strategies for the transition to socialism, to the correct understanding of principles of Marxism. Different countries, Trotsky observed and advanced to a large extent independently from each other, in ways which were quantitatively unequal and qualitatively different. In other words, countries had their own specific national history with national peculiarities.
At the same time, all the different countries did not exist in complete isolation from each other. Sociologically speaking, this had five main effects: a more backward, older or more primitive country would adopt parts of the culture of a more advanced, or more modern society, a more advanced culture could adopt or merge with parts of a more primitive culture – with good or bad effects. Cultural practices, institutions and ways of life belonging to both old and new epochs and phases of human history were all combined and linked together in a rather unusual way, within one country. In turn, this meant that one could not say that different societies all developed through the same sort of linear sequence of necessary developmental stages, but rather that they could adopt/utilize the results of developments reached elsewhere, without going through all the previous evolutionary stages which led up to those results; some countries could thus "skip", "telescope" or "compress" developmental stages which other countries took hundreds of years to go through, or rapidly carry through a modernization process that took other countries centuries to achieve.
Different countries could both aid or advance the socio-economic progress of other countries through trade and contributing resources, or block and brake other countries as competitors from making progress by preventing the use of capital, trading routes, land or other kinds of resources. In Trotsky's theory of imperialism, the domination of one country by another does not mean that the dominated country is prevented from development altogether, but rather that it develops according to the requirements of the dominating country. For example, an export industry will develop around mining and farm products in the dominated country, but the rest of the economy is not developed, so that the country's economy becomes more unevenly developed than it was before, rather than achieving balanced development. Or, a school system is set up with foreign assistance, but the schools teach only the messages that the dominating country wants to hear; the main tendencies and trends occurring at the level of world society as a whole, could be found in each separate country, where they combined with unique local trends – but this was a locally specific “mix”, so that some world trends asserted themselves more or faster, others weaker and slower in each specific country.
Thus, a country could be advanced in some areas of activity, but at the same time comparatively retarded in other areas. One effect was that the response to the same events of world significance could be quite different in different countries, because the local people attached different "weightings" to experiences and therefore drew different conclusions. According to Trotsky, the unequal and combined development of different countries had an effect on the class structure of society. For example, the Russian empire in 1917 was a peasant s
International Marxist Tendency
The International Marxist Tendency is an international Trotskyist tendency founded by Ted Grant and his followers following their break with the Committee for a Workers International in the early 1990s. Their website, Marxist.com, is edited by Alan Woods. The site is multilingual, publishes international current affairs articles written from a Marxist perspective, as well as a large number of historical and theoretical articles; the IMT is active in over 30 countries worldwide. Militant was an entryist group within the British Labour Party based around the Militant newspaper, founded in 1964. In 1974, Militant and its allies in Sweden and other countries formed the Committee for a Workers' International. At the time it was the largest Trotskyist organization in Europe; the organisation acquired more members during the 1970s and early 1980s and dominated the Labour Party in Liverpool. In 1983, the five members of the Militant newspaper's editorial board were expelled for contravening the Labour Party constitution and expulsions of Militant members continued throughout the rest of the decade.
Ted Grant was a long time leader of Militant until it split in early 1992 over a number of issues whether to continue working within the Labour Party. The majority, rejecting entryism, formed Militant Labour, which subsequently became the Socialist Party of England and Wales. Grant argued that leaving Labour would amount to throwing away many decades of patient work and maintained that Marxists should remain within the party. However, he and his supporters were expelled from the tendency and together with Alan Woods they formed Socialist Appeal in Britain; the factional fight within Militant that led to the expulsion of Grant and Woods played itself out within the CWI with supporters of the Grant faction leaving to form the Committee for a Marxist International in several countries Spain. At its World Congress in 2006, the organisation was renamed the International Marxist Tendency. Woods is editor of the British section's journal Socialist Appeal and of the IMT website, In Defence of Marxism.
The International Marxist Tendency adheres to Orthodox Trotskyism, emphasising the education of cadres of workers and youth. The IMT manifesto makes demands such as "the end to privatisation and the abandonment of market economics", "the nationalisation of privatised companies without compensation" and "the reintroduction of the state monopoly of foreign trade"; the IMT claims sections in many countries worldwide, including Esquerda Marxista in Brazil, Sinistra classe rivoluzione in Italy, Vonk in the Netherlands, Fightback in Canada, Socialist Appeal in Britain. Its section in France, Révolution, practiced entryism in the French Communist Party. Révolution left the French Communist Party and have become member of La France Insoumise while La Riposte are staying to the party and are no longer a section of the International Marxist Tendency; the IMT's Brazilian section, Esquerda Marxista was a recognized tendency within the ruling Workers' Party and has a majority in the Movimento Negro Socialista.
On 5 May 2015, the Brazilian section announced its withdrawal from the Workers' Party, citing the failure of this party to stand up to austerity and its support for police repression of protest movements. Two members of the Greek Section were elected to the Central Committee of SYRIZA during its founding congress in July 2013; this faction has since pushed within SYRIZA for the rejection of austerity, for the party to carry out socialist policies. This organization's positions have gained the attention of the Wall Street Journal, which interviewed some members as part of an article on 23 June 2015; the Communist Tendency joined the newly founded Popular Unity following its split from SYRIZA. The Mexican section, La Izquierda Socialista, has been active in the National Regeneration Movement. Several members of the Mexican section were mentioned by name in articles by the Conservative newspaper La Razón; these articles took note of these members large role in student struggles at Instituto Politécnico Nacional, accused them of being outside agitators linked to the left-wing writer and politician Paco Ignacio Taibo II.
On August 26, 2015 members of La Izquerda Socialista were injured in a confrontation with riot police after leaving an "Ayotzinapa" protest in Mexico city. Among the injured was Ubaldo Meneses, editor of the organization's newspaper, a member of the national council of MORENA. In preparation for the Italian general election in 2018, the IMT's section launched the For a Revolutionary Left electoral alliance with the Workers' Communist Party, the Italian section of the Coordinating Committee for the Refoundation of the Fourth International; the alliance received 0.08% of the vote. Since the rapid growth of the Democratic Socialists of America since the 2016 presidential election in the United States, US members of the IMT have joined DSA chapters around the country. Just as the Committee for a Worker's International pursued a policy of entryism within traditional mass social democratic parties up until the early 1990s, IMT groups across the world pursue this method in their respective Labour Parties, some Communist Parties such as those in France and Italy and, in some countries, mass populist parties such as the Pakistan Peoples Party.
This work, however, is combined with independent work outside these parties and with a strong observance of not liquidating the organisation within them
