Category: Marxist Politics and Philosophy

Call for solidarity: FBI raids African People’s Socialist Party and Uhuru Movement

By JEFF MACKLER The specter of a Biden administration-authorized Department of Justice (DOJ) initiated McCarthy-era witch hunt was posed in bold relief last week as FBI agents took aim at a Black liberation organization that has been a sharp critic of the U.S./NATO-backed war in Ukraine and a defender of poor nations threatened with U.S. sanctions, coups, embargoes and blockades. These include Cuba, Syria, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Iran.

Debate in the Fourth International Part III: Capitalism’s World Economic, Political and Social Crises and the Coming Fightback

By JEFF MACKLER, for Socialist Action/USA This is the third and final text presented by Socialist Action as a minority viewpoint to the February 19-23, 2022 meeting of the Fourth International (FI), an international socialist current of some 56 parties across the globe. Some 150 representatives of these parties gathered this year via Zoom due to the COVID 19 crisis to discuss and debate the Fourth International’s politics and program. The politics in the report below were adopted by the National Committee of Socialist Action/USA, a fraternal party of the FI barred by reactionary U.S. legislation from being a formal member of any international socialist organization. The text below was rejected by the February FI meeting by the vast majority of delegates. The central thesis of the majority text asserts that the building of revolutionary socialist parties on the Leninist model anywhere in the world today is not on the agenda. The text below, slighted updated to cover developments since the February FI meeting, challenges this view in all its fundamentals.

Debate in the Fourth International Part II: There Is No Equal Sign Between U.S. Imperialism and Chinese and Russian Imperialism: An Alternative to the FI majority text entitled “The World Geostrategic Situation”  

By JEFF MACKLER, National Committee/Socialist Action USA This text was adopted by Socialist Action’s National Committee for presentation to the annual February 2022 meeting of the delegates to the Fourth International’s elected international leadership. Representatives of some 56 parties across the globe were present at this five-day zoom gathering. Socialist Action participates only in a fraternal capacity due to reactionary U.S. legislation that bars membership in international socialist organizations.

Debate in the Fourth International: The Leninist Strategy of Party Building and the Impending Ecological Catastrophe

Our historic conception of the Transitional Program and its underlying method is aimed at the construction of a deeply rooted, mass revolutionary socialist working class party with the central objective of leading the proletarian struggle for state power and the construction of a socialist society. The Bureau text is silent on this fundamental question.

Marxism versus Anarchism

Robbie Mahood [Presented as on line educational sponsored by Ligue pour l’action socialiste (LAS)/Socialist Action/Canada. Montréal, April 23, 2021. SA/LAS is Socialist Action/USA sister party in the Canadian state] The last few decades have seen a resurgence in anarchist thought and modes of organizing inspired by anarchism.  Decisions by consensus, diversity of tactics, affinity groups, … Continue reading Marxism versus Anarchism →

Grace Carlson: Unsung Hero of the Early Trotskyist Movement

By Ann Montague  Grace Carlson was the only female member of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) (predecessor organization of Socialist Action) to be convicted and sentenced under the notorious anti-communist Smith Act of 1940. She was sentenced to sixteen months in the Federal Correctional Facility For Women in Alderson, West Virginia. The trial and convictions … Continue reading Grace Carlson: Unsung Hero of the Early Trotskyist Movement →