In this podcast, Joe Russell explains the history of the Levellers and the Diggers, and discusses what we can learn from these heroic revolutionary movements to help us in the struggle for socialism today.Over 350 years ago, the masses in England turned the world upside down, carrying out one of the first of the bourgeois revolutions. This shows how English history – contrary to the story we are constantly told – is not one glorious, uninterrupted march of conservative progress and moderation. I...
Apr 14, 2021•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this podcast, Ben Curry explains the Marxist understanding of the role played by individuals in history – and the role that we must play today. History is commonly taught as little more than the deeds of great men, who alone possess the ability to make history. Marxism rejects this view, and instead sees the development of society and great events as subject to objective processes, which often act behind the backs of the people taking part in them. But does this mean that the actions, ideas, ...
Apr 08, 2021•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this podcast, Olivia Ruadh explains why it is the capitalist system that is to blame for climate change – and why we need to fight for a clear socialist solution. With the huge youth strikes for climate internationally in recent years, the environmental movement became a real mass movement. The slogan of these protests – ‘for system change, not climate change – indicated a clear revolutionary mood amongst activists. Whilst more and more people are drawing direct links between the climate cata...
Apr 01, 2021•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this podcast, Shaun Morris of the Revolution editorial board, will examine the lessons and legacy of the Irish independence struggle – an understanding of which is essential for revolutionary Marxists fighting for a socialist united Ireland today. One hundred years ago, Ireland was in the midst of a revolutionary war for independence from Britain. As Britain’s oldest colony, Ireland was the testing ground for the brutal policies that the British ruling class applied across the Empire. The ter...
Mar 24, 2021•35 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this podcast, Jules Legendre from Révolution - the French section of the International Marxist Tendency - explains what the Paris Commune was, and the lessons that revolutionaries must draw from it today. For two months between March and May 1871 the armed workers of Paris, surrounded by enemies on all sides, took their destiny into their own hands and demonstrated that it is possible for the workers to run society democratically, without capitalists, bankers or even a standing army. In his b...
Mar 22, 2021•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this talk from yesterday's meeting on how to end violence against women, we were joined by Natasha Sorrell, an NEU activist and Socialist Appeal supporter, and Karen Campos, an activist in Izquierda Socialista (IMT - Mexico)and the Liga de Mujeres Revolucionarias. Both Natasha and Karen emphasised that it is only by abolishing capitalism that we can begin to build a society free from oppression and violence. "Killed by the system we're told 'protects' us.” These were the striking words on one...
Mar 17, 2021•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this podcast, James Kilby analyses the Great Depression, a period of crisis that many have compared to the present situation. In both cases, however, it is clear that these crises are not 'accidental', but a necessary product of capitalism's incurable contradictions. The COVID-19 pandemic has triggered a deep economic collapse. The world stands on the verge of a new depression. We must therefore look to the past to understand the present – and the future. The Wall Street Crash was the spark f...
Mar 11, 2021•48 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this talk from our international women's day event, Laurie explains where women's oppression comes from and what we can do to end it. Marxists understand that women's oppression has not existed forever. Rather, it arose with the rise of class society, which alongside subordinating the majority of people to the will of a few exploiters, also resulted in the origins of the family and the oppression and exploitation from women. This historical understanding of oppression is crucial - contrary to...
Mar 08, 2021•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this talk from last month's MSF conference, Fiona Lali - lead organiser of the MSF - discusses need for leadership in our present-day struggles, and why we should look to the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky as inspiration. With mass movements taking hold in every corner of the world, it has become clear that the masses possess plenty of energy and initiative. But spontaneous outbursts of anger are only one side of the equation: without a conscious, far-sighted leadership, movements will ebb, enter...
Mar 07, 2021•22 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this talk, Fiona Lali discusses the importance of remembering the crimes of the ruling class. While almost all African nations have official independence, they have no independence at all from imperialist exploitation. The only way forward is militant struggle against the exploiters of all lands, based on the principles of socialist internationalism. The idea that the British Empire ‘civilised’ the ‘backward’ and ‘barbarian’ people of Africa is the story rolled out by the apologists of imperi...
Mar 03, 2021•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this podcast, we share with you a talk given by Fred Weston - editor of marxist.com - given at the recent Marxist Student Federation Conference, on the perspectives for world revolution in 2021. As the pandemic drags on and the crisis of capitalism deepens, any illusions in the stability of the current system have been crushed. All around the world, the working class are awakening to the reality of the situation. In the USA, we have witnessed the seismic Black Lives Matter movement, which too...
Feb 28, 2021•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this talk, Alan Woods - editor of marxist.com - discusses the relationship between Marxism and art, noting the nature of art under class society and how we can create a world where everyone can express themselves freely through art. Marxists are sometimes accused of only being interested in pouring over economic data and political analysis; that we have no interest in art and culture. Nothing could be further from the truth. By striving for the end of capitalism, and freeing men and women fro...
Feb 24, 2021•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast At a meeting of leading members of the International Marxist Tendency at the end of January, Alan Woods (editor of marxist.com) provided an overview of the dramatic events unfolding at the start of 2021. The crisis of world capitalism is causing eruptions, dislocation and class polarisation in one country after another. The COVID-19 pandemic continues to inflict misery and hardship on ordinary people, while the wealthy enrich themselves even further. The ruling class is pumping trillions into th...
Feb 21, 2021•39 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this talk, Ben Gliniecki discusses the history of the capitalist state and the police, and why a workers’ state would offer a clear socialist alternative to the repression and violence seen under capitalism. The ruling class has always tried to give the state and the police an appearance of neutrality and justice – a force for preserving peace and stability. But since 2008, the crisis of capitalism has destroyed the economic and political equilibrium. And the present crisis will make this muc...
Feb 17, 2021•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this talk, Daniel Morley explains why ‘academic Marxism’ is incompatible with the real revolutionary ideas of Marxism. To paraphrase Marx’s famous aphorism: The academics have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it. Ever since their inception, there has been a war waged against the genuine ideas of Marxism – not only by the ruling classes and by Stalinist regimes, but in the universities also. The aim of this concerted campaign has always been the same...
Feb 10, 2021•50 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this podcast, Fred Weston – editor of marxist.com – discusses what attitude Marxists should take to the Beijing regime, and outlines the future perspectives for China, its working class, and the coming Chinese revolution. China has risen rapidly to become a major global power. It now represents a serious challenge to US imperialism, which only 20 years ago claimed hegemony over world capitalism. The result has been an ever-deepening trade war between the two countries, which has escalated in ...
Feb 03, 2021•54 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this session, Natasha Sorrell discusses how it is the working class who produce all the wealth in society. The capitalists, meanwhile, are mere parasites. That is why we need to fight for a socialist economic plan – one where workers are in control. In ‘normal’ times, the capitalists would have us believe that it is the bosses and ‘entrepreneurs’ who are essential to society. But the pandemic has shown who plays the really essential role: the nurses, carers, and cleaners – in short, the worki...
Jan 27, 2021•44 min•Transcript available on Metacast For this week's episode of Marxist Voice, we are joined by Fiona Lali - lead organiser at the Marxist Student Federation - who will be interviewing Olive and Tori - two Marxist students playing a leading role in the ongoing rent strike movement. With young people being lured back into universities by the Tory government and corruption university management, rent strike movements have exploded on campuses up and down the country. Students are rightly rising up in indignation at their shameful tre...
Jan 22, 2021•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this recent talk to Socialist Appeal supporters, Antonio Balmer (from the Socialist Revolution USA editorial board) discusses the recent dramatic events in Washington, which are yet another symptom of the decline of American capitalism - and a harbinger of revolutionary explosions to come. The storming of Capitol Hill by a mob of Trump supporters on 6 January is a graphic illustration of the deep crisis gripping US capitalism and the whole system of American bourgeois democracy. The fact that...
Jan 21, 2021•46 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this session, Ellen Morton of the Glasgow Marxists discusses how these crises are laying the basis for revolution in these islands. The task ahead is to build a Marxist leadership in Britain and beyond. The coronavirus crisis has hit Britain harder than most. The UK is a world leader in terms of ‘excess deaths’ from the pandemic, and is experiencing a deeper recession than almost any other developed capitalist country. On top of this, Boris Johnson is presiding over the ongoing shambles that ...
Jan 20, 2021•31 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this session, John McInally – former vice president of the PCS civil servants’ union and veteran trade union activist – will discuss how, in these conditions, we can build a revolutionary trade union movement. The coronavirus crisis has accelerated class consciousness. Workers are getting organised to resist the tsunami of job cuts and austerity that is coming. Already, tens of thousands have joined both the NEU teachers’ union and Unison, Britain’s largest public sector union. Members of the...
Jan 14, 2021•36 min•Transcript available on Metacast In our latest episode of Marxist Voice, we speak to Dr Raj Mistry - a junior doctor in a hard-hit hospital in South East England - about the COVID catastrophe that is currently pushing the NHS to breaking point. The Tories have attempted to blame a new, more infectious strain of the virus for the current crisis. But, in reality, it is Tory cuts and privatisation that have created this dire situation inside the NHS, with chronic staff shortages and a long-term decline in bed numbers. This is why ...
Jan 13, 2021•29 min•Transcript available on Metacast In our latest episode of Marxist Voice, we're joined again by Natasha Sorrell - a teacher and NEU activist - to discuss the ongoing battle between the teachers and Tories over the reopening of schools. Thanks to a mass campaign by the National Education Union, the teachers have forced the Tory government into another U-turn, with remote learning now due to take place until the February half-term. But the struggle for safe schools continues. Rather than listening to those who know best, the Torie...
Jan 08, 2021•34 min•Transcript available on Metacast The Black Death resulted in up to 200 million deaths in the 14th century, making it the deadliest pandemic ever recorded. To many at the time, the plague seemed like the end of the world. What we now know is that it was not the world that was ending, but the decrepit feudal system, which was dying on its feet even before the plague hit. Out of the contradictions and class conflicts that were ruthlessly exposed by the Black Death there later arose momentous uprisings of the poor and oppressed. Th...
Jan 06, 2021•51 min•Transcript available on Metacast Six years after the beginnings of the Black Lives Matter movement, the death of George Floyd in the USA has sparked an international movement against racism and police violence. The repression and injustices experienced by BAME communities day-in, day-out was captured by the last words of George Floyd and Eric Garner: “I can’t breathe!” The protests against institutional racism have spread like wildfire to Britain, with militant demonstrations insisting that ‘the UK is not innocent’. But the que...
Dec 16, 2020•41 min•Transcript available on Metacast Labour’s election defeat last year, followed by a sharp shift to the right in the party under Keir Starmer, has opened up a period of introspection and questioning on the Left. Many are asking: what now? Into this context, self-appointed advisors to the movement have been quick to put forward their own ‘new’ prescriptions. One such idea – put forward by Paul Mason and other ‘left’ commentators – is that ‘values’ now form the fundamental dividing line in British politics, as opposed to class inte...
Dec 11, 2020•42 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this talk from the International Marxist University, Ben Gliniecki - a leading activist of Socialist Appeal - discusses the Marxist morality and the question of whether Marxists should aspire to be pacifists. Visit podcast.marxist.com for the full recordings. One of the many slanders hurled at the Bolsheviks is that they were bloodthirsty intriguers who got their way through violent means. This is a criticism shared both by the hypocritical bourgeois, and elements on the left. These pacifists...
Dec 02, 2020•40 min•Transcript available on Metacast To celebrate Engels' 200th birthday, we are republishing this talk from 2014, in which Rob Sewell discusses Engels' life and ideas - and in particular his outstanding contributions to Marxist theory. The greatest birthday present we can offer Engels is to learn from his legacy: to continue the struggle for socialism and build the forces of Marxism today. Join us in the fight for socialism: Join - socialist.net/join Donate - socialist.net/donate Subscribe - socialist.net/subscribe Follow us on Fa...
Nov 28, 2020•58 min•Transcript available on Metacast 28 November this year marks the 200th anniversary of Engels’ birth. To commemorate this, Adam Booth discusses the vital role that Friedrich Engels played in developing the revolutionary ideas of Marxism. Alongside Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels was one of the founding fathers of ‘scientific socialism’. Though often considered as playing second fiddle to Marx, there can be no doubt of Engels’ extensive and outstanding contribution to Marxist theory. His collaboration with Marx was far from one-sided...
Nov 27, 2020•45 min•Transcript available on Metacast In this talk from the International Marxist University, Yola Kipcak - a leading activist of Der Funke, the Austrian section of the IMT - provides a Marxist analysis of Queer Theory. Visit podcast.marxist.com for the full recordings. Marxism defends the unity of peoples across all gender and sexual lines in the fight against the oppressive capitalist system. But Queer Theory holds that our gender and sexual identities are a fiction produced by discourses and oppressive power in society: a learned...
Nov 25, 2020•28 min•Transcript available on Metacast 
