Why you should read ‘The History of Philosophy: A Marxist Perspective’
Philosophy might seem irrelevant to the fight for revolution. But in truth, it is only by having a correct, scientific outlook that we can transform the world around us.
Trotsky: The ABC of Materialist Dialectics (1939)
Here we republish a philosophical work of art by Trotsky. The ABC of Materialist Dialectics offers an insight into the basics of Marxist philosophy. Without understanding philosophy we cannot understand Marxism. Dialectic is neither fiction nor mysticism, but a science of the forms of our thinking insofar as it is Read more…
PODCAST: Materialism and Knowledge
How do we acquire knowledge, and how reliable is it? Is there a real world beyond our senses, or is each of us an isolated atom? Can we really understand the workings of society and change it for the better?
In his podcast, Alan Woods – editor of In Defence of Marxism – mounts a defence of materialism against the trends of subjective idealism, such as positivism and postmodernism, that deny the possibility of objective and scientific knowledge about the world and society.
How Marxists understand the world: Why we are materialists
For most people, the word Philosophy will immediately bring to mind something like the image of a university seminar room full of intellectual types deeply engaged in high level discussion. It appears as something obscure, reserved for only the most knowledgeable people, and – more importantly – it appears as Read more…
Marx’s revolution in philosophy
Dialectical materialism is our “sharpest weapon”, as Engels explained, against the misery of class society.” Read our latest #TheoryThursdays article on Marx’s revolution in philosophy here!
ABC of Materialist Dialectics
Trotsky’s ‘ABC of Materialist Dialectics’ is a brilliant short explanation of Marxist philosophy. It was written as part of a defence of Marxism against a middle-class revisionist tendency in the American Trotskyist movement in the late 1930s, which attempted to challenge its basic principles. As opposed to pragmatism and Read more…
Anti-natalist philosophy: hysteria, pessimism and capitalism’s decline
Readers of US-based magazine the New Yorker may have read a recent and sensationally-titled article, “The Case for Not Being Born”, by Joshua Rothman (27/11/2017). The article itself is a good introduction to a relatively recent school in bourgeois philosophy known as “anti-natalism”. The basic thrust of anti-natalism is that Read more…
An Introduction to Dialectical Materialism
What is a philosophy? At each stage in human history, men and women have worked out some sort of picture of the world and their place in it. They develop a Philosophy. The pieces they use to make up this picture have been obtained by observing nature and through generalising Read more…
