Party & Programme > Bolshevism
Fur flies over Lenin
22 Mar 2012
What has the debate over 1912 got to do with current communist practice? James Turley answers the philistines
Unity and its discontents
28 Sep 2023
Are campaigns calling for unity bound to fall on stony ground? Lawrence Parker takes issue with Mike Macnair on communist rapprochement
It’s good to talk
28 Sep 2023
Unwillingness to fight through political differences results in unprincipled splits which cannot be explained and reduces the movement to gravel. Mike Macnair issues a call for debate
Two forms of unity
21 Sep 2023
There are any number of broad unity projects being plotted, floated and pushed at the moment. All will fail. James Harvey reports on our assessments, debates … and a membership application
Once more unto the breach
14 Sep 2023
Workers did not rule and suffered terrible oppression, but, sticking to the provisional assessment made by Trotsky in the 1930s, the Soviet Union was still a workers’ state, insists Daniel Lazare
Other theories, other labels
10 Aug 2023
If, after the launch of the first five-year plan, the Soviet Union cannot be classified as a workers’ state, what was it? Jack Conrad looks at some alternatives that have been offered by different schools of thought
Clean breaks and clear principles
03 Aug 2023
Today’s left largely misunderstands and therefore misrepresents Clara Zetkin’s contribution to the politics of Marxism. Ben Lewis provides an excerpt from the introduction to a newly translated pamphlet
Online Communist Forum, Sunday July 30 5pm
27 Jul 2023
Veiled lessons
29 Jun 2023
Yassamine Mather spoke to Anne McShane at a Hands Off the People of Iran meeting. Given the recent wave of arrests in Iran and new legislation reinforcing the wearing of the hijab, the experience of the Soviet Union’s Zhenotdel in the 1920s is of particular relevance.
Dumbness of dumbing down
29 Jun 2023
The Morning Star’s CPB is about to enter its pre-congress discussion period. We have here, though, a classic case of bureaucratic, not democratic, centralism. Mike Macnair investigates
First plan realities
22 Jun 2023
Clearly the first five-year plan had nothing to do with the realisation of socialist planning. In the second of two articles, Jack Conrad investigates the counterrevolution within the revolution
First plan backgrounds
15 Jun 2023
Planning and socialism are synonymous. However, as Jack Conrad argues in a two-part article, there is planning and planning. The Soviet Union’s first five-year plan owed more to chaos than plan
Zhenotdel and its travails
30 Mar 2023
In light of the ongoing Women, Life, Freedom protests in Iran, Anne McShane discussed with Yassamine Mather the lessons that can be drawn from the fight for women’s emancipation in post-revolutionary Russia
Dictating to power
16 Mar 2023
Marc Mulholland discusses the importance of the vote, the inadequacies of taxing the rich and why the path to working class power lies through extreme democracy
A tale of two phrases
09 Mar 2023
What did Marx mean by the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’? Marc Mulholland thinks the answer is closely bound up with ‘permanent revolution’
Centrality of involvement
02 Feb 2023
In light of the mass upsurge in Iran sparked by protests against the hijab, Yassamine Mather asked Anne McShane to speak about the lessons of history, in particular the fight against bourgeois feminism in the Second International and the role of Bolshevik women in Russia