Ted Grant Selected Works Volume One: Stalinism and the Class Nature of the Soviet Union

by Ted Grant, John Peterson (Introduction)

The reissue of the first volume of selected works by Ted Grant marks a new stage in making his ideas more widely known to a new generation of Marxists. Stalinism may no longer be as pressing an issue as it was in the latter half of the 20th Century, but it is far more than a theoretical or historical question - today's situation is deeply impacted by events of the past.

In the post-World War II period, Marxists had to explain the phenomenon of Stalinism, which was no longer confined to the degenerated workers' state of the USSR, but was spreading around the world. While every other leader of the Fourth International lost their bearings on this and ever other fundamental question - veering to ultra-leftism, opportunism, reformism, and even to the extreme right - Ted Grant stayed the course, sticking to the fundamentals of Marxism to navigate these uncharted waters. His writings on these momentous and complex events are a textbook example of how to apply the ideas of Lenin and Trotsky to the changing world around us, a 'must-read' for all those who wish to master the Marxism method.

412 pages, Kindle Edition

Published December 19, 2018

About the author

Edward Grant (born Isaac Blank; 9 July 1913 – 20 July 2006) was a South African Trotskyist who spent most of his adult life in Britain. He was a founding member of the group Militant and later Socialist Appeal.

Reviews

[Olivier Turbide · Rating 5 out of 5]

Trotsky disait dans le programme de transition que « la crise actuelle de la civilisation humaine est la crise de la direction du prolétariat »

Aujourd'hui je dirais que la crise de la civilisation humaine se résume à ce que beaucoup trop peu de communistes ont lu Ted Grant

Sans blague, ces textes sont essentiels pour comprendre le stalinisme au XXe siècle, en particulier « Reply to David James », « The colonial revolution and the sino-soviet dispute », et « Against the theory of state capitalism : reply to comrade Cliff ». Autant essentiel (même plus, j'oserais dire) que la Révolution trahie de Trotsky!

[William · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ted Grant’s grasp of the Marxist method is sharper than a knife. After reading this, I feel enlightened to the core. I devoured the 400 pages quickly because every sentence was a revelation.

The man predicted the Chinese Revolution, the Sino-Soviet split, clearly explained how counter-revolution in Western Europe could take a democratic form, and much more. There is seriously no other analysis of the post-war period as precise as his. His in-depth explanation of the policies of the Stalinist bureaucracy in Eastern Europe solved every riddle I had in mind about this historical period.

The sharp polemics are something else as well—he completely tears apart the theories of state capitalism and bureaucratic collectivism.

“The degeneration of the Russian Revolution and the strengthening of Stalinism for a whole historical epoch was the main reason why the revolution in China began right from the start on Bonapartist lines. This in turn meant that the revolution in other countries of Asia, Africa, and Latin America had a ready-made Bonapartist model—which appeared in the minds of the leading circles of the intellectual strata as ‘socialism.’ While the Chinese Revolution was accomplished largely through a peasant war, with a peasant army as an instrument of proletarian Bonapartism, at least lip service was given in the later stages of the revolution, after the conquest of power, to the rule of the proletariat.”