Under the banner of liberty, the thirteen colonies overthrew British rule, ushering in the rule of the American bourgeoisie.

However, enshrined in the US Constitution was an insoluble contradiction: slavery. To abolish this vile institution, a Second American Revolution was required — the Civil War. What began as a war to preserve the Union was transformed into a revolutionary war to end slavery.

The convulsive period of revolution and counterrevolution known as Reconstruction followed. Despite their heroic efforts at self-organization and defense, the aspirations of millions of freedpeople were betrayed by the Northern capitalists.

All of these struggles shaped the American nation-state and laid the basis for US imperialism. In these pages, there are countless lessons to be learned about the dynamics of revolution and counterrevolution as a new generation of revolutionaries prepares for the momentous class battles yet to come.

As the creator of the Bolshevik Party and leader of the Russian Revolution, Lenin was a man who changed the world and translated the ideas of Marxism into reality.
Today, one hundred years after his death, the bourgeois historians continue to vilify and slander Lenin’s life and ideas. This book sets out to definitively answer these distortions, putting forward a defence of the real Lenin and the ideas he stood for. Given the ongoing capitalist crisis, his ideas are gaining an increasingly wide echo. In so many ways, Lenin is more relevant today than ever before.

Over two volumes, this book traces Lenin’s life and work, drawing on the colossal heritage left behind in his own writings. This book also features an appendix of Krupskaya’s writings on Lenin, a chronology, and over 250 images.

Volume Two spans from Lenin’s return to Russia in April 1917 to his death in 1924. In this period, the working class conquered power in October 1917 and struggled to survive in a country racked by civil war and imperialist intervention. It ends with Lenin’s last fight against the emerging Soviet bureaucracy.

As the creator of the Bolshevik Party and leader of the Russian Revolution, Lenin was a man who changed the world and translated the ideas of Marxism into reality.
Today, one hundred years after his death, the bourgeois historians continue to vilify and slander Lenin’s life and ideas. This book sets out to definitively answer these distortions, putting forward a defence of the real Lenin and the ideas he stood for. Given the ongoing capitalist crisis, his ideas are gaining an increasingly wide echo. In so many ways, Lenin is more relevant today than ever before.

Over two volumes, this book traces Lenin’s life and work, drawing on the colossal heritage left behind in his own writings. This book also features an appendix of Krupskaya’s writings on Lenin, a chronology, and over 250 images.

Volume One covers the years from Lenin’s youth to the February Revolution in 1917. These are the years in which Bolshevism took shape, from its theoretical beginnings among the first Russian Marxists to the Bolshevik Party’s experiences in the 1905 Revolution and the First World War.

Der Jännerstreik 1918 erschütterte das Habsburgerreich in Grund und Boden. Dieses weitgehend unbekannte Ereignis markierte den Beginn der österreichischen Revolution. Wie schon in Russland bildeten sich Arbeiterräte, die den Kern einer neuen gesellschaftlichen Ordnung darstellten.

Wir wollen mit dieser Arbeit zeigen, welchen großen Einfluss die Russische Revolution auf die österreichische Arbeiterbewegung hatte, wie die sozialdemokratische Parteiführung auf die revolutionären Bestrebungen der Arbeiter in Wien, Wiener Neustadt und den anderen Industriegebieten vor mehr als 90 Jahren reagierte, und welche Rolle die linke Opposition in der Sozialdemokratie während der österreichischen Revolution gespielt hat. Der Jännerstreik 1918 ist ein Musterbeispiel für die Dialektik in revolutionären Prozessen.

Wir wollen mit dieser Broschüre zeigen, was die Aufgaben von Sozialisten in einer revolutionären Situation sind und wie sie sich auf solche, die ganze Gesellschaft umwälzenden Geschehnisse vorbereiten sollten.

Doch es hätte nicht so kommen müssen! In seinen Schriften analysiert Leo Trotzki die Gründe für den Aufstieg des Faschismus in Deutschland und Österreich und kritisiert die Politik der Reformisten und Stalinisten: Die Unterstützung des „kleineren Übels“ durch die SPD führte zum Sieg des „größeren Übels“. Gleichzeitig zeigte sich die KPD unfähig, die Masse der sozialdemokratischen Arbeiter zu gewinnen. Trotzki skizziert in diesem Band die Politik, die den Faschismus hätte verhindern können.

Heute steht der Faschismus nicht unmittelbar vor der Tür. Aber die bürgerliche Demokratie befindet sich wieder in einer tiefen Krise. Während historische Parallelen unzureichend sind, um die heutige Situation zu erklären, ist es für Revolutionäre unerlässlich, Trotzkis marxistische Methode zu studieren, um sie auf die heutige, neue Situation anwenden zu können.

Die herausragende Persönlichkeit der Turiner Fabrikrätebewegung war der Kommunist Antonio Gramsci. Gramsci ist heute zweifellos eine der bekanntesten Figuren aus der marxistischen Tradition. Zu diesem „Ruhm“ kam er allerdings durch die falschen Leute aus den falschen Gründen – und eindeutig nicht wegen seiner führenden Rolle in der Turiner Rätebewegung. Was wurden seine Ideen nach seinem Tod verzerrt, gefälscht, abgestumpft und ihres revolutionären Gehalts beraubt! In Wahrheit war Gramsci während des Biennio Rosso derjenige, der die Notwendigkeit des Bruchs mit der im Sterben liegenden kapitalistischen Ordnung am deutlichsten erkannte. Er propagierte unermüdlich den Aufbau der Räte, in denen er die Keimzellen einer neuen kommunistischen Ordnung sah, in der sich die Arbeiter selbst regierten.

Auf dem Höhepunkt der Klassenkämpfe 1919-1920 lag die Macht für die Arbeiterklasse zum Greifen bereit. Doch die Spitzen der Gewerkschaften und der Sozialistischen Partei verhinderten die Ausweitung des Kampfes, was zu einer herben Niederlage und schlussendlich zur faschistischen Reaktion führte.

Das sind brutale Lektionen. Es ist unsere Pflicht, die Erfahrungen der vergangenen Kämpfe zu studieren, um daraus zu lernen. Nur so schaffen wir uns die Werkzeuge für unseren Sieg in den heutigen Bewegungen.

“The Bolivarian Revolution, if it is not to be reduced to an empty phrase, must mean the socialist revolution in Venezuela. And the working people of Venezuela must inscribe on their banner the aim of the Socialist United States of Latin America. That is the only perspective that can guarantee the final victory.”

The Bolivarian Revolution transformed Venezuela. The corrupt landowners had lands confiscated. Empty factories were expropriated. A mass programme of housing, education and healthcare was underway.

For the first time in their history, the Venezuelan working masses had a say in their lives. The revolution lit both a fire in their hearts and a beacon to the masses of Latin America. It was for this crime that Hugo Chávez attracted the ire of the “devil” in the White House.

Writing as these events unfolded, Alan Woods explains how the outright sabotage of the oligarchy, the pressure of liberal and reformist elements in the PSUV, and the crushing domination of US imperialism put a brake on the movement.

The Bolivarian Revolution remained incomplete. Had the movement been taken to its logical conclusion, with the abolition of capitalism and the expropriation of the oligarchy, the last quarter-century in Latin America would look profoundly different. Instead, the gains of the revolution have been undone, and US imperialism is once again licking its lips in anticipation of the oil and riches that lie beneath the continent.

This book serves not only as an analysis of the Venezuelan Revolution, but as an illustration of the internationalist duty of Marxists to explain and point to the way forward through events. Even more pertinently, lessons should be learnt from the limitations of the Bolivarian Revolution in order to arm a new generation of class fighters.

The revolution changed the course of world history and the last century has been dominated by its consequences. Ted Grant’s book traces the evolution of Soviet Russia from the Bolshevik victory of 1917, through the rise of Stalinism and the political counter-revolution, its emergence as a super-power after the Second World War, and the crisis of Stalinism and its eventual collapse.

The book, which was first published in 1997, has been updated and edited in the light of new developments and the subsequent re-establishment of capitalism in Russia. Grant based his analysis on that of Leon Trotsky, who first analysed Stalinism in his Revolution Betrayed.

While the counter-revolution has attempted to bury the memory of October, the new crisis of world capitalism has led to a revival of interest in Marxism and the significance of Bolshevism. The republication of Ted Grant’s book in this centenary year of the revolution therefore comes at a fitting time.

It remains the clearest account of the movement of the Spanish proletariat, which took power in Catalonia, but was betrayed by the Popular Front government. It describes the heroic struggles waged by the workers and peasants, which, in the words of Leon Trotsky could have carried through ten revolutions. Morrow describes in detail the failure of the anarchists, whose leaders entered the bourgeois government, as well as that of the POUM, the centrist party of the revolution.

In particular, the book describes the role of the Stalinists, who under the orders of Moscow supported the bourgeois republic’s suppression of the revolution. In the wake of the Moscow frame-up trials, the GPU, Stalin’s secret police, sent agents to Spain to murder Spanish revolutionaries, which prepared the way for the eventual victory of Franco.

Few books of the period have stood the test of time better than Morrow’s, supplemented in this edition by an earlier article, The Civil War in Spain. We also include a foreword by Ted Grant written in 1973, which covers the same periods and provides a valuable addition to this work.

A study of these tragic events will help arm a new generation of workers and youth with the lessons of the bitter defeats of the 1930s and equip them with the knowledge to finally carry through the struggle began so many years ago. In the great words of Spinoza, “ours is not to laugh or to weep, but to learn.”