By terrorism, Marxists mean attempts by individuals or small groups to achieve political or social change by carrying out acts of violence (political assassinations, taking of hostages, blowing up of buildings) against individual representatives of the ruling class. The purpose of such acts is to exert pressure on the ruling class to change its policies.

The lack of financial accountability of MPs revealed by the “Colston affair” highlights the fact that — contrary to the myths perpetuated by establishment political commentators in the capitalist media and in academia, as well as bourgeois politicians themselves — the parliamentary system exists to thwart rather than implement democracy (“rule by the people”).

In my opinion, Greg Ogle’s review of Katherine Gibson and Julie Graham’s book The End of Capitalism in GLW #256 concedes far too much to the drivel of these “post-modernists”. For example: He writes, “many on the left abandoned such economic reduction long ago [i.e., the Marxist understanding that “society is structured by class, of people and institutions being constrained (if not positively formed) by material conditions which ultimately relate to a particular production dynamic”], not least because of powerful feminist criticism that gender oppression could not be reduced to class.”

Comrade Chris Slee’s answer to the question of whose policy was confirmed by the October Revolution – Trotsky’s permanent revolution theory or the Bolsheviks’ policy of a “two-stage revolution” – seems to be that both were partially proved right and both were partially proved wrong.

The following two letters – to Melbourne branch member Chris Slee and to Green Left Weekly contributor Phil Shannon, respectively – were written in response to comments made by them in letters published in Green Left Weekly last year.

Dear Phil,

I thought it would be helpful to follow up the brief comments in my letter in this week’s Green Left with a direct letter to you on the points raised in your letter in GLW 211.

Rather than begin by responding to the specific arguments you raised in your letter, I think it will help clarify the issues if I begin with a general presentation of how I assess the differences between Lenin and Trotsky on the relationship between the bourgeois-democratic and socialist revolutions. I will then take up the specific arguments raised in your letter.