Trotsky: Towards October 1879-1917

Trotsky #1

by Tony Cliff

Volume 1

Genres: Politics, History, Biography

314 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

Born in Palestine to Zionist parents in 1917, Ygael Gluckstein became a Trotskyist during the 1930s and played a leading role in the attempt to forge a movement uniting Arab and Jewish workers. At the end of of the Second World war, seeing that the victory of the Zionists was more and more inevitable, he moved to Britain and adopted the pseudonym Tony Cliff.

In the late 1940s he developed the theory that Russia wasn’t a workers’ state but a form of bureaucratic state capitalism, a theory which has characterised the tendency with which he was associated for the remaining five decades of his life. Although he broke from “orthodox Trotskyism” after being bureaucratically excluded from the Fourth International in 1950, he always considered himself to be a Trotskyist although he was also open to other influences within the Marxist tradition.

Reviews

[Martin Empson]

Shining through this volume of the work, is Trotsky's brilliance. As a polemicist, a theoretician and a writer. He is also a man of humour and emotion. But most of all he is someone who dedicated his life to making a revolution happen, defending its gains and constantly trying to organise those who had the power to change the world. Learning from his life is part of learning how we can challenge the existing system in the future.

Full review: http://resolutereader.blogspot.co.uk/...