Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Russian revolutionary and intellectual Leon Trotsky along with some other members of the Left Opposition and the Fourth International. Trotsky described himself as an orthodox Marxist, a revolutionary Marxist, and a Bolshevik–Leninist as well as a follower of Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Vladimir Lenin, Karl Liebknecht, and Rosa Luxemburg. His relations with Lenin have been a source of intense historical debate. However, on balance, scholarly opinion among a range of prominent historians and political scientists such as E.H. Carr, Isaac Deutscher, Moshe Lewin, Ronald Suny, Richard B. Day and W. Bruce Lincoln was that Lenin’s desired “heir” would have been a collective responsibility in which Trotsky was placed in "an important role and within which Stalin would be dramatically demoted ".
Shachtmanism is the form of Marxism associated with Max Shachtman (1904–1972). It has two major components: a bureaucratic collectivist analysis of the Soviet Union and a third camp approach to world politics. Shachtmanites believe that the Stalinist rulers of proclaimed socialist countries are a new ruling class distinct from the workers and reject Trotsky's description of Stalinist Russia as a "degenerated workers' state".
Max Shachtman was an American Marxist theorist. He went from being an associate of Leon Trotsky to a social democrat and mentor of senior assistants to AFL–CIO President George Meany.
Alexander Theodore Callinicos is a Rhodesian-born British political theorist and activist. An adherent of Trotskyism, he is a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and serves as its International Secretary. Between 2009 and 2020 he was the editor of International Socialism, the SWP's theoretical journal, and has published a number of books.
Duncan Hallas, was a prominent member of the Trotskyist movement and a leading member of the Socialist Workers Party in Great Britain.
Raya Dunayevskaya, later Rae Spiegel, also known by the pseudonym Freddie Forest, was the American founder of the philosophy of Marxist humanism in the United States. At one time Leon Trotsky's secretary, she later split with him and ultimately founded the organization News and Letters Committees and was its leader until her death.
Victor Serge, born Victor Lvovich Kibalchich, was a Russian writer, poet, Marxist revolutionary and historian. Originally an anarchist, he joined the Bolsheviks five months after arriving in Petrograd in January 1919 and later worked for the Comintern as a journalist, editor and translator. He was critical of the Stalinist regime and remained a revolutionary Marxist until his death. He was a close supporter of the Left Opposition and associate of Leon Trotsky.According to, William Giraldi, Serge's novels may be "read like an alloy of" George Orwell and Franz Kafka: "the uncommon political acuity of Orwell and the absurdist comedy of Kafka, a comedy with the damning squint of satire, except the satire is real." In his studies of Serge, Richard Greeman described him as a Modernist writer influenced by James Joyce, Andrei Bely and Freud; Greenman also believed that Serge, although writing in French, continued the experiments of such Russian Soviet writers as Isaac Babel, Osip Mandelstam and Boris Pilnyak and poets Vladimir Mayakovsky and Sergei Yesenin. He is remembered as the author of novels and other prose works, memoirs and poetry. Among his novels chronicling the lives of Soviet people and revolutionaries and of the first half of the 20th century, the best-known is The Case of Comrade Tulayev. Nicholas Lezard calls the novel " of the great 20th-century Russian novels" that follows the traditions of "Gogolian absurdity".
John Molyneux was a British Trotskyist, academic and author. He was a leading member of the Socialist Workers Party before retiring to Ireland, where he became active in the Irish SWP and was editor of Irish Marxist Review.
Boris Souvarine, also known as Varine, was a French Marxist, communist activist, essayist and journalist.
Marcel Martinet was a French pacifist socialist revolutionary militant and a prolétarian writer.
Christopher John Harman was a British journalist and political activist, and a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party. He was an editor of International Socialism and Socialist Worker.
The International Socialist Organization (ISO) was a Trotskyist group active primarily on college campuses in the United States that was founded in 1976 and dissolved in 2019. The organization held Leninist positions on imperialism and the role of a vanguard party. However, it did not believe that necessary conditions for a revolutionary party in the United States were met; ISO believed that it was preparing the ground for such a party. The organization held a Trotskyist critique of nominally socialist states, which it considered class societies. In contrast, the organization advocated the tradition of "socialism from below." as articulated by Hal Draper. Initially founded as a section of the International Socialist Tendency (IST), it was strongly influenced by the perspectives of Draper and Tony Cliff of the British Socialist Workers Party. It broke from the IST in 2001, but continued to exist as an independent organization for the next eighteen years. The organization advocated independence from the U.S. two-party system and sometimes supported electoral strategies by outside parties, especially the Green Party of the United States.
The Socialist Workers Party (SWP) is a far-left political party in the United Kingdom. Founded as the Socialist Review Group by supporters of Tony Cliff in 1950, it became the International Socialists in 1962 and the SWP in 1977. The party considers itself to be Trotskyist. Cliff and his followers criticised the Soviet Union and its satellites, calling them state capitalist rather than socialist countries.
A workers' council, also called labor council, is a type of council in a workplace or a locality made up of workers or of temporary and instantly revocable delegates elected by the workers in a locality's workplaces. In such a system of political and economic organization, the workers themselves are able to exercise decision-making power. Furthermore, the workers within each council decide on what their agenda is and what their needs are. The council communist Antonie Pannekoek describes shop-committees and sectional assemblies as the basis for workers' management of the industrial system. A variation is a soldiers' council, where soldiers direct a mutiny. Workers and soldiers have also operated councils in conjunction. Workers' councils may in turn elect delegates to central committees, such as the Congress of Soviets.
Revolutionary History was a British journal covering the history of the far left. It was established by the historians Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson and maintained an editorial board representing many strands of British Trotskyism. In a 2004 edition of the Weekly Worker, the publication was described as "the premier Marxist historical journal in the world."
Chanie Rosenberg was a South African-born artist, former teacher and socialist. She was the sister of Michael Kidron, the partner of Tony Cliff, and a founder member of the Socialist Workers Party in Britain.
Tony Cliff was a Trotskyist activist. Born to a Jewish family in Ottoman Palestine, he moved to Britain in 1947 and by the end of the 1950s had assumed the pen name of Tony Cliff. A founding member of the Socialist Review Group, which became the International Socialists and then the Socialist Workers Party, in 1977. Cliff was effectively the leader of all three.
The anti-Stalinist left is a term that refers to various kinds of Marxist political movements that oppose Joseph Stalin, Stalinism, Neo-Stalinism and the system of governance that Stalin implemented as leader of the Soviet Union between 1924 and 1953. This term also refers to the high ranking political figures and governmental programs that opposed Joseph Stalin and his form of communism, such as Leon Trotsky and other traditional Marxists within the Left Opposition. In Western historiography, Stalin is considered one of the worst and most notorious figures in modern history.
The International Socialist Tendency (IST) is an international grouping of unorthodox Trotskyist organisations espousing the ideas of Tony Cliff (1917–2000), founder of the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in Britain. IST supporters are sometimes called "Cliffites". It has sections across 27 countries; however, its strongest presence is in Europe, especially in Britain.
Far-left politics in the United Kingdom have existed since at least the 1840s, with the formation of various organisations following ideologies such as Marxism, revolutionary socialism, communism, anarchism and syndicalism.
