"Using the method of contrasts, we compare their ideas and ours on how best to take the left forward. But our arguments are not directed solely at the SWP and its supporters in the British and international labour movement. There are also organisations and groupings which have a similar approach. This book is a critique of what we believe are wrong methods in general, which in the crucial task of forging a new Marxist force can be a barrier to building a new mass workers' left party in Britain. Our task above all is to seek to educate the new generation of workers and young people who will be moved into action by the great events that impend in Britain and worldwide. Many will investigate the credentials - including the history of all organisations - before engaging with them. A serious examination - which we aim for here - would show that the SWP in its fundamental ideas, its approach and, above all, its method has been found wanting. Unless they change, they can still have a negative effect in the battles to come."

- From the preface

See the review in the Socialist 560

The propertied classes have often accused socialists in struggle against exploitation of 'terrorism' while the terror of capitalist rulers provokes resistance. Trotsky shows that the working class is the only social force capable of changing societ

Millions of people's hopes were raised when New Labour was elected in 1997. Since then, these hopes have been cruelly dashed. The New Labour government has shown since it came to power that it is firmly on the side of big business. Blair and his ministers have attacked working conditions, the welfare system, free education, public services and are now bringing private companies into the NHS and schools. Despite huge levels of protest, the war and occupation of Iraq continues and has so far cost £5 billion of public money in Britain alone.

As the harsh realities of the government's policies are realised by more and more people, opposition to New Labour is growing. This pamphlet argues that an essential part of making that opposition effective is the building of a new mass workers party.

May 2006 marked the eighteeth anniversary of the 1926 General Strike in Britain - the most important and earth-shattering moment in the history of the British working class. To commemorate it and, more importantly, to draw out the lessons from this movement, Peter Taaffe has written this book outlining the course of the nine days that shook British capitalism to its foundations.

It is more than a narrative and chronology of the events themselves, although this will be important for those newer to the movement. Following the public-sector workers' strike during March 2006, the biggest strike of the British working class since 1926, it discusses the use of the demand for a general strike. But it particularly deals with the revolutionary possibilities of the General Strike and the question of whether the fledgling Communist Party of Great Britain had the right strategy, programme and tactics to take full advantageof the strike and the period.

See interview with the author '1926 General Strike: 9 Days That Shook Britain' in the Socialist 438

The ancient Greek philosopher Anaximander once wrote that the heavens and the worlds within them began in a "sphere of fire", arising from some unbounded chaos. Some 2,400 years later, Friedrich Engels echoed Anaximander's dialectic: "Everything that comes into being must pass away."

Science, Marxism and the Big Bang discusses some of the great philosophies and scientific discoveries of cosmology - including those of Aristotle, Galileo, Newton, Kant, Hegel, Engels and Einstein. This discussion dispels the misconceptions of Reason in Revolt - the book by Ted Grant and Alan Woods that claims to expound the fundamentals of Marxism - in particular that the Big Bang theory is just another "creation myth".

Engels praised Immanuel Kant's theory of the "origin of all existing celestial bodies". Peter Mason argues that Engels' outlook is compatible with modern theories of our universe.

The great French revolution signalled the end of feudalism in France and laid the basis for modern capitalist society. Yet today the historians of the ruling class try to deny their own heritage. They are petrified of new revolutionary upheavals - this time led by the powerful working class towards the overthrow of capitalism.

The true history of the revolution is still rich for the working class today: on the heroic will of the sans-cullotes to do away with the old order, on the ebbs and the flows of the revolutionary process, on the development of Bonapartism - the forerunner of modern military dictatorships and on the revolutionary tasks in societies where elements of feudalism remain.

This book, first published in 1989, above all unearths the true history of the struggle of the oppressed and draws out vital lessons for the class struggle today.

Read the review 'The Masses Arise: The French revolution and today's struggles' in the Socialist 583

A million seller in the USA, Out of the Night was originally published in four English editions and five other languages. Acclaimed and attacked, it was outlawed in Germany, Italy and Russia. Valtin, who is both an heroic and a tragic figure, takes the reader to the upheavals of Germany 1918-23, then to the four corners of the globe following his travels as a revolutionary sailor.

Through his eyes, it is possible to re-live the hopes and the the agonies of a whole generation of German workers as fascism crushed them in its terrible vice. Valtin's description of the barbarous tortures of the Gestapo after his capture makes the blood run cold. Despite the persecution of the author at the hands of both the Gestapo and the Kremlin secret police, Out of the Night above all shows the power and self-sacrificing heroism possessed by workers in struggle. It is republished now in English for the first time since the 1940s.

Analysis of the Spanish Revolution and Civil War, including the role of the POUM, Stalinists and Anarchists.

"The Vietnam War was the longest conflict of the twentieth century – unfolding over 30 years, 10,000 days in length. This war left an indelible impression worldwide in the minds of the generation who lived through these tumultuous events. It helped to form the ‘1960s generation’ of young people who participated in and sometimes led mass movements and demonstrations against the established order of world capitalism. It was a powerful factor in the revolt of the student youth, who sympathised with the Vietnamese masses and their tenacious resistance to US imperialism...

"The implacability of the Vietnamese, their refusal to bow to the military might of the US, lit a fire under the US ruling class in the form of a mass antiwar movement which compelled it to withdraw from Vietnam."

- From the introduction

See interview with the author in the Socialist 324

Lenin's April Theses was written when he arrived back in Russia in April 1917. He argues that the working class, leading the exploited peasantry, should take power and begin to carry out a socialist transformation of society. All other options would end with a brutal counter-revolution.

Now new revolutions are taking place. Millions have risen up across the Middle East demanding democracy and an end to poverty. Imperialism is colluding with the national capitalist classes to ensure that no regime comes to power that threatens their interests. These ongoing revolutions demonstrate beyond doubt that capitalism does not offer a way forward. The main ideas outlined by Lenin apply just as much to Tunisia and Egypt today as they did to Russia in April 1917.