Tony Cliff

The unchanging core of Marxism

December 2, 2017 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

ON OCTOBER 14, 2017, Efraim Carlebach interviewed Ian Birchall at Birchall’s home in Edmonton, north London. In 1962, Birchall joined the International Socialists, a tendency led by Tony Cliff and the organizational forerunner of the extant Socialist Workers Party (UK), founded in 1977. Though he is no longer a member of the Socialist Workers Party, Birchall has remained a leading figure of the International Socialist tendency for over half a century. [Read More]

Cliffites 'bend the stick' like a reed in the wind

A Response to James Heartfield

October 26, 2014 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

SPEAKING FOR THE International Bolshevik Tendency (IBT) at the Left Forum, Jason Wright recently observed, “It seems for a while now that it has been the desire of Platypus to have a three-way conversation be tween New Left Maoism (as one of the more palatable faces of Stalinism), orthodox Trotskyism,” and Platypus themselves, who tend to put speakers in situations significantly less comfortable than their catechistic internal meetings. At a roundtable with the IBT, Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), and Platypus, it would be difficult to discern which group has done a larger disservice to the workers’ movement. [Read More]

James Heartfield SWP (UK) Cliffism Tony Cliff

Tony Cliff's legacy today

International Socialism and the tradition of Lenin and Trotsky

July 4, 2014 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

I became a Trotskyist in 1933. The theory of state capitalism is a development of Trotsky’s position… But at the end of the Second World War, the perspectives that Trotsky had put forward were not realized. Trotsky wrote that one thing was certain: the Stalinist bureaucracy would not survive the war. It would either be overthrown by revolution or by counterrevolution… The assumption was that the collapse of the Stalinist bureaucracy would be a fantastic opening for the Trotskyist movement, for the Fourth International. [Read More]

James Heartfield Tony Cliff Cliffism SWP (UK)

What is Cliffism worth?

A response to James Heartfield

April 1, 2014 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

JAMES HEARTFIELD’S REVIEW of Ian Birchall’s biography of Tony Cliff, founder of the British Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and therefore of the International Socialist Tendency, is a curious affair.1 Heartfield fails his readers by declining to situate himself in the story, as a champion of the changing perspectives of the late British Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP), unique among British left groups in having evolved from Trotskyism first to a neither-left-nor-right iconoclasm and then to a pro-market libertarianism. [Read More]

Cliffism SWP (UK) Tony Cliff

The anti-political party

Book Review: Ian Birchall. 'Tony Cliff: A Marxist for His Time'. London: Bookmarks, 2011.

April 1, 2013 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

THE SOCIALIST WORKERS PARTY (SWP) is the largest political party left of the Labour Party, and has been active on the far left since 1977 and before that as the International Socialists since the 1960s. The party was led by Tony Cliff until his death thirteen years ago, and Ian Birchall, who has written this diligently researched memoir, is still a member since joining in the 1960s. Birchall’s “warts-and-all” examination is motivated by a marked unhappiness about A World To Win, the autobiography which Cliff apparently wrote based on recollection, without access to the relevant documentation. [Read More]

Book Review Tony Cliff Socialist Workers Party (UK) Ian Birchall SWP (UK) Cliffism Ian Birchall

Trotsky and Trotskyism, Lecture 7

1953--1963

July 28, 2012 | The Platypus Affiliated Society

Part 7 of the Summer 2012 Platypus Affiliated Society Primary Reading Group Lecture Series: Trotsky and Trotskyism. Recorded on 21st July, 2012 at The New School, New York. Audio Recording Your browser does not support the audio element Week 7 Readings * recommended / * supplemental reading Cornelius Castoriadis, “The workers and organization” (1959) * Cliff Slaughter, “What is revolutionary leadership?” (1960) * Revolutionary Tendency of the Socialist Workers Party/U. [Read More]

Castoriadis Cliff Slaughter Cornelius Castoriadis Deutscher Genesis of Pabloism Hal Draper Isaac Deutscher Marxism Murray Bookchin Spartacist League Tony Cliff Leon Trotsky Trotskyism