What distinguishes revolutionaries from Trotskyism? Submitted by International Review on 5 November, 2009 We are publishing two articles from Internationalisme, organ of the Gauche Communiste de France[1] dedicated to the question of Trotskyism and written in 1947. At this time, Trotskyism had already abandoned proletarian internationalism by participating in the Second World War, unlike the […]
Introduction to the Communist Left
Works that explain the key positions of left-communism
1917 – The Proletariat Takes Power, ICT
“On the evening of October 24th the Provisional Government had at its disposal little more than 25,000 men. On the evening of October 25th, when preparations were underway for the storming of the Winter Palace, the Bolsheviks assembled about 20,000 Red Guards, sailors and soldiers before that last refuge of […]
Capitalism and communism – Gilles Dauvé
Communism is not a programme one puts into practice or makes others put into practice, but a social movement. Apart from perhaps a clearer understanding, those who develop and defend theoretical communism are moved by the same practical personal need for communism as those who are not especially concerned by […]
The Fundamentals for a Marxist Orientation, Bordiga
1. Marxism is not a matter of choice between conflicting opinions, in the sense that Marxism is connected with a historic tradition. 2. Orientation of the dialectic method of Marxism; the contradiction between the productive forces and social forms; classes, class struggle, party-conformism, reformism, anti-formism. 3. Interpretation of the characteristics of the present […]
Legality and Illegality, Georg Lukács, 1920
Another of Lukács’ essays from his famous 1923 collection History and Class Consciousness, Legality and Illegality is an important warning against the diametrically opposed romanticisation or mortal fear of illegality seen in altogether too many so-called “communist” organisations of the modern day, as well as a thorough exploration of bourgeois […]
Nationalism and Socialism, Paul Mattick
A 1959 article by the left-communist Paul Mattick defending Luxemburg’s stance on national liberation in the new era of the post-WW2 world. Many of his arguments still bear relevance to the conflicts of today.
Condemnation of the Renegades to Come, Amadeo Bordiga
Bordiga’s commentary on Lenin’s text ‘”Left-Wing” Communism: An Infantile Disorder’, written in 1961. Lenin’s original work, often misrepresented as being against left-communism, is in fact a polemic against the tendencies now called councilism and utopianism, as Bordiga makes clear.
Communism and its Tactics, Sylvia Pankhurst
The second version of this text, serialised in ‘Workers Dreadnought’ in 1923, outlying basic positions of the Communist Left in its early days, written by suffragette and communist Sylvia Pankhurst.
The Democratic Principle, Bordiga
The use of certain terms in the exposition of the problems of communism very often engenders ambiguities because of the different meanings these terms may be given. Such is the case with the words democracy and democratic. In its statements of principle, Marxist communism presents itself as a critique and a negation of […]
The System of Communist Representation, Bordiga
In launching our communist programme, which contained the outlines of a response to many vital problems concerning the revolutionary movement of the proletariat, we expected to ace a broad discussion develop on all its aspects. Instead there has been and still is only furious discussion over the incompatibility of electoral […]