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Arguments for Revolutionary Socialism
THIS SMALL book is made up from a selection of articles from the Teach yourself Marxism column in Socialist Worker, the weekly paper of the Socialist Workers Party. The original articles were written in the years 1983–86 and are reprinted here without significant alteration. They have, however, been selected, grouped under topics and put as far as possible into a coherent order by Steve Wright and Peter Marsden, to whom thanks are due. Inevitably, given the conditions of production, there is a certain amount of overlap and repetition.
The Teach yourself Marxism column is written with two sorts of people particularly in mind. The first is the thinking worker who is beginning to question his or her situation under capitalism, and who wants to find out about socialism and Marxism to see whether they offer a credible alternative. This reader has a multitude of questions arising from their experience, the media, what they were told at school, discussions at work, and so on. The column attempts to answer these questions in as simple and straightforward a way as possible.
The second kind of reader is already a committed and active revolutionary socialist. To be a revolutionary activist is to be a permanent persuader; someone who at work, at union meetings and political meetings, on picket lines and in the pub gets involved in discussion and debate on everything from the latest strike to the role of US imperialism or what went wrong in Russia. In all these discussions the revolutionary socialist has to strive to counter the capitalist system of ideas that dominates most people’s thinking, and to put across the socialist, Marxist, point of view. The column aims to assist in this, to provide, again as straightforwardly as possible, some of the arguments the activist needs to have at his or her fingertips.
Not surprisingly, Arguments for Revolutionary Socialism has similar audiences in view and similar purposes. In addition, this book hopes to provide an introduction to most of the main ideas of Marxist theory. It is worth pointing out that virtually every argument put forward in these pages is a compressed version of a longer, more developed and substantiated case to be found elsewhere. For example the section on exploitation in chapter two is a condensation of the theory of surplus value to be found in Marx’s Capital – or more accessibly in his pamphlet Wage Labour and Capital, while the Marxist view of terrorism outlined in chapter five is stated more fully in Leon Trotsky’s Against Individual Terrorism. The interested reader is strongly urged to follow up as many such leads as possible – see our Suggested Reading list at the end of the book.
As an introduction to Marxism this work is one of many; it cannot claim any special merit except, perhaps, one. The majority of commentaries on Marxism treat it as a more or less interesting academic interpretation of the world. This was not at all what its founder intended. Marx produced Marxism not for the university professor and the lecture hall, but for the worker and the factory floor. It is there, a system of ideas for use in all the discussions and battles, large and small, whose sum total constitutes the struggle of the working class for freedom and socialism. Hopefully, Arguments for Revolutionary Socialism makes this, at least, clear.
Finally I would like to dedicate this work to Kevin Murphy, a fine friend and comrade over fifteen years and one of the best arguers for revolutionary socialism I know.
John Molyneux, February 1987
John Molyneux is a member of the Socialist Workers Party in Britain and a regular columnist for the weekly Socialist Worker. He is the author of Marxism and the Party (1978), Trotsky’s Theory of Revolution (1981), and What is the real Marxist tradition? (1985).
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Last updated: 5 June 2015