This is one of a 14-volume series of writings by Leon Trotsky, who along with V.I. Lenin was a central leader of the 1917 Russian Revolution. These volumes cover the years 1929-1940, when Trotsky led the political fight world-wide to maintain the continuity of Bolshevik's revolutionary perspective and leadership against the reactionary policies imposed by the Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union. Reading Trotsky carefully, one can learn a lot about history and about today's world, as well as how to apply Marxist methods to orient oneself for working-class political action.

This volume includes more than 100 articles and letters. They cover topics ranging from the economic depression and the rising inter-imperialist tensions leading to World War II, to the Stalinist frame-up trials in the Soviet Union, the Spanish Civil War, and detailed leadership questions posed in workers movements in different countries at the time. These volumes are lively, pointed and have extensive notes and chronologies to aid the reader today.

I'd also recommend some other titles written by Trotsky at this time, including The History of the Russian Revolution, The Fight Against Fascism in Germany, Trade Unions in the Epoch of Imperialist Decay, and The Transitional Program for Socialist Revolution, all available from the same publisher, Pathfinder Press.

This volume contains lessons crucial for those committed to the goal of emancipating working people and oppressed nations.

The workers movement of that time was misled by parties - social democratic and fake communist -- which preferred imperialist "democracy" over workers revolution. This allowed fascism to triumph and, together with "democratic" imperialism, brought us the second world war which slaughtered tens of millions and included the U.S. - supposedly the most "democratic" imperialists - initiating the threat of human extinction with the nuclear bombing of Japan.

Trotsky explains how Lenin's program could have resulted in workers victories over capitalism all over Europe, as well as the overthrow of the murderous Stalin regime and the regeneration of the Soviet Union on a course of world revolution and workers democracy.

Studying Trotsky's writings today is timely as imperialism is again on the march toward fascism and war.

You can see why Trotsky was reknown as a fiery public speaker -- he writes with passion, intelligence and friendly, human humour. These pieces written while living in Mexico, staying with Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo. Correspondence with and about them included here, too. Articles on the eve of World War II, with fascism triumphant in Germany and Italy especially thought-provoking in light of recent developments in France with LePen's electoral showing. He scathingly makes the point in polemic with "our Palestinian friends" (gives you a feel for the international scope of the debate that was raging) that it is meaningless to talk about the fascist danger without addressing the danger of ordinary democratic imperialism. How else, he points out, to join the Indian masses in their quest for independence from the Mother of parliamentary democracy? Unexpectedly fun to browse through and think about.

What strategy is needed to advance the cause of the working class and progressive people? Since Franklin D. Roosevelt in the 1930s, many labor, Black, and other progressive movements have supported the "lesser evil" -- usually the Democratic party candidate. Debated here is whether working people should dump this course and seek instead to replace the system which is alternatively administered by "lesser evil" Democrats and "greater evil" Republicans. Read the book and consider the consequences of "coalitionism" vs. independent working class political action.

Eugene V. Debs the socialist revolutionist was fond of saving, "it is better to vote for what you want and not get it, than to vote for what you don't want and get it." Malcolm X was fond of simply pointing out that at every key point in the history of Black people, the Democratic party "has sold us out." This book explains why real revolutionists are trying to chart a course of indepedence for workers, farmers, and the oppressed from the twin parties of capitalism, the Demnocrats and the Republicans.

Can the Republicans and the Democrats help us. Or do we need some new kind of party like the Green party, whichis a more liberal or more progressive party but still built on the model of the Democrats and the Republicans.
The responses that leaders of the Socialist Workers Party give here to people who believe that working people can work in the Democratic party or build other capitalist political parties answer these questions. They point out that the fundamental problem in this society is not liberal ideas or non liberal ideas, but the existence of a capitalist class, the big corporate leaders, and a capitalist system. They explain that politics is a question of taking power out the hands of those people and that system.

This book chronicles a series of debates between supporters of the Democratic and Republican parties and leaders of the Socialist Workers party who believe that working class people, Blacks, Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, women, and all who fight for change need to break from the Republican and Democratic parties and the wanna be capitalist parties like the Greens to form a working class political party, a labor party, a party that can fight for power to be placed in the hands of workers and farmers in this country and the world. Its simple, a system is something that seeks to preserve itself. The SWPers demonstrate that Democratic party and other capitalist parties are part of the capitalism system and are not vehicles for liberation, but traps

In 1932 Trotsky receives the first inklings of Stalinist threats to murder him, faces threats from Fascists in Turkey, in France. He warns of the catastrophe that is coming in Germany because of the sectarian madness of the Stalinized Communist party. Trotsky finds time to urge on revolutionary communists from Poland to China, from New York to Moscow to fight for principled, Marxist politics. The strength of these pages is not simply what Trotsky records or how incisive his analyses are, but his cold-blooded, rational insistence that the only way out is for the workers of the world to take power out of the hands of the capitalists and the only way forward is to build an international party of real communists to do this.

In this book, Trotsky aimed to shake vanguard workers out of their routines, to awaken them to both the dangers and possibilities of what lay ahead in the thirties. These articles point to the danger of Hitler, the threat of war emerging from the weakness of capitalism, and the counter-revolutionary character of Stalinism. His article on 'Proletarian' literature refutes the idea that workers could create our own culture without reshaping society. Trotsky underscores the revolutionary potential of U.S. workers and Black workers in particular. You will recognize, under the surface of today's events, the same great challenges that Trotsky described in 1932.

Here are some 80 short, incisive articles, letters and interviews: a week-by-week commentary and analysis of world events and the challenges facing working-class movements from one of the great revolutionaries, Leon Trotsky. A central leader of the Russian Revolution, though exiled by Stalin in the late 1920s, Trotsky writes with enduring confidence in the capacity of workers to learn, organize and fight.

The economic collapse of the Great Depression; the rise of mass fascist movements; the drive of the Britain, Germany, Japan and the United States towards world war; leadership challenges facing working people, especially with the rise of Stalinism and the subordination of once-revolutionary Communist Parties to the conservative policies of Moscow's bureaucrats-- it's all here, with facts and clear, sharp analysis.

In reading these pages, I was constantly drawn to make comparisons with the opening of the 21st century, from the rise of Le Pen in France and fascist movements in the U.S., the growing use of military force by Washington, and the spreading resistance of working people looking for a way out of the crisis we face. The big difference, of course, is the recent collapse of the Stalinist regimes and the myth that Moscow of the 1930s represented a revolutionary way forward.

These writings are be an invaluable aid in understanding society today and figuring out what needs to be done next. The book includes fifty pages of notes that help a reader today understand the events and persons Trotsky discusses.

This volume chronicles invaluable lessons of the world working-class movement during two critical years. The year 1933 saw the worst defeat for the working class ever in Germany. Hitler came to power because the Communist Party, obeying Stalin's orders, and the Socialist Party refused to band together, although they led the majority of working people.

Trotsky, whose collaborators were grouped in the International Left Opposition, declared an end to any effort to reform the world-wide Communist Parties. Instead, he called for a new world party to fight for socialist revolution in the capitalist countries and political revolution within the Soviet Union.

The years 1933-34 saw the victory of fascism in Germany without a shot fired, and armed workers' resistance to fascism and semi-fascist governments in Austria and Spain. The Stalinized Communist International was communist no more; it showed itself to be a counterrevolutionary instrument of the Stalin bureaucracy's doubling-dealing with world imperialism at the workers' expense, moving our best fighting elements around and sacrificing them like chess pieces. In this book, the co-leader with V.I. Lenin of the Russian Revolution Leon Trotsky, analyzes these events with one end in mind: to figure out WHAT TO DO about them, how to build revolutionary parties to lead the workers and farmers to power; to defeat fascism and "democratic" imperialism by socialist revolution and workers' power, and thereby prevent the holocaust that was World War II. If this sounds like stuff fighters for fundamental social change need today as the Yankee Empire and its European rivals-"allies" march us working people into a new Great Depression, and towards fascism and World War II, then do yourself a favor and buy this book and study it as a guide to action today.

The years 1933-34 saw the victory of fascism in Germany without a shot fired, and armed resistance to fascism and semi-fascist governemnts in Austria and Spain. The Stalinized Communist International was communist no more; it showed itself to be a counterrevolutionary instrument of the Stalin bureaucracy's doubling-dealing with world imperialism at the workers' expense, moving our best fighting elements around and sacrificing them like chess pieces. In this book, the co-leader with V.I. Lenin of the Russian Revolution Leon Trotsky, analyzes these events with one end in mind: to figure out WHAT TO DO about them, how to build revolutionary parties to lead the workers and farmers to power; to defeat fascism and "democratic" imperialism by socialist revolution and workers' power, and thereby prevent the holocaust that was World War II. If this sounds like stuff fighters need today as the Yankee Empire and its European rivals-"allies" march us working people into a new Great Depression, and towards fascism and World War III, then do yourself a favor and buy this book and study it as a guide to action today.

This volume contains many gems, including Trotsky's introduction to the first Afrikaans version of the Communist Manifesto and his memorial to his son, murdered by Stalin's agents: "Leon Sedov - Son, Friend, Fighter". But there is something else the reader can gain from reading through this and the other "miscellaneous" Trotsky Writings collections, that you don't get from Trotsky's major books of the 1930s: the picture of a revolutionary leader dealing day by day with every challenge, with issues big and small ranging from world politics to party organisation, providing a political lead in response to revolutionary opportunities and other explosive events as world war II approached. In the early 21st century, with depression conditions and class polarisation extending relentlessly, these lessons from the 1930s become ever more relevant to class conscious fighters seeking a way out of capitalism's terminal crisis.

Isaac Deutscher, the great historican and biographer of Trotsky, called these years "The Hell Black Night." Then these were years Deutscher, then a Polish Trotskyist, used to slink away in fear from Trotsky's revolutionary perspectives, the only delegate to vote against the founding of the Fourth International. Read these articles, speeches, and interviews and you will understand why during the height of Stalin's purges when the victims were not only comrades, people he fought the Russian revolution with, fought Stalin with, but his own dearest son and closest political collaborator, that Trotsky extended the vision of a new revolutionary international, that Trotsky led his movement to new growth and expansion, politically and numerically on a world scale. Read here how to fight Stalinism and fascism, see here as Trotsky builds a movement on principle. see the faith in history and the revolutionary potential of working people that allowed Trotsky to understand there would be new revolutions, revolutionary communists like Che and Fidel. revolutionists like Thomas Sanakara and Malcolm X. Read the basis for victory for working people around the world.

The article on the death of his son, Leon Sedov, is heart-rending and inspiring - a father who must write his child's obituary, a leader who salutes another leader and faces his loss. As always with Trotsky's writings, a rich mixture of political clarity - like the article explaining the difference between the economic foundations of the Soviet economy and its perfidious government - and nuggets of insight - such as the single page on art and revolution. Includes simple, short exposés of the Moscow Trials. Gives the reader a feel for deep, historical truths learned during the Russian revolution that drove Trotsky to keep fighting as the world crumbled into World War II.

The Truth About World War II

This is more than a story of the racist attacks-court-martials, violent mobs, lynchings-that were the real face of the U.S. "war for democracy." It's a story of how Black workers fought back (including many GIs), based on news articles from the socialist newspaper, The Militant. Learn how the "March on Washington Movement" swelled in response to Roosevelt's racist imperialist war. Glimpse the heroism of the participants in the protests and uprisings, which have been erased from the official history books. Their courage is part of the heritage of today's working class. But this book is the only place where you can find it truthfully presented.

This is a wonderful collection, an essential part of the history we need to know to understand American capitalism and racism, the fight for Black liberation and equal rights, and working class struggles as a whole. The protests and campaigns described here were an essential foundation for the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, and should inspire us to continue the fight today.

Here are some 150 articles, pamphlets and political resolutions, a week-by-week account of political developments and struggles during tumultuous years of the 1940s. They come from the socialist newsweekly, the Militant, and are written by working class leaders seeking to build on the labor battles of the 1930s and to deepen the fight against racist oppression.

The articles document instances of police brutality and killings, lynch-mob murders of Blacks, and the pervasive racist discrimination in employment, housing and the military. But above all, they record, analyze and promote the fight against these conditions. The success in uniting Black and white workers to smash Henry Fords anti-union stronghold and bring the UAW to Ford Motor Co., the mass protests of the 1942 March on Washington Movement-- and the bitter opposition of the Roosevelt administration to this anti-racist movement; the 1943 Harlem rebellion against killer cops-- "A protest against intolerable conditions;" its all here to learn from and be inspired by. An extensive chronology and glossary will help today's reader understand this history all the better.

The US that waged World War II was a racist country, fighting to preserve its own ability to segregate and exploit African Americans, defending and trying to get a piece of Britain, Belgium, Holland, and France's Racist exploitation of hundreds of millions of colonial slaves, and to hold on to its oporession of Latin America and get as big a piece of China, Vietnam and other countries and Asia as they could. Could there be any wonder that at home, battles were fought by African Americans against racism, in housing, in jobs, in access to health care and education, just as they were fought before and after the war and continue to be fought. It is not wonder the SWP fighter and leader who is the principal author and editor of this book was chosen by Malcolm X 20 years later to be the person who edited and helped to publish his writings. These fighters were the Malcolm X's of their time....

This excellent little book traces the evolution of the thought and action of Malcolm X in the last eleven months of his life.Malcolm rejected the anti-Semitism and anti-woman policies of the Nation of Islam, and its refusal to involve itself in the civil rights movement. He continued to more and more place the Black struggle in this country in the world context : in the context of the struggle of the workers and farmers in Asia , Africa, and Latin America against imperialism, Yanki imperialism in the first place. He continued to expose the role of the Democratic Party to fool the masses of working people into thinking that we have a friend among our oppressors and exploiters. More and more, he spoke out against capitialism as the cause of racism and described himself unabashedly as pro-socialist.He spoke of the Chinese, Vietnamese, and Cuban revolutions as examples of what we working people must do HERE for the future of all humanity. The author is no academic ' observer'; he covered Malcolm's evolution for The Militant newspaper, the only place Malcolm's speeches were published in full and undistorted after he left the Nation of Islam. This book is an excellent companion volume to read alongside Malcolm's actual speeches, also published by Pathfinder Press.

I was surprised when I read this book. It gives Malcolm X's speech announcing his political program for fighting for Black control of the black community and Justice. I didnt know what that was before I read it. I read the talk Malcolm gave introducing the program and he talks about how he was supposed to bring Che Guevara up to the meeting, but Che couldn't make it. Heavy Stuff. Breitman is pretty good at defending Malcolm X against critics and showing what the man stood for without imposing his own views on him. We need to see how Malcolm X was in action to get a better idea how we can advance the struggle.

This short book is the best book ever written on Malcolm, although it is modest. It seeks to document the changes in Malcolm's ideas in the last years of his life. It also includes Malcolm's Speech introducing his program for the Organization of Afro-American Unity which besides outlining his idea for a political struggle in the Black community, documents Malcolm's collaboration with Cuban Revolutionist Che Guevara. Also included is the program of the OAAU.
Breitman, a long-time revolutionist, was one of the first people who called attention to the revolutionary significance of Malcolm and the Muslims. He is the editor Malcolm chose to put together Malcolm X Speaks. Breitman's concern is with the view that Malcolm did not do anything signficant, particularly in the African American struggle, between his expulsion from the Muslims and his murder. Instead, he shows how the amount of work Malcolm did to energize and organize struggle both inside the US and abroad, is how to believe and documents what Malcolm did.
He also comments on how Malcolm realised he needed to sharpen his critique of the Nation of Islam and Elijah Muhammed, something that is shown in February 1965: The Final Speeches, a collection of Malcolm's speeches and interviews from the last month of his life.

We are commonly told that World War II was the 'good war.' That maybe Vietnam was 'bad,' but in World War II, the US was fighting against fascism and for freedom. This book will force anyone to reexamine that view and come to a more realistic idea of what the second World War was all about--groups of imperialist countries fighting to redivide the markets, raw materials and territory of the world. The record of the SWP in that war shows just how far the US government was willing to go to silence dissent--leaders of the party who were influential in building up the Teamsters union in Minnesota were imprisoned; and the party's newspaper was banned from the mails. Despite this, as James Cannon shows, the party never abandoned its principles and actually succeeded in gaining members as the war dragged on. This is a fine example to all people today as the US drags us to war in Iraq in the name of freedom and fighting 'terrorism.'

For those who reject U.S. President George W. Bush and U.K President Anthony Blair-led imperialist flag waving and the current war drive, this book is must reading.

"As weeks and weeks went by, I didn't hear a single one of the defendants say a single word of loyalty to this government and this flag...." So declared the federal judge as he sentenced 18 leaders of the Socialist Workers Party and labor movement to prison for opposing WWII on the day the U.S. entered it.

The loyalty of these leaders was to the working class of the world. This meant opposing their own ruling class and its government, and leading a movement to replace it with a workers and farmers government.

Jim Cannon's books are filled with wit, wisdom. As the book opens in the summer of 1940, the party hadsuffered its biggest split, as middle class elements left to get out of the way of fighting Roosevelt. Shortly afterward, Trotsky was assassinated, and Cannon, who had become Trotsky's closest collaborator in the world revolutionary movement gives his assessment of the murder, and of Trotsky's place in history. Then, the SWP faced persecution from the FBI, from the Roosevelt Administration, and from the bureaucracy of the Teamsters Union. The SWP chose to stand and fight for revolutionary internationalist principles. Cannon's also to bring younger working class members of the party into the leadership as he and other leaders were threatened with prison Cannon's struggle led to the biggest expansion of the party in the working class, in the black, and in the immigrant community in the party's history. When you fight you win. To read what happened next, read his books Letters from Prison and then The Socialist Workers Party in the American Century also from Pathfinder.

The years 1936-37 were decisive in the struggles of working people to defeat fascism and prevent the holocaust that was called World War II.The Great Depression was devasting the working people round the world. In this book, the co-leader with Lenin of the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917, Leon Trotsky, exposes the Moscow witch hunt trials, through which the bureaucrat-dictator Stalin ( NOT a communist ! ) began the process of the final rubbing out of communist opposition to his regime. The civil war in Spain raged and was in its crucial phase: would the workers and peasants of Spain defeat the fascists through revolutionary means or would the coalition of liberals, "democratic" socialists ( read: pro-capitalist "socialists" ), Stalinists, and sadly, anarchist leaders who sold themselves and their powerful unions to the reform-ist coalition - the Popular Front-open the gates to the fascists, making World War II inevitable ? How could working people help out the fight of the Chinese people against in Japanese invasion of 1937: the opening guns of World War II? How to build a revolutionary leadership, both in the countries mentioned above, around the world, and in the U.S. itself? In this valuable book and two others-"The Spanish Revolution" and "Leon Trotsky on China", also published by Pathfinder Press, the great revolutionist poses these question and attempts to answer them in terms of action. As world capitalism sinks into a new depression, and as world imperialism, Yankee imperialism in the first rank, drives us working people towards fascism and a new world war, those who fight for a new and human world in the streets and on the strike picket lines need this book BAD.

This volume begins with Trotsky's writing on board the ship Ruth the Norwegian government used to deport him to Mexico. His "In Socialist Norway," is a humorous well-written account of how the Social Democrats who ruled Norway in the thirties, buckled under to the pressure of native fascists and Stalin to first restrict Trotsky's right to defend himself against the slanders of the Moscow trials, and then placed him under house arrest until he was invited to Mexico. I found his analysis of Kamenev, Zinoviev, and Stalin himself, in his articles written in Mexico explaining the Moscow trials to be interesting studies in how personal character is a factor in revolutionary leadership and retreat from that leadership. Also very interesting is the correspondence and proposals Trotsky wrote around building the commission led by American philosopher John Dewey that investigated the Moscow trials. As always with all of the Trotsky Writings Volumes, there is a week-to-week, sometimes day-by-day, chronicle of world events, and of Trotsky's struggle to build a revolutionary movement.

This book adds profiles of revolutionists from the 1920s and 1930s to those Trotsky published in his original book of revolutionary profiles shortly after the Russian Revolution. We learn the personal strengths and weaknesses of revolutionists of the generation that made the Russian Revolution, and the generation that rose in struggle for and against Stalin in Russia and the World. Even with his worst enemies, Trotsky attempts to be objective. He is after the lessons of character, the problems of human strength and weakness, in this world of economic crisis, imperialist wars, fascism, Stalinist betrayal, working class struggle, and proletarian revolution. There is some eloquent inspiring writing here in his writing on Lenin and on his son Leon Sedov, murdered by Stalin's assassins. This is a book workers and youth fighting for a future can use to understand the human side of fighting in this world of struggle.