Events

On 13-14 January, tens of thousands of people from across Europe gathered in Berlin to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht. Despite the poor weather, this year’s demonstration was one of the largest and most militant events that Berlin has seen in the recent period; a clear sign of the political polarisation and class consciousness that is developing as a result of the intensifying capitalist crisis.

The marvellous national convention of the Progressive Youth Alliance was held in Lahore on 15 December, with the main demands of free education for all and restoration of student unions. Revolutionary students and unemployed youth from across the country gathered to discuss problems faced by the youth and how to organise to overcome them.

On the weekend of 16 November 2018, the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) held its second Francophone school in Geneva. During those two days, more than 70 activists and sympathisers participated in the school, coming from Switzerland, Belgium, and France; as well as Quebec, England and Germany.

On 22 November, at the Leon Trotsky House Museum in Mexico City, Alan Woods began his talk on the English Revolution by saying that, while postmodernists claim there are no laws in history and that it is impossible to understand, there are recurrent processes and even familiar characters across the centuries. Similar material conditions provoke historical phenomena with certain similarities.

On Monday, dozens of young people and workers assembled in the auditorium of the Leon Trotsky House Museum to listen to a speech by Alan Woods, leader of the International Marxist Tendency. The event was about the ideas of Karl Marx, 200 years since his birth. The day (November 20), could not be more appropriate, as it also marked the anniversary of the beginning of the Mexican Revolution.

On the weekend of 10-11 November, the NYC comrades of the International Marxist Tendency hosted the 2018 Northeast Regional Marxist School. There was record turnout for an IMT event in the USA, with nearly 90 registered attendees from Boston, Philadelphia, New York, New Jersey, Pittsburgh, Washington, DC, Minneapolis, Toronto, Montreal – and London!

This weekend saw the annual, national school of Revolution, the Swedish section of the International Marxist Tendency, which took place in Gothenburg. Over 90 enthusiastic revolutionaries from all over the country gathered to prepare for a rise in the class struggle in the coming period, which will offer great possibilities for Marxists.

Revolution: that was the banner under which Switzerland’s biggest, Marxist weekend school took place on 7-8 October. 100 enthusiastic Marxists from Switzerland, France, Italy, Germany and Austria met in Nidau/Biel in the heart of Switzerland to discuss how to achieve socialism in our lifetimes.

On 19-21 October, around 300 Marxists from Britain, Europe and beyond gathered in London for the annual Revolution Festival. This year’s festival commemorated the inspiring events of 1968, half a century on. The weekend provided an inspirational experience for all comrades present, with the political level of contributions throughout the discussions being higher than ever before.

The British Marxists of Socialist Appeal will be hosting the Revolution Festival 2018, starting tonight at 7pm (London time) and running over the weekend. The event will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the revolutionary year of 1968, in addition to providing a range of discussions and panels on topics such as Marxism and the black struggle, the fight for women's suffrage, resisting the far right, AI and human consciousness, the US-China trade war, and much, much more! Many of these sessions will be livestreamed to the Socialist Appeal Facebook page, so our international audience can

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Kashmir Marxist School

A two-day Marxist School was held in Rawalakot, Kashmir in which over one-hundred comrades participated from across Pakistan and Kashmir. Despite difficult economic conditions, long distances and sweltering heat, comrades arrived with great enthusiasm to take part in these discussions demonstrating their commitment to the ideas of Marxism. Preparatory schools were also held in various cities in which all the suggested topics were discussed in detail.

Between 24-29 July, 370 Marxists from more than 25 countries gathered in the Italian Alps for the 2018 congress of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT). In years to come we believe this congress will be remembered as a turning point in the effort to build a worldwide organisation capable of leading the working class in the struggle to overthrow capitalism.

The electric mood that filled the US IMT Congress flowed from the political confidence of the comrades in our ideas and in the revolutionary destiny of our class. Nine months before the Bolsheviks successfully led the working class to power and established the first workers’ state, Lenin addressed a gathering of socialist youth in Zurich: “We of the older generation may not live to see the decisive battles of this coming revolution.” In the forty weeks that followed, the Bolshevik Party proceeded to grow from a membership of 8,000 to 250,000 and won over the vast majority of the working class to the program of socialist revolution.

On 23 May, more than 70 students and workers gathered at Ryerson University in Toronto, Canada for Fightback’s event on the Sexual Revolution in the Soviet Union. Presenting on the topic was Fred Weston, editor of the In Defense of Marxism website and author of a recent series of articles on sexuality in the USSR. While over 100 years later the social advances made by the Russian Revolution of 1917 are still widely misunderstood, if not entirely erased by mainstream and pro-capitalist versions of history, Fred’s presentation cut through all the misinformation and laid bare both the real gains and limitations of the revolution. He explained that to learn the real lessons for the struggle

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More than 140 revolutionaries gathered in Toronto, Canada on the May long weekend for the 18th annual congress of Fightback/La Riposte Socialiste, the supporters of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) in Canada and Quebec. Fifty years since the May 1968 revolution in France, workers and youth from Toronto, Edmonton, Montreal, London, Waterloo, and Oshawa discussed the possibilities for a new revolution. The record turnout, up from 110 in 2017, marked yet another advance for the forces of Marxism. The rapid growth of Fightback in the last period was highlighted by the fact that when we asked which of our attendees had joined the movement in the past two years, more than half the

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One decade on from the onset of the Great Recession, and British society is undergoing a series of crises: economic, political, and social. The status quo has broken; the centre ground has collapsed; political polarisation and radicalisation is taking place everywhere.