Michael Löwy

Michael Löwy pays tribute to the historic Bolivian Trotskyist leader Hugo Gonzales Moscoso, who died in January 2010. - read article...

Michael Lowy comments on important issues facing environmental campaigners, in the light of an important document authored by Daniel Tanuro. - read article...

Daniel Tanuro’s report on climate change [1] is one of the most important documents produced by our movement in recent years. It is an invaluable contribution to the political arming of revolutionary Marxists and to making them capable of facing up to the challenges of the 21st century. - read article...

This is the first systematic biography of the main leader and theorist of the Fourth International after 1945, who was, as noted by Tariq Ali in his preface, one of the most creative and independent revolutionary thinkers of our time. - read article...

What remains from the Communist Manifesto in 2008, one hundred and sixty years after its publication? As David Harvey observes in his brilliant preface to this edition, the present financial crisis corresponds in an astonishing way to the predictions of Marx and Engels: “ the society of the ‘too much’, of ‘overproduction’ and excessive speculation, has plainly broken down and reverted, as it always does’ to a ‘state of momentary barbarism”. - read article...

Almost a year has passed since the IPCC released its reports on how rapid climate changes are taking us towards a disaster. The reports have made the issue more obvious and less controversial: the conclusion of this is that the climate threat can no longer be ignored. - read article...

June 1971; the young Brazilian journalist Luiz Eduardo Merlino, militant of the Fourth International, dies from torture, 23 years old. Now, his partner and sister have decided, despite the official amnesty, to bring the man responsible for this crime, to justice. - read article...

We have been waiting a long time, a very long time, for this book to be published... - read article...

Michael Löwy looks at the new book by Cuban "unaffiliated Trotskyist" Celia Hart. - read article...

Despite their undeniable differences, Marx and Weber have much in common in their appraisals of modern capitalism: they share a vision of the capitalist economic system as a universe where “individuals are directed by abstractions,” (Marx), where impersonal relations and objects [Versachlicht] replace personal relations of dependence, and where the accumulation of capital becomes an end in itself and, by and large, irrational. - read article...

Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution, as sketched for the first time in his essay Results and Prospects (1906), was one of the most astonishing political breakthroughs in Marxist thinking at the begining of the XXth century. - read article...

There seems to exist an intimate link between the dialectical method and revolutionary theory: not by chance, the high period of revolutionary thinking in the XXth century, the years 1905-1925, are also those of some of the most interesting attemps to use the hegelo-marxist dialectics as an instrument of knowledge and action. Let me try to illustrate the connexion between dialectics and revolution in the thought of three distinct Marxist figures : Leon D. Trotsky, Vladimir I. Lenin and György Lukacs. - read article...

The Marxist view of religion has been greatly over-simplified, typically identified with the well-worn refrain that it’s the "opiate of the people." Michael Löwy challenges this misconception, and presents us with a much more nuanced view of Marxism and religion. - read article...

The Marxist view of religion has been greatly over-simplified, typically identified with the well-worn refrain that it’s the "opiate of the people." Michael Löwy challenges this misconception, and presents us with a much more nuanced view of Marxism and religion. - read article...

This letter was sent to the the Brazilian DS at the end of January and subsequently endorsed by the FIs International Committee. - read article...

This Congress was the first in the history of the Fourth International to adopt a resolution on ecology. This document, published in draft form in IV nearly two years ago, was debated at length at the FI’s International Executive Committee (IEC) and amended accordingly by the drafting committee designated by the IEC. - read article...

The ’Fifth International’ is not the "spectre haunting Europe and the world" of which Marx wrote in the ’Communist Manifesto’, but is an idea that is beginning to circulate. - read article...

From 1959 to 1967, Che’s thought evolved considerably. He distanced himself ever further from his initial illusions concerning Soviet or Soviet-style socialism, that is, from the Stalinist version of Marxism. - read article...

The theory of permanent revolution is not a metaphysical speculation but an attempt to respond to one of the most dramatic questions of our epoch: how to resolve the appalling social problems suffered by the dependent capitalist countries - colonial and semi-colonial in the language of the time - how can they escape pauperisation, dictatorship, oligarchical regimes, foreign domination? - read article...

Thirty years later, Che Guevara’s message is still a glowing beacon to those who know that a better world is possible. - read article...

Our articles on the floods in Pakistan have given details of how to send financial aid to the Labour Relief Fund. If it is more convenient for you, you can also send funds through the Europe Solidaire Sans Frontieres account. - read article...

Pakistan is facing worst ever floods of its history. Torrential rains have unleashed flash floods in different parts of the country since last three weeks. Water levies broke leaving the people exposed to flood water. More than 12 million people have suffered due to these floods. More than 650,000 houses have collapsed, mainly in villages. Thousands of acres of crops have been destroyed due to flood water. Houses, live-stock such as cattle’s and goats, household goods, clothes, shoes and other items have been destroyed. Residents of villages are currently without drinkable water, food, shelter and in need of clothes. In particular, the situation is dire for children and women and they are in desperate need of food and clothing. Disease is spreading fast in the areas affected due to lack of drinkable water. In particular, flu, fever, diarrhea, cholera have been noted and are spreading. - read article...

An unexpected, unthinkable, yet - concerning current circumstances - quite expectable and natural thing has occurred yesterday night. Three public social activists that have always expressed a consistent antifascist attitude and shunned civil indifference have been detained. - read article...

We, the participants at the Istanbul ESF, affirming that we have a strong engagement aganist all war and occupation and that we are for a politial resolution of the Kurdish issue, have made the following resolution : - read article...

Under the impulse of the World Bank and international capitalist institutions, the Moroccan regime started a privatization process of the universities and attacks against the right to studiy. The announcement of the “Emergency plan” to the university at beginning of the academic year, i.e. of the brutal aggravation of these attacks, put a spark to the powder. The class-struggle trade unionists of fight, organised within the UNEM, are at the forefront of the mobilization against the “Emergency plan”. - read article...