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Proletarian Military Policy
The Proletarian Military Policy was a policy adopted by the Fourth International in response to World War II. It was an attempt to apply transitional demands such as trade union control of military training and the election of officers to transform what it characterised as an imperialist war into a revolutionary struggle against Nazism. Alongside his call for an unconditional defence of the Soviet Union, Trotsky outlined the approach to be adopted by Marxists who were conscripted into the military,"We are absolutely in favor of compulsory military training and in the same way for conscription. Conscription? Yes. By the bourgeois state? No. We cannot entrust this work, as any other, to the state of the exploiters. In our propaganda and agitation we must very strongly differentiate these two questions. That is, not to fight against the necessity of the workers being good soldiers and of building up an army based on discipline, science, strong bodies and so on, including conscription, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Fourth International
The Fourth International (FI) was a political international established in France in 1938 by Leon Trotsky and his supporters, having been expelled from the Soviet Union and the Communist International (also known as Comintern or the Third International). There is no longer a single, centralized cohesive Fourth International. Throughout most of its existence and history, the Fourth International was hunted by agents of the NKVD, subjected to political repression by countries such as France and the United States, and by supporters of the Soviet Union. The Fourth International struggled to maintain contact under these conditions of crackdowns and repression during World War II due to the fact that subsequent Proletarian revolution, proletarian uprisings were often under the influence of Soviet-aligned pro-Stalin parties and militant Nationalism, nationalist groups, leading to defeats for the Fourth International and the Trotskyists, who subsequently never managed to obtain meaning ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
James Burnham
James Burnham (November 22, 1905 – July 28, 1987) was an American philosopher and political theorist. He chaired the New York University Department of Philosophy. His first book was ''An Introduction to Philosophical Analysis'' (1931). Burnham became a prominent Trotskyist activist in the 1930s. His most famous book, ''The Managerial Revolution'' (1941), speculated on the future of an increasingly proceduralist hence sclerotic society. A year before he wrote the book, he rejected Marxism and became an influential theorist of the political right as a leader of the American conservative movement. Burnham was an editor and a regular contributor to William F. Buckley's conservative magazine ''National Review'' on a variety of topics. He rejected containment of the Soviet Union and called for the rollback of communism worldwide. Biography Early life Born in Chicago, Illinois, on November 22, 1905, James Burnham was the son of Claude George Burnham, an English immigrant and e ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eighth Army (United Kingdom)
The Eighth Army was a field army of the British Army during the Second World War. It was formed as the Western Army on 10 September 1941, in Egypt, before being renamed the Army of the Nile and then the Eighth Army on 26 September. It was created to better control the growing Allied force based in Egypt and to direct its efforts to lift the siege of Tobruk via Operation Crusader. It later directed Allied forces through the remaining engagements of the Western Desert campaign, oversaw part of the Allied effort during the Tunisian campaign and finally led troops throughout the Italian campaign. During 1943, it made up part of the 18th Army Group before being assigned to the 15th Army Group (later, the Allied Armies in Italy). Throughout its campaigns, it was a multi-national force and its units came from Australia, British India, Canada, Czechoslovakia, Cyprus, the Free French Forces, Greece, Newfoundland, New Zealand, Poland, Rhodesia, South Africa, Mauritius, as well a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ted Grant
Edward Grant (born Isaac Blank; 9 July 1913 – 20 July 2006) was a South African Trotskyist who spent most of his adult life in Britain. He was a founding member of the group Militant tendency, Militant and later Socialist Appeal (UK, 1992), Socialist Appeal. Early life Grant was born Isaac Blank in Germiston, South Africa. His father, Max Blank, was a Lithuanian Jewish emigré from Tavrig, who was involved in the mineral business, and his mother, Adelle, was originally from the Parisian district of Le Marais. They had two sons, Isaac and Isador, and three daughters, Rose, Rachael and Zena. His parents divorced and he was brought up by his mother who took in lodgers to supplement her income. He was introduced to Trotskyism by one of these lodgers, Ralph Lee, a leader in the Bolshevik-Leninist League to which Lee would later recruit him. In 1934, Grant left South Africa for Britain, changing his name to Edward Grant in the process. Before reaching the UK he stopped over in Fra ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cairo Forces Parliament
The Cairo Forces Parliament was a meeting of British soldiers in Cairo, Egypt in February 1944 which voted for the nationalisation of banks, land, mines, and transport in the United Kingdom. Among those that took part was Leo Abse who later became a Labour MP. Another participant who later became a Labour MP was Henry Solomons, who was appointed the Labour 'Prime Minister' of the Cairo Forces Parliament. Sam Bardell, a member of the Communist Party of Great Britain was secretary and the parliament attracted political activists from the Common Wealth Party and the Trotskyist movement. The Parliament was eventually shut down because of the growing support for the revolutionary ideas promoted by members of the Workers' International League. Adopting the tactics of the Proletarian Military Policy, they were elected to the positions of Prime Minister and Home Secretary. Their revolutionary work was successful in winning the support of many soldiers, as described by Ted Grant,"Fro ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Army Bureau Of Current Affairs
The Army Bureau of Current Affairs (ABCA) was an organisation within the British Army during World War II to promote discussion among soldiers about current events, citizenship, and post-war reconstruction. In August 1940, Lord Croft, Under-Secretary of State for War, had sought the advice of Dr Tom Jones – renowned for his commitment to adult education – about supplying 'mental stimulant' to troops. "TJ" had immediately recommended his protégé William Emrys Williams, who was thus appointed director of the new unit. Both the ABCA and the Directorate of Army Education (run by Lt Col Frederic William Duffield Bendall) came under the Director-General of Welfare and Education. Williams insisted – despite some controversy – on the right to education, in particular in current affairs, for servicemen and women, and ran the ABCA for the duration of the war. For this role, he became known as ''ABCA Bill''. The ABCA was a programme of general education for citizenship fo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Workers' International League (1937)
The Workers' International League (WIL) was a Trotskyist group that existed in Britain from 1937 to 1944. Formation The WIL was formed in 1937 by members of the Militant Group, who had split due to false allegations from the leadership of that group that Ralph Lee (born Raphael Levy), then a newly arrived South African member, had misled a strike and used the strike funds to move to England. The split took around a third of the membership of the Militant Group and four of its branches,Bornstein, S. & Richardson, A. (1986) ''War and the International'', London: Socialist Platform, pg.5 including Jock Haston and Ted Grant. The group remained in the Labour Party, where they published ''Searchlight'' edited by Gerry Healy, which in September 1938 was replaced by the magazine ''Youth for Socialism'', which in its own turn was renamed ''Socialist Appeal'' in June 1941 as a result of the WIL's turn of focus away from the Labour Party. The group also produced a theoretical journal ' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
State Capitalism
State capitalism is an economic system in which the state undertakes business and commercial economic activity and where the means of production are nationalized as state-owned enterprises (including the processes of capital accumulation, centralized management and wage labor). The definition can also include the state dominance of corporatized government agencies (agencies organized using business-management practices) or of public companies (such as publicly listed corporations) in which the state has controlling shares. A state-capitalist country is one where the government controls the economy and essentially acts as a single huge corporation, extracting surplus value from the workforce in order to invest it in further production.Compare: This designation applies regardless of the political aims of the state, even if the state is nominally socialist. Some scholars argue that the economy of the Soviet Union and of the Eastern Bloc countries modeled after it, includ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Max Shachtman
Max Shachtman (; September 10, 1904 – November 4, 1972) was an American Marxist theorist. He went from being an associate of Leon Trotsky to a social democrat and mentor of senior assistants to AFL–CIO President George Meany. Beginnings Shachtman was born to a Jewish family in Warsaw, Poland, which was then part of the Russian Empire. He emigrated with his family to New York City in 1905. At an early age, he became interested in Marxism and was sympathetic to the radical wing of the Socialist Party. Having dropped out of City College, in 1921 he joined the Workers Council, a Communist organization led by J.B. Salutsky and Alexander Trachtenberg which was sharply critical of the underground form of organization of the Communist Party of America. At the end of December 1921 the Communist Party launched a "legal political party," the Workers Party of America, of which the Workers' Council was a constituent member. Shachtman thereby joined the official communist movemen ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
World War II
World War II or the Second World War (1 September 1939 – 2 September 1945) was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War II, Allies and the Axis powers. World War II by country, Nearly all of the world's countries participated, with many nations mobilising all resources in pursuit of total war. Tanks in World War II, Tanks and Air warfare of World War II, aircraft played major roles, enabling the strategic bombing of cities and delivery of the Atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, first and only nuclear weapons ever used in war. World War II is the List of wars by death toll, deadliest conflict in history, causing World War II casualties, the death of 70 to 85 million people, more than half of whom were civilians. Millions died in genocides, including the Holocaust, and by massacres, starvation, and disease. After the Allied victory, Allied-occupied Germany, Germany, Allied-occupied Austria, Austria, Occupation of Japan, Japan, a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
American SWP
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a communist party in the United States. The SWP began as a group which, because it supported Leon Trotsky over Soviet leader Joseph Stalin, was expelled from the Communist Party USA. Since the 1930s, it has published '' The Militant'' as a weekly newspaper. It also maintains Pathfinder Press. Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, the SWP was the largest Trotskyist organization in the United States. During the 1960s and 1970s, the SWP and its youth wing, the Young Socialist Alliance, were the third-largest socialist organizations, after the Communist Party USA and Students for a Democratic Society. The SWP suffered many splits and its membership declined. The modern SWP is smaller than its progeny, such as the Trotskyist Socialist Alternative and the Marxist-Leninist Party for Socialism and Liberation. The SWP places a priority on "solidarity work" to aid strikes and is strongly supportive of Cuba. During the 2020s, the SWP has defended ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Social Patriotism
Social patriotism is an openly patriotic standpoint which combines patriotism with socialism. It was first identified at the outset of the First World War when a majority of Social Democrats opted to support the war efforts of their respective governments and abandoned socialist internationalism and worker solidarity. Social chauvinism can be described as aggressive or fanatical patriotism, particularly during time of war, in support of one's own nation (e.g., government, culture, etc.) versus other nation(s), displayed by those who are socialists or social democrats. During World War I, most left-wing political parties took a social-chauvinist stand, with few exceptions. Most Socialists gave up their anti-militarism and their belief in international unity among the working class in favour of "defense of the fatherland", and turned to social-chauvinism, most notably the German Social Democratic Party and the French Section of the Workers' International. A break with social ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
