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Irish Communist Organisation
The British and Irish Communist Organisation (B&ICO) was a small group based in London, Belfast, Cork, and Dublin. Its leader was Brendan Clifford. The group produced a number of pamphlets and regular publications, including ''The Irish Communist'' and ''Workers Weekly'' in Belfast. Τhe group currently expresses itself through Athol Books with its premier publication being the '' Irish Political Review''. The group also continues to publish ''Church & State'', ''Irish Foreign Affairs'', ''Labour Affairs'' and ''Problems.'' History Origins as Irish diaspora Maoist group Brendan Clifford was an Irish emigrant from the Sliabh Luachra area of County Cork who had migrated to London and become involved in left-wing politics there. Clifford and some of his followers had been in Michael McCreery's Committee to Defeat Revisionism, for Communist Unity and later they joined the Irish Communist Group.See David Widgery, The Left in Britain (1976) p. 489 This body consisted largely of ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Brendan Clifford
Brendan Clifford (born 1936) is an Irish historian and political activist. Early life and education He was born in the Sliabh Luachra area of Munster, Republic of Ireland. Career As a young man, Clifford emigrated to the United Kingdom and became involved in left-wing politics. Initially, he was an associate of Michael McCreery, a leader of the Committee to Defeat Revisionism, for Communist Unity, Widgery, David (1976). ''The Left in Britain, 1956–68''. Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England: Penguin Books. p. 489. . a small British Marxist–Leninist group that had left the Communist Party of Great Britain in 1963. Later, he joined the Irish Communist Group which soon split into two factions; Clifford sided with the Maoist faction, which named itself the Irish Communist Organisation (ICO). In 1967, Clifford gave a public speech on the Republican Congress in Wynn's Hotel, Dublin,"Dual Aim of the Republican Congress", ''Irish Times'', March 68th, 1967, (p.8). at a meeti ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
David Widgery
David Widgery (27 April 1947 – 26 October 1992) was a British Marxist writer, journalist, polemicist, physician, and activist. Biography Widgery was born in Barnet and grew up in Maidenhead, Berkshire. He contracted polio as a child and was expelled from sixth form for publishing a magazine. In 1965, Widgery met Allen Ginsberg, then visited Watts, where he encountered the civil rights movement, followed by Cuba. On return to Britain, he studied medicine at the Royal Free Hospital Medical School before writing for the ''New Statesman'' and '' Oz'' magazines, becoming co-editor of ''Oz'' during 1971. Widgery joined the International Socialists in 1967, remaining in the group when it became the Socialist Workers Party in 1977. He began working at Bethnal Green Hospital in 1972, worked at St Leonard’s Hospital in the late 1970s and later in the decade he published his first book, ''The Left in Britain, 1956–68''. Widgery contributed to ''Ink'', '' Time Out'' and '' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Dennis Dennehy (Irish Communist)
Dennis Dennehy (1938–1984) was an Irish political activist. He was a founding member of both the Irish Communist Organisation and the Dublin Housing Action Committee. Life Dennis Dennehy was born in Ireland in 1938 and was a native of Bushmount, Ballyduff, County Kerry. He emigrated to London, and became active in CND and amongst Communist groups there with other Irish emigrants. Following the 1965 split in the Communist group, he sided with the Maoist wing which became the Irish Communist Organisation (later the British & Irish Communist Organisation). Returning to Ireland in the mid sixties he served as secretary of the Dublin Housing Action Committee, and was arrested for squatting at 20 Mountjoy Square. During his time in prison he went on hunger strike in January 1969. He then worked as driver in Dublin Bus (CIÉ) and was member of the ITGWU The Irish Transport and General Workers Union (ITGWU), was a trade union representing workers, initially mainly labourers, in I ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Marxist Revisionism
Within the Marxist movement, revisionism represents various ideas, principles and theories that are based on a significant revision of fundamental Marxist premises that usually involve making an alliance with the bourgeois class. The term ''revisionism'' is most often used by those Marxists who believe that such revisions are unwarranted and represent a "watering down" or abandonment of Marxism—one such common example is the negation of class struggle. As such, revisionism often carries pejorative connotations and the term has been used by many different factions. It is typically applied to others and rarely as a self-description. By extension, people who view themselves as fighting against revisionism have often self-identified as anti-revisionists. History The term ''revisionism'' has been used in a number of contexts to refer to different revisions (or claimed revisions) of Marxist theory. Those who opposed Karl Marx's revolution through his lens of a violent uprising a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Nikita Khrushchev
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (– 11 September 1971) was the First Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union from 1953 to 1964 and chairman of the country's Council of Ministers from 1958 to 1964. During his rule, Khrushchev stunned the communist world with his denunciation of his predecessor Joseph Stalin's crimes, and embarked on a policy of de-Stalinization with his key ally Anastas Mikoyan. He sponsored the early Soviet space program, and enactment of moderate reforms in domestic policy. After some false starts, and a narrowly avoided nuclear war over Cuba, he conducted successful negotiations with the United States to reduce Cold War tensions. In 1964, the Kremlin leadership stripped him of power, replacing him with Leonid Brezhnev as First Secretary and Alexei Kosygin as Premier. Khrushchev was born in 1894 in a village in western Russia. He was employed as a metal worker during his youth, and he was a political commissar during the Russian Civil Wa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Chinese Communist Party
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP), officially the Communist Party of China (CPC), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the China, People's Republic of China (PRC). Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CCP emerged victorious in the Chinese Civil War against the Kuomintang, and, in 1949, Mao Proclamation of the People's Republic of China, proclaimed the establishment of the People's Republic of China. Since then, the CCP has governed China with List of political parties in China, eight smaller parties within its United Front (China), United Front and has sole control over the People's Liberation Army (PLA). Each successive leader of the CCP has added their own theories to the Constitution of the Chinese Communist Party, party's constitution, which outlines the ideological beliefs of the party, collectively referred to as socialism with Chinese characteristics. As of 2022, the CCP has more than 96 million members, making it the List of largest political parties ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Anti-revisionist
Anti-revisionism is a position within Marxism–Leninism which emerged in the 1950s in opposition to the reforms of Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. Where Khrushchev pursued an interpretation that differed from his predecessor Joseph Stalin, the anti-revisionists within the international communist movement remained dedicated to Stalin's ideological legacy and criticized the Soviet Union under Khrushchev and his successors as state capitalist and social imperialist. The term Stalinism is also used to describe these positions, but it is often not used by its supporters who opine that Stalin simply synthesized and practiced orthodox Marxism and Leninism. Because different political trends trace the historical roots of revisionism to different eras and leaders, there is significant disagreement today as to what constitutes anti-revisionism. As a result, modern groups which describe themselves as anti-revisionist fall into several categories. Some uphold the works of Stalin a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Alliance For Workers' Liberty
The Alliance for Workers' Liberty (AWL), also known as Workers' Liberty, is a Trotskyist group in Britain and Australia, which has been identified with the theorist Sean Matgamna throughout its history. It publishes the newspaper ''Solidarity''. History Workers' Fight The AWL traces its origins to the document ''What we are and what we must become'', written by the tendency's founder Sean Matgamna in 1966, in which he argued that the Revolutionary Socialist League – by then effectively the Militant tendency – was too inward-looking, and needed to become more activist in its orientation. The RSL refused to circulate the document; hence, with a handful of supporters, he left to form the Workers' Fight group. Espousing left unity, they accepted an offer in 1968 to form a faction within the International Socialists (IS) as the Trotskyist Tendency. Trotskyist Tendency The Trotskyist Tendency clashed with the leadership of the International Socialists over many issues; for examp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sean Matgamna
Sean Matgamna is an Irish Trotskyist active in Britain. A founder of Workers' Fight in 1966, he is still a prominent member of the group, now called the Alliance for Workers' Liberty. Early life Matgamna was born in 1941 in Ennis, County Clare, Ireland, and grew up in the town, serving as an altar boy at Ennis Cathedral. He emigrated with his family to Manchester in 1954 and attended St Peter's Catholic School in Salford. Early political experience He joined the Young Communist League (YCL) as a teenager in Manchester and then, in 1960, Gerry Healy's Trotskyist Socialist Labour League, from which he was expelled in 1963. He joined another Trotskyist group, Militant, in 1965 and in 1966 co-authored a pamphlet, ''What We Are and What We Must Become'' outlining his views. When Militant refused to circulate it among the membership, he and his supporters left the organisation. Workers' Fight Matgamna, working with two supporters, formed the Workers' Fight group to act upon their ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Irish Workers' Group
:''See Irish Workers' Group (1976) for the Irish Workers' Group which was a member of the League for a Fifth International.'' The Irish Workers' Group (IWG) was a Marxist political party in Ireland. It originated as the Irish Workers Union, which later called itself the Irish Communist Group,See'' International Trotskyism, 1929-1985'' by Robert Jackson Alexander, Duke University Press, 1991 (pg. 570). and contained a variety of people who all considered themselves to be Marxists. Some were from an Irish Republican background, and some, including Gerry Lawless,"''In 1965 he awlessset up the Irish Workers Group (IWG), the first Irish Trotskyist group since the 1940s. The IWG was small, but politically formative for a number of people who subsequently played significant roles in the Irish left – in particular, the leaders of People’s Democracy in the North.''Maverick socialist whose charm won him friends in unlikely places(Obituary of Gerald Lawless). ''The Irish Times'', 28 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Trotskyist
Trotskyism is the political ideology and branch of Marxism developed by Ukrainian-Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky and some other members of the Left Opposition and Fourth International. Trotsky self-identified as an orthodox Marxist, a revolutionary Marxist, and Bolshevik–Leninist, a follower of Marx, Engels, and 3L: Vladimir Lenin, Karl Liebknecht, and Rosa Luxemburg. He supported founding a vanguard party of the proletariat, proletarian internationalism, and a dictatorship of the proletariat (as opposed to the " dictatorship of the bourgeoisie", which Marxists argue defines capitalism) based on working-class self-emancipation and mass democracy. Trotskyists are critical of Stalinism as they oppose Joseph Stalin's theory of socialism in one country in favour of Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. Trotskyists criticize the bureaucracy and anti-democratic current developed in the Soviet Union under Stalin. Vladimir Lenin and Trotsky, despite their ideological disp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Maoist
Maoism, officially called Mao Zedong Thought by the Chinese Communist Party, is a variety of Marxism–Leninism that Mao Zedong developed to realise a socialist revolution in the agricultural, pre-industrial society of the Republic of China and later the People's Republic of China. The philosophical difference between Maoism and traditional Marxism–Leninism is that the peasantry is the revolutionary vanguard in pre-industrial societies rather than the proletariat. This updating and adaptation of Marxism–Leninism to Chinese conditions in which revolutionary praxis is primary and ideological orthodoxy is secondary represents urban Marxism–Leninism adapted to pre-industrial China. Later theoreticians expanded on the idea that Mao had adapted Marxism–Leninism to Chinese conditions, arguing that he had in fact updated it fundamentally, and that Maoism could be applied universally throughout the world. This ideology is often referred to as Marxism–Leninism–Maoism to ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
