The 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 Féin 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 ha...

The achievements of science and technology during the past century are unparalleled in history. They provide the potential for the solution to all the problems faced by the planet, and equally for its total destruction. Allegedly scientific theories are being used to "prove" that criminality is caused, not by social conditions, but by a "criminal gene". Black people are alleged to be disadvantaged, not because of discrimination, but because of their genetic make-up. Of course, such "scienc...

John Reed, the author of Ten Days that Shook the World, once said that Lenin was the most loved and the most hated person alive. He was loved by tens of millions who wanted to change society, but hated by the ruling class and their apologists.As the leader of the Russian Revolution, Lenin was a man who changed the world. A convinced Marxist, he created the Bolshevik Party, the most revolutionary party in history. Lenin translated the ideas of Marxism into reality.It is now ...

On 28 June 1914, two pistol shots shattered the peace of a sunny afternoon in Sarajevo. Those shots reverberated around Europe and shattered the peace of the whole world. This was the beginning of the Great Slaughter. Could it have been avoided?Alan Woods uses the method of Marxism to answer this question. He explains that, actually, whilst individuals play an important role in history, to explain events such as wars, one must look at deeper causes.As well as dealing with the...

There have been many books and potted histories of the Russian Revolution, either written from an anti-Bolshevik perspective, or its Stalinist mirror image, which paint a false account of the rise of Bolshevism. For them, Bolshevism is either a historical "accident" or "tragedy." Or it is portrayed erroneously as the work of one great man (Lenin) who marched single-minded toward the October Revolution. Author Alan Woods* reveals the real evolution of Bolshevism as a living struggle of vari...

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 theo...

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, which 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.It is this method which allows Marxists to look at how things were, how they have become and how they are most l...

Ted Grant was a well-known figure in the international Marxist movement. He had a significant impact on British politics. When he died all the most important newspapers carried extensive obituaries that recognised this fact.This is a remarkable work that comprehensively covers the development of Ted's life and ideas, starting from his early family background in Johannesburg right up to his death in London in 2006 at the age of 93.From his earliest youth in South Africa Ted Gr...

The declarations of Hugo Chavez in favour of socialism have provoked an important debate in Venezuela and internationally. However some have concluded that the 'old' ideas of Marxism are no longer valid and that it is necessary to invent a completely new and original theory of Socialism of the 21st century. This book is a reply to that view - expressed by Heinz Dieterich amongst others - and a defence of the fundamental ideas of Marxism and scientific socialism against these revisionist ar...

Alan Wood provides a concise introduction to the Russian Revolution and its origins dating back to the emancipation of the Russian peasant serfs in 1861. The third edition of this successful pamphlet brings the historiography up to date to include the multitude of research in the last ten years that followed the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening up of the archives.

"The Republic was dying on its feet because its social basis had ceased to exist.This fact expressed itself in continuous political crises and convulsions in the capital, party strife, revolutions and counter-revolutions."In the first complete Marxist history of the Roman Republic, Alan Woods provides a gripping and accessible analysis of the titanic struggles that shaped the Roman world, and continue to resonate today.Spanning more than a thousand years of developme...

"The millions of people who have come out onto streets and squares around the world in recent years to oppose the policy of cuts and austerity do not trust politicians and trade union leaders. This shows a revolutionary instinct. Those who sneer at the movement as "merely spontaneous" display their ignorance of the essence of a revolution, which is precisely the direct intervention of the masses in politics. This spontaneity is an enormous strength—but at a certain point it will become a f...