Post-structuralism, the philosophical rationale of contemporary “post-modernist discourse”, presents itself as a radically new view of the world. However, in many ways it is simply a reincarnation of existentialism, which conceives of nature and society as dominated by accident and chance and stresses the meaningless of human existence.

This book by Frederick Engels explains the origins of the modem socialist movement. It is probably the most influential work expounding the basic ideas of Marxism, other than the Communist Manifesto.

As Engels himself explains in his introduction to the first English edition, published in 1892, it was drawn from three chapters of his 1878 book Anti-Dühring, a polemic against the views of Eugen Dühring, a professor at Berlin University. In his lectures and numerous writings which flooded the book market after 1869, Dühring claimed to be the originator of a “revolution in science” which superseded Marxism.

Resistance, the socialist youth organisation in political solidarity with the Democratic Socialist Party, was the organiser of the impressive high-school walkouts and protests against racism and One Nation that were held around the country in July.

The memorable year 1968 – a momentous year for the left and the newly radicalising young people of the time, and an almost historical, legendary year for the young rebels of today. A popular slogan was coined at the time: “We are the people our parents warned us about!” Well, they’re still the people your parents are warning you about, except for those parents who themselves were part of it at the time, who radicalised then, and kept their ideals and fire and hopes alive.

Leon Trotsky was one of the outstanding Marxist revolutionaries of the 20th century. A leading figure in the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party from the time of its second congress in 1903, after joining the Bolsheviks in July 1917, Trotsky rapidly became one of its central leaders. When the Bolsheviks won a majority in the Petrograd soviet (council) of workers’ and soldiers’ deputies, Trotsky was elected its president and in that capacity headed the organisation of the insurrection of November 7 (October 25 in the tsarist calendar).

The collapse of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the disintegration of the USSR is undoubtedly the most significant development in world politics since the Second World War. In immediate terms, it has provoked widespread ideological confusion and demoralisation within the international workers’ movement, and on the other side, gloating by the capitalist rulers and their apologists.

One of the traditions on which Direct Action built is that of the old Industrial Workers of the World, who were the first publishers of a paper with this name in Australia. The IWW was formed in Chicago in 1905, and by the outbreak of WWI was well established in Australia. The IWW – otherwise known as the Wobblies – set out to be an industrial union uniting all workers in the struggle against the bosses. But it was also a revolutionary organisation based on a dedicated membership preaching the doctrines of all-out class struggle and the fight for a new social order.

In September 1944 the Communist Party of Australia had reached 23,000 members. It had led mass struggles of the unemployed during the 1930s. It had developed substantial support amongst Australian workers. During the late ‘40s CPA members occupied leadership positions in unions representing nearly half the organised working class. At the end of WWII the CPA had 4000 of its members in the armed forces. Its national weekly had a circulation in the tens of thousands, and it published separate weekly papers in Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and South Australia as well.