Chris Marsden, 59, is a member of the international editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site, and the national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party in the UK. He joined the Trotskyist movement in 1983 and has played a leading role in the work of the International Committee of the Fourth International for several decades.
Examining the crisis that erupted in the Bolshevik Party on the eve of the October insurrection puts the vital question of the irreplaceable role of the revolutionary party under the microscope, and enables us to more fully understand the tasks faced by our party and its cadre today.
The British General Strike of May 1926 remains, after the passage of almost a century, a defining moment in the history of the workers’ movement. Its lessons are essential for the development of a revolutionary strategy, not just in Britain but the world over.
Chile’s supposed transition to democracy is built on a lie: that it is in everyone’s interest that the past be forgotten and the crimes that were committed be forgiven.
Dave Hyland’s lasting political legacy is that in 1985-1986 he led the faction of the Workers Revolutionary Party that declared its support for the International Committee of the Fourth International and opposed the efforts of the party’s central leadership, Gerry Healy, Cliff Slaughter and Mike Banda, to liquidate the Trotskyist movement in Britain and internationally.
Seventy-six years after his assassination at the hands of a Stalinist agent, Trotsky remains not only a towering historical personality, but also a figure of acute contemporary political relevance.
Dave Hyland joined the Socialist Labour League at a crucial juncture in not just British, but world history, and it was world events that ultimately shaped him.
On Sunday, June 23, the Parti de l’egalité socialiste, the French section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, held a public meeting in Paris entitled, “Free Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning!”
SEP (UK) National Secretary Chris Marsden spoke at the May 12 meeting in London in defence of Assange and Manning. This clip has been taken from the full video livestream of the event, published by independent journalist Gordon Dimmack.
This is the speech delivered by Chris Marsden, national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (Britain), to the 2019 International Online May Day Rally organized by the International Committee of the Fourth International and the WSWS.
Labour haemorrhaged support across the UK and among all sections of workers, young and old, from the north and south, those in favour of leaving the European Union and those for remaining.
For the past year, Corbyn has led the suppression of any discussion over Assange’s imprisonment in Britain and the country’s participation in the US-led attempt to destroy him.
Corbyn’s defence of the Labour Party’s grip on the working class and his continued opposition to any struggle against the right wing is a vindication of the political stand taken by the Socialist Equality Party.
Labour was, from its birth, dedicated to the defence of capitalism against the threat of international socialism.
Marx repudiated the central premise of reformism when drawing the fundamental lesson of the Paris Commune of 1871. The first attempt by the working class to take power into its own hands ended in the slaughter of up to 20,000 Communards.
The answer to the Brexit crisis is not unity with the EU, but working class unity in a continent-wide struggle against all of Europe’s governments for the United Socialist States of Europe.
Nigel Farage is intent on portraying the European elections, which will see a massive abstention, as a plebiscite on Brexit and a weapon against any move towards a second referendum.
Having spent over three years hailing Corbyn as the left rebirth of Labour, Galloway now parrots the claim that Farage’s politics articulate the views of the working class on what he insists is the main issue of the day—Brexit.
A new report shows that decades of cuts in social programs have fallen on all workers, regardless of whether they voted to leave or remain in the EU.
The Socialist Equality Party’s campaign for an active boycott of the June 23, 2016 referendum on UK membership of the European Union sought to mobilise the working class against nationalism and war.
The SWP have joined in the efforts to railroad Assange and blacken his name, justifying a course of action that would end with the WikiLeaks editor facing a show trial in the US.
The Socialist Workers Party’s aim is to promote the “progressive” credentials of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn and of the Trades Union Congress.
The building of a genuine anti-war movement can only proceed through a ruthless exposure of Labour’s apologists.
The Revolutionary Socialists have played a vital part in a political conspiracy against the Egyptian working class.
The former Greek finance minister described in a recent interview the “air of defeat” within the Syriza leadership following the landslide “no” vote in the July 5 referendum on EU austerity.
Varoufakis’ essay on becoming an “erratic Marxist” is a damning exposure of the political role of the new Syriza-led government in Greece and the social layer that it represents.
Various pseudo-left groups have moved from providing political apologies for Syriza’s coalition with the Independent Greeks to fully embracing the alliance as a model to be emulated
Syriza has come to power based upon a programme that articulates the interests of a powerful section of the Greek bourgeoisie and more privileged sections of the upper-middle class.
Mnangagwa, who came to power in a coup against President Robert Mugabe last November, advances himself as the strongman required to restore the order necessary for resumed investment by the major corporations.
Two things recommend Ramaphosa to the world’s bourgeoisie—his fabulous wealth and the fact that he earned it through a readiness to deal ruthlessly with the working class.
Mugabe’s resignation is the result of a palace coup with political and economic aims dictated by bourgeois forces no less corrupt than Mugabe.
The goal of the new Zimbabwean president, Mnangagwa, is to impose an adrenalized version of the capitalist policies that have already created so much suffering.
Below is the report given by Chris Marsden, national secretary of the Socialist Equality Party (Britain), to public meetings this past week in London and Manchester.
Yasser Arafat will be remembered as a man of tremendous personal courage and unswerving loyalty to the cause of Palestinian liberation. Millions throughout the world will dismiss with contempt the slanders heaped on Arafat, the international symbol of Palestinian resistance for nearly four decades, by the likes of Ariel Sharon and George W. Bush, war criminals both, who have the temerity to call Arafat a terrorist.
The political career of Syrian President Hafez al-Assad, whose death June 10 ended a 30-year reign, illustrates the organic incapacity of the Arab bourgeoisie to realise the aspirations of the Arab masses for freedom from foreign domination, democracy and social justice.
The passing of the Arab League deadline for the regime of Bashir al-Assad to meet its terms brings military intervention in Syria’s escalating civil war by the region’s powers one step closer.
Cohen’s attack on the left’s “anti-Semitism,” which seeks to proscribe all criticism of Israel, is a slander directed in particular against Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters.
What is revealed by the renewed slander campaign against Foot is a dirty plot by the security services to bring down a Labour government, had it won the 1983 general election, that now reads like a dry run for today’s campaign against Corbyn.
This month marks the 25th anniversary of the 1984-85 British miners’ strike. We are republishing the conclusion of a two-part series that reviews its essential lessons. The series was first published in March 2004 to mark the 20th anniversary of the strike.
Most working people will have greeted the announcement of her demise with cold indifference, contempt, and, in some cases, celebration.
The summit was specifically called to conceal the fact that months of discussions on the formation of a new party with former Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn at its head have so far come to nothing.
Corbyn’s sermonising has one aim only: to allow him to pose as an advocate for peace while refusing to mobilise workers and young people against the Labour government.
When the European powers speak of the end of the “international rules-based order,” they are preparing for a return to the pursuit of their own imperialist interests by force of arms.
Whatever attempts at a compromise are made and whatever the difficulties posed to London, Paris and Berlin, the direction is toward open conflict with Washington.
Amid the self-congratulatory commentary in the British media on Starmer’s successes in schmoozing Trump, there are guarded acknowledgements that not very much was, in fact, achieved.
What Woods, et al, now dare to dismiss as the defence by a “sect” of an “orthodoxy” disproved by events, as they themselves oriented to the counter-revolutionary bureaucracies, represented the essential struggle for the perspective of world socialist revolution and the international party required for its realisation.
Former International Marxist Tendency leader Ted Grant’s claim to orthodoxy was decisively refuted by his attitude to the emergence of Pabloite liquidationism within the Fourth International. Indeed, the theoretical revisions of Grant were a clear anticipation of those associated with Pabloism.
The RCI continues the decades-long efforts of the tendency initially led by Ted Grant to oppose the Fourth International and to orient workers and youth to the Stalinist, trade union and social democratic bureaucracies—under the cover of a torrent of radical-sounding rhetoric.
We are publishing the opening report delivered to the Seventh National Congress of the Socialist Equality Party (UK) by Chris Marsden, its National Secretary. Marsden was re-elected to his position by the Congress, held November 29-December 2, 2024.
By agreeing to Ukraine firing Storm Shadow cruise missiles into Russian territory, Starmer has made a de facto declaration of war without so much as a debate in parliament.
The essential response of the major European powers to Trump’s election has been to plan to step up their own military aggression against Russia and to consider what it will take to make this a European-led war.
The House of Lords International Relations and Defence Committee has issued its report, “Ukraine: a wake-up call” proposing measures by which the UK and Europe can take on “Putin’s Russia” and China.
With the possibility of Trump winning the presidency in November very real, Starmer was intent on making clear to Britain’s ruling elite that Labour would do whatever it takes to defend the specific interests on British imperialism under all conditions.
The right-wing evolution of Labour into such a naked party of big business and imperialist war was not reversed by Corbyn’s leadership and cannot be answered by the formation of what would essentially be a Labour Party Mark II.
Labour has not only continued to fully back Israel’s genocide but confirmed its role as a right-wing government of savage austerity, anti-migrant measures, attacks on democratic rights and advocating for the use of long-range NATO missiles that would transform the proxy war in Ukraine into a direct war with Russia.
”It’s not a moment of Epiphany, where you wake up and suddenly you are on the other side of the Rubicon. It takes time. But there is a moment where you feel that you know enough and you understand enough and you have heard enough to challenge fundamentally the narrative of your own society, of your own state.”
Stand Up To Racism and the Socialist Workers Party figures in its leadership minimise the connection between the far-right danger and the systematic promotion of anti-migrant and nationalist rhetoric by the official parties, diverting from the central task of opposing the Starmer Labour government which came to power based on pledges to “stop the boats” and deport “illegal” migrants.
There can be no successful struggle against the far-right danger that does not base itself on the fight to mobilise the entire working class against the ruling capitalist class and the war and austerity agenda of its Labour government.
Corbyn will not lead a movement against the Labour government. He will support it, while making the occasional criticism to supposedly pressure it to the left. But the Labour Party is impervious to such pressure, functioning as the unalloyed representative of the financial oligarchy and of British imperialism.
Labour takes power with the lowest share of the popular vote of any incoming government in British history.
