During the Second World War, revolutionary socialists argued, in the face of huge repression, that the German-Japanese ‘Axis’ and the US-British ‘Allies’ were fighting an imperialist war; and that working people should support neither side.
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Features
Latest update : 25 October.
This section contains articles on theoretical, analytical and historical themes usually longer than articles published in the news magazine section.
Articles in this section
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Trotskyists and the Second World War
1976 - Trotskyists and Resistance in the Second World War
31 May 2005, by -
A Journey with Livio Maitan
Lessons from a Critical Intellectual
19 January 2005, byLidia Cirillo reflects on nearly 40 years fighting for revolutionary marxism in Italy alongside Livio Maitan. She discusses the victories and defeats of the Italian Fourth International section, and the strengths of Maitan’s political vision which historically justified his work, even while he was apparently ’on the margins’.
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Marxism
Theses of resistance
9 December 2004, byDaniel Bensaïd makes a bold attempt to track the theoretical challenges faced by Marxism today.
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Marxist Theory
1990 - Communism
31 December 2003, byErnest Mandel outlines the orthodox Marxist view of the stages of transition after the fall of capitalism.
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Basic Theories of Karl Marx
Historical Materialism
30 December 2003, byOutside his specific economic theories, Marx’s main contribution to the social sciences has been his theory of historical materialism. Its starting point is anthropological. Human beings cannot survive without social organisation.
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The Basic Theories of Karl Marx
Marx’s Economic Theory - General approach and influence
30 December 2003, byA general appraisal of Marx’s method of economic analysis is called for prior to an outline of his main economic theories (theses and hypotheses). Marx is distinct from most important economists of the 19th and 20th centuries in that he does not consider himself at all an ’economist’ pure and simple.
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The Basic Theories of Karl Marx
Marx’s Labour Theory of Value
30 December 2003, byAs an economist, Marx is generally situated in the continuity of the great classical school of Adam Smith and Ricardo. He obviously owes a lot to Ricardo, and conducts a running dialogue with that master in most of his mature economic writings.
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The Basic Theories of Karl Marx
Marx’s Theory of Rent
30 December 2003, byThe labour theory of value defines value as the socially necessary quantity of labour determined by the average productivity of labour of each given sector of production. But these values are not mathematically fixed data. They are simply the expression of a process going on in real life, under capitalist commodity production. So this average is only ascertained in the course of a certain time-span.
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The Basic Theories of Karl Marx
Marx’s Theory of Money
30 December 2003, byIn the same way as his theory of rent, Marx’s theory of money is a straightforward application of the labour theory of value. As value is but the embodiment of socially necessary labour, commodities exchange with each other in proportion to the labour quanta they contain. This is true for the exchange of iron against wheat, as it is true for the exchange of iron against gold or silver.
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The Basic Theories of Karl Marx
Marx’s Theory of Surplus Value
30 December 2003, byMarx himself considered his theory of surplus-value his most important contribution to the progress of economic analysis (Marx, letter to Engels of 24 August 1867). It is through this theory that the wide scope of his sociological and historical thought enables him simultaneously to place the capitalist mode of production in his historical context, and to find the root of its inner economic contradictions and its laws of motion in the specific relations of production on which it is based.
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