Permanent Revolution and the War of Position: the theory of revolution in Gramsci and Trotsky

‘It is a well known fact that, in November 1917, as soon as Lenin and the majority of the party had switched to Trotsky’s conception, and sought to remove, not only the political administration, but also the industrial government, Zinoviev and Kamenev stuck to the party’s traditional stance; they wanted a revolutionary coalition government with […]

Reflections about the class dynamics and the tempo of the revolutionary phase

The revolutionary days of December 19 and 20 have ushered in a revolutionary phase in Argentina. A series of three revolutionary events shattered the country to its foundations back then, bringing down De la Rúa’s government in a revolutionary fashion. These bore the marks that Lenin highlighted as the hallmark for such situations: -an exceptional […]

Communism without transition?

As long as imperialist capitalism outlives itself, the contradiction between the potential of the productive forces and the destitution imposed on the masses by the rule of the capitalist relationships of production becomes more and more flagrant. One of Marx’s tenets was to point out that this contradictions could not be worked out unless the […]

“Transitions to democracy”: an instrument of U.S. imperialism to counterweight the decline of its hegemony

The so-called “transitions to democracy” have been a key policy of US imperialism to prevent the upswing of proletarian revolution, as a way of offsetting the decline of its hegemony after its defeat in Vietnam. It encompasses a number of developments on the world arena since the mid- 1970s. The recent success of Mexico’s “negotiated […]

Mass and vanguard struggles in the decadence of “neo-liberalism”

The boom of neo-liberalism during the 1980s and the first years of 1990s was not a consequence of a natural economic evolution from postwar Keynesianism to the rule of the market, but rather it could settle down inflicting harsh defeats to the international working class movement and the semi-colonial peoples. The military interventions on behalf […]

Objective and subjective premises for socialist revolution on the eve of the XXI Century

Drafted by Christian Castillo, passed by the CC of the PTS on October 17, 1998. It has been nine months now since the PTS leadership issued a document titled “Strategic lessons and programmatic basis to advance in the rebuilding of the IV International” (dated January 27, 1998), which was then passed by the whole Trotskyist […]

The Great Depression of the twenty-first century

“AMERICA’S recession is likely to be long and deep if the latest employment numbers are anything to go by. America shed more jobs in November than in any month in the past 34 years, according to figures released on Friday December 5th by the Bureau of Labour Statistics. The fall in employment of 533,000 is […]

Notes on the Capitalist Crisis Underway and the Rebuilding of the Fourth International

Over the past few years, the Trotskyist Faction-Fourth International (FT-CI) has developed an increasing intervention into the countries where it operates and has insisted on defending Marxist theory against the kinds of revisions which mean a step backwards from the advances made in this field, because, as Trotsky asserted, a time of ideological reaction makes […]

The crisis of capitalism and the prospects for revolutionaries

In only a few months, the financial crisis which began with the collapse of the real estate boom and the U.S. credit crunch has become one of the worst crises of the capitalist economy since the 1929 Wall Street crash and the subsequent Great Depression of the 1930s. The measures taken by the capitalist states […]

“New era” or imperialist continuity?

Amidst great expectations in the United States and overseas, on Tuesday, January 20, Barack Obama took the oath as the 44th President. In front of two million people who witnessed the ceremony in Washington and millions around the world who followed it by television, Obama delivered the inaugural address of his presidency, that begins with […]