Kirjahaku

"One day I would like you to go to the places that I have been and to see the things that I have seen but without the nasty bits." Eighty years after World War Two, encouraged by his father's stories of survival and determination, a son travels to Poland to follow his father's experiences as a soldier and a Prisoner of War.Without the Nasty Bits weaves Norman's words with Alan's journey in a story that brings the past to life.

Eighteen years after it was first published, Wellred Books proudly presents the second edition of Bolshevism: The Road to Revolution. "The history of the Bolshevik party contains valuable lessons for today's struggle for socialism, and Alan Woods has performed a service by making this history accessible to a new generation of militants." Revolutionary HistoryThere have been a multitude of histories of Russia, either written from an anti-Bolshevik perspective, or its Stalinist mirror image, which both paint a false image of Bolshevism. For them, the Russian Revolution was either an historical 'accident' or 'tragedy', or is presented as the work of one great man (Lenin), who marched single-mindedly towards October.Using a wealth of primary sources, Alan Woods reveals the real evolution of Bolshevism as a living struggle to apply the method of Marxism to the peculiarities of Russia. Woods traces this evolution from the birth of Russian Marxism, and its ideological struggle against the Narodniks and the trend of economism, through the struggle between the two strands of Menshevism and Bolshevism, and up to the eventual seizure of power.On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, this book, which represents the authoritative work on the building of the Bolshevik Party, can be used as a handbook for those involved in the movement today.

"Marx was the best hated and most calumniated man of his time. Governments, both absolutist and republican, deported him from their territories. Bourgeois, whether conservative or ultra-democratic, vied with one another in heaping slanders upon him. All this he brushed aside as though it were a cobweb, ignoring it, answering only when extreme necessity compelled him. And he died beloved, revered and mourned by millions of revolutionary fellow workers - from the mines of Siberia to California, in all parts of Europe and America... "His name will endure through the ages, and so also will his work." Two hundred years after the birth of the great revolutionary Karl Marx, across the world, the capitalist system is in crisis and the working class are moving in to action to change their lives. In ruling class circles, no longer do they snidely declare the death of Marx. On the contrary, there is fear and consternation in their ranks. There has, therefore, never been a more urgent time to study his ideas. This short book, released for the two hundredth birthday of Marx, contains a series of articles on the man, his life, and his ideas: from an explanation of the philosophy of Marxism; to Marx's battles against petty-bourgeois anarchist ideas; to Trotsky's assessment of the Communist Manifesto. And much more This book should be read by all class-conscious workers as the beginning of the study of the ideas of Marxism. As Lenin said, "without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement."

The story of the Spanish revolution of the 1930s is quite well known to most people on the left, but there is a surprising level of ignorance concerning the events that occurred subsequently. History did not cease with the victory of Franco in 1939. And the story of how the Franco dictatorship was eventually brought down by the revolutionary movement of the Spanish workers is an inspiring one.Under the most difficult and dangerous conditions, Spanish workers launched a strike wave, which, in its intensity and duration, has no parallel anywhere. There was nothing remotely like this in Hitler's Germany, Mussolini's Italy or Salazar's Portugal. This was a genuine revolution, which could and should have gone far further than it did. If it did not finally succeed, that was no fault of the working class. The Spanish revolution of the 1970s was shamefully betrayed by the leaders of the communist and socialist parties, who entered into an agreement with former fascists in order halt the movement in its tracks.Alan Woods participated personally in the last phase of this struggle and was a witness to some of its most decisive moments. Using a wealth of documentary material from the time and also new interviews with key participants in the events, he tears away the thick veil of lies, myths and half-truths to reveal what actually occurred.With new struggles and challenges on the order of the day in Spain and the rest of the world, it is the duty of all conscious workers and revolutionary youth to study the lessons of the past as a necessary precondition for victory in the future. This book is an important contribution to a necessary learning process and is obligatory reading for anyone who is interested in the struggle for socialism today.

"The cause of labour is the cause of Ireland, the cause of Ireland is the cause of labour." - James ConnollyThe national liberation movement in Ireland stands once more at a crossroads. For thirty years, the Provisional IRA fought an armed struggle to eject British imperialism, without bringing Ireland one step closer to unification. Now, decades after the IRA declared a ceasefire and Sinn F in politicians took up ministerial portfolios in the Northern Ireland Assembly, the Good Friday Agreement is tattered and failing.The armed struggle and the constitutional road to a United Ireland have both landed in dead ends. The question is now posed before socialist Republicans: in a period of unprecedented capitalist crisis, when all the old contradictions are bursting violently to the surface - where next?For more than 200 years, generation after generation of Irish men and women have fought for national liberation from British imperialism under the banner of the Irish Republic. In studying this rich revolutionary heritage, one lesson shines through, bought at an enormous cost of life and suffering: only through the socialist revolution is the attainment of complete national liberation and reunification of Ireland possible.

Alan Woods outlines the development of philosophy from the ancient Greeks, all the way through to Marx and Engels who brought together the best of previous thinking to produce the Marxist philosophical outlook. Marxism looks at the real material world, not as a static immovable reality, but one that is constantly changing and moving, according to laws that can be discovered.This allows Marxists to look at how things were, how they have become and how they are most likely going to be in the future. The book deals with the history of human thought as a long process which started with the early primitive humans in their struggles for survival, through to the emergence of class societies, all as part of a process towards greater and greater knowledge of the world we live in.This long historical process eventually created the material conditions which allow for an end to class divisions and the flowering of a new society where humans will achieve true freedom, where no human will exploit another and no human will oppress another.Here we see how philosophy becomes an indispensable tool in the struggle for the revolutionary transformation of society.

Denne bog blev skrevet mens det skete i 2011: Den arabiske revolution, der begyndte i Tunesien, og er fejet over hele den arabiske verden, er af verdenshisto­risk betydning. Revolutionen har væltet to diktatorer og rystet utallige regimer. Men frem for alt har den givet de arabiske masser – og undertrykte overalt – en tro på, at de kan være med til at bestemme over deres eget liv. De revolutionære folk har eftertrykkeligt og på modig vis modbevist de løgne, der er blevet spredt i Vesten, om at de er tilbagestående, reaktionære og apatiske. Kapitalismens verdensomspændende krise har lagt pres på leveforholdene for arbejdere, unge og fattige verden over. Den arabiske revolution er en eksplosiv begyndelse på en periode med stigende klassekamp, revolutioner og kon­trarevolutioner i hele verden. I den næste periode vil de samme spørgsmål, som de arabiske masser har stået overfor bliver aktuelle i alle lande. Bogen består af artikler, der er blevet udgivet af den Internatio­nale Marxistiske Tendens (IMT), som i Danmark repræsenteres ved Socialistisk Standpunkt. Dens indhold er blevet til i de stormfulde for­årsdage i 2011 og afspejler på den måde revolutionens levende udvikling. Konklusionen kan kun blive foreløbig, fordi det sidste kapitel vil blive skrevet af de revolutio­nære unge, arbejdere og fattige selv.

The ideas of Lenin and Trotsky are without doubt the most distorted and slandered ideas in history. For more than 80 years, they have been subjected to an onslaught from the apologists of capitalism, who have attempted to present their ideas - Bolshevism - as both totalitarian and utopian. An entire industry was developed in an attempt to equate the crimes of Stalinism with the regime of workers' democracy that existed under Lenin and Trotsky. It is now more than thirty years since the publication of the first edition of this work. It was written as a reply to Monty Johnstone, who was a leading theoretician of the Communist Party of Great Britain. Johnstone had published a reappraisal of Leon Trotsky in the Young Communist League's journal Cogito at the end of 1968. Alan Woods and Ted Grant used the opportunity to write a detailed reply explaining the real relationship between the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky. This was no academic exercise. It was written as an appeal to the ranks of the Communist Party and the Young Communist League to rediscover the truth about Trotsky and return to the original revolutionary programme of Lenin. Also included in this new edition is Monty Johnstone's original Cogito article, as well as further material on Lenin's struggle with Stalin in the last month of his political life. The foreword is written by Trotsky's grandson, Vsievolod Volkov.

Efter att ha blivit en bästsäljare på engelska ges nu boken "Vad är marxism?" för första gången ut på svenska. Den riktar sig till dig som är nybörjare inom marxismen och innehåller tre avsnitt som täcker den marxistiska teorins tre grundpelare: dialektisk materialism, historiematerialism och marxistisk ekonomi. De kompletteras av viktiga utdrag från texter av några av marxismens mest framstående företrädare – Marx, Engels, Lenin och Trotskij. Instabilitet, kris, krig och växande klassklyftor gör marxismen alltmer attraktiv för miljontals arbetare och unga runtom i världen. Revolutionens gamla mullvad gräver sig fram djupt inne i samhällets grundvalar, som Marx sade. Och ändå får vi hela tiden höra att marxismen antingen är irrelevant, förlegad eller till och med död. Men om det vore sant, varför pumpas det då ut så många böcker och artiklar varje år som attackerar marxismen? Det verkar som att den härskande klassen är oroliga eller till och med rädda för dessa "döda" idéer. Marxismen – eller den vetenskapliga socialismen – är namnet på den uppsättning idéer som Karl Marx och Friedrich Engels först utarbetade för mer än 150 år sedan. Tillsammans ger dessa idéer en teoretisk grund för arbetarklassens kamp för en högre form av samhälle – socialismen.

"Socialism, since it has become a science, demands that it be pursued as a science, that is, that it be studied" - Friedrich Engels In this epoch of instability, crisis, war and ever-growing inequality, Marxism is becoming an increasingly attractive proposition to millions of workers and young people around the world. The old mole of revolution, to use Karl Marx's own phrase, is burrowing deep into the foundations of society. Marxism - or scientific socialism - is the name given to the body of ideas first worked out by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. In their totality, these ideas provide a fully worked-out theoretical basis for the struggle of the working class to attain a higher form of human society - socialism. This book is aimed specifically at newcomers to Marxism. A bestseller now in its third edition, it comprises introductory pieces on the three component parts of Marxist theory: dialectical materialism, historical materialism and Marxist economics. Complementing these introductions are key extracts from some of the great works of Marxism written by its most outstanding figures - Marx, Engels, Vladimir Ilyich Lenin and Leon Trotsky.