In Defence of Marxism Issue 36

The International Marxist Tendency proudly presents the relaunched In Defence of Marxism theoretical journal.

In this issue:

In the new issue, Adam Booth looks at one of capitalism’s oldest myths around the efficiency of the so-called ‘free-market’ and its superiority to a socialist planned economy. In a defence of the planned economy, the article responds to the Libertarian ideas of the Austrian School of economics, whose ‘theories’ amount to vitriolic support  of the unrestricted rule of capital at the expense of the needs of society (The Austrian School of Economics: Capitalism’s Free-market Fanatics).

Secondly, Rob Sewell exposes how the life and ideas of Lenin have been distorted by both the bourgeois historians on the one hand, and the ‘Stalin school of falsification’ on the other. In this article, we uncover the genuine ideas of Lenin, and how they developed alongside the tumultuous events in Russia during his formative years (The Young Lenin).

Finally, Fred Weston and Parson Young show how so-called ‘Luxemburgism’ – a term used to counter the ‘authoritarianism’ of Lenin and the Bolsheviks – is an idea far removed from the genuine ideas of Rosa Luxemburg herself. The article traces Luxemburg’s thought during her political life and clarifies the differences and convergences between her and the Bolsheviks (Rosa Luxemburg and the Bolsheviks: Dispelling the Myths).