Marxism & Terrorism

From the Paris Commune of 1871 to the Russian and Cuban revolutions and other struggles for national liberation and socialism in this century, the propertied classes have always laid the charge of ‘terrorism’ on the young fighters leading the struggle against exploitation and oppression.

In this pamphlet, Russian Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky explains why the working class is the only social force capable of leading the toiling majority in overthrowing the capitalist exploiters and beginning the construction of a new society. Individual terrorism, whatever its intention, more and more relegates the makers of history to the role of spectators and opens the workers movement to provocation and victimisation. Trotsky at the same time answers all those who slander the revolutionary working-class movement as ‘terrorists’ and ‘adventurists’.