Marxist Theory After Trotsky: v. 3: Selected Writings

by Tony Cliff

This volume completes the trilogy of Tony Cliff's key writings, It is as it groups together his major theoretical works for the first time.
Cliff's analysis of the nature of Stalinist Russia as state capitalist proved to be vital in orienting socialists in the difficult period of the Cold War, and rallying a new movement around the concept of 'Neither Washington ru Moscow but international socialism'. Cliff's original text on this issue is reproduced here for the first time since the 1940s.
Another phenomenon that needed explaining was the economic boom post-war period that confounded Trotsky’s predictions, and led some socialists to believe that capitalism could escape economic crisis forever. The theory of the permanent arms economy, which also appears in this explained both the source of the boom and the seeds of its downfall.
Finally, the coming to power of governments in China and Cuba that clamed to be socialist, but did so without the participation or involvement of their respective working classes, posed a problem for socialist theory, In Cliff’s article 'Permanent Revolution' this question is explained using Trotsky’s brilliant theoretical insight, but adapting it to contemporary conditions,
Alongside the 'big three' theories, this volume includes many other articles of great importance, ranging from an analysis of the agrarian question to the liberation of women and gay people, It concludes with a short but exceptionally clear summary of Marxist theory.
Both those who are new to Cliff's work and those who are not will find this book an illuminating read.

Genres: Politics

317 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2003

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.