Legacy Series

Historic recording from 1977 of David Widgery's Skegness talk on Racism and The Blues.
The SWP Easter rally was held annually in Skegness.
The talk is principally about Bessie Smith and Billie Holiday and the racism that the suffered and resisted.

Dave Widgery: Racism and the Blues

Recorded April 1981 on the 600 anniversary of The Peasants Revolt.
In 1381 140,000 people from all over England converged on London to demand the withdrawal of The Poll Tax. It was the very beginnings of working peoples striving for control of their destiny.
SWP Easter Rally at Skegness

Paul Foot: Peasants Revolt of 1381

Possible the best Foot meeting of all time. A passionate plea for the recognition of the great struggle for freedom fought by the slaves of San Domingo to free themselves. In which they defeated the armies of the French, the British and the Spanish. Foot at his best.

To Toussaint L’Ouverture
William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
TOUSSAINT, the most unhappy man of men! 
Whether the whistling Rustic tend his plough 
Within thy hearing, or thy head be now 
Pillowed in some deep dungeon’s earless den;— 
O miserable Chieftain! where and when 5
Wilt thou find patience? Yet die not; do thou 
Wear rather in thy bonds a cheerful brow: 
Though fallen thyself, never to rise again, 
Live, and take comfort. Thou hast left behind 
Powers that will work for thee; air, earth, and skies; 10
There’s not a breathing of the common wind 
That will forget thee; thou hast great allies; 
Thy friends are exultations, agonies, 
And love, and man’s unconquerable mind.

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Paul Foot: Toussaint L'Ouverture

The story of Louise Michel and the Paris Commune. Edited transcript of the speech: https://www.marxists.org/archive/foot-paul/1979/xx/louisemichel.html

Paul Foot: Louise Michel and the Paris Commune

Roger Huddle: Art and Culture in the Revolution

An important debate from Marxism 1987 on how Marxists understand how things change.
Transcript of Harman article here:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/harman/1986/xx/base-super.html

"In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces.
The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real basis on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite form of social consciousness.
The mode of production of material life conditions the social, political and intellectual life process in general.
It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.
At a certain stage in their development the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or – what is but a legal expression for the same thing – the property relations within which they have been at work hitherto.
From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into fetters. Then begins an epoch of social revolution.
With the change of the economic foundation the entire immense superstructure is more or less rapidly transformed.
In considering such transformations, a distinction should always be made between the material transformation of the material conditions of production, which can be determined with
the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious, aesthetic or philosophical – in short ideological – forms in which men become conscious of the conflict and fight it out.
... We do not judge a period of transformation by its consciousness; on the contrary this consciousness must itself be explained from the contradictions of material life, from the existing conflicts between the social productive forces and the relations of production.
In broad outlines Asiatic, ancient, feudal, and modern bourgeois modes of production can be designated as progressive epochs in the economic foundation of society"
[Karl Marx: from the Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy].

Base and Superstructure

Debate: Base And Superstructure with Harman, Hallas, Callinicos and Barker

A talk by revolutionary socialist Tony Cliff on understanding racism.

Understanding Racism -Tony Cliff

In a meeting at Marxism 1995.
Bundist Majer Bogdanski was born in the Polish industrial city of Lodz, Majer became aware of workers' struggles and Jewish resistance to oppression at an early age, joining the youth movement of the Bund. During the Second World War he survived the Soviet gulag and fought in Italy, while his fiance and family back in Poland perished in the Holocaust.

Marxism 95

Witness To The Holocaust - Majer Bogdanski

Historic recording of Tony Cliff from 1974.
Cliff explains the difference between Lenin and Marx. He sees Lenin as grounded in the notion that the emancipation of the working class is the act of the working class. This enabled him to relate to workers and build an organisation of workers.

Lenin - Tony Cliff

From 1989
Revolutionary Marxist Tony Cliff discusses the origins of Mao's China. 
He demonstrates the devastation of it's base in the working class after 1927 and how the results of that manifest in 1949. Cliff looks at the links with Stalinism and its outcomes.

Marxism 89

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Mao and China - Tony Cliff

Recorded in 1989.
Veteran revolutionary Marxist Duncan Hallas discusses key question about socialists attitude to WW2. Was it an Imperialist war? Should socialists be for the defence of the UK in that war? What was the opinion of Lenin and Trotsky?

Skegness 1989

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Was WW2 an Imperialist War? - Duncan Hallas

Sound archive of recordings of meetings at Marxism Festival from the 1970's.
Most were originally recorded on cassette tape.
Curated by Dave Gilchrist

Legacy Series

The Bookmarks Marxism Sound Archive