The following lecture was delivered by Socialist Equality Party (UK) National Secretary Chris Marsden to public meetings in Sheffield, Manchester, Inverness, London and Glasgow, marking the centenary of the 1926 general strike.
The radicalism of the youth of the 1960 was not "drug inspired." It was a response to Vietnam, the struggle for civil rights, and, even more fundamentally, the fresh and not-forgotten horrors of the two World Wars. The 1917 October Revolution had not disappeared from memory, capitalism and anti-communism were in bad odor, Stalinism was increasingly discredited, and there was a revival of interest in Trotsky, whose extraordinary books were recognized as political and literary masterworks. This resurgence was suppressed by the reactionary political climate of the Reagan-Thatcher years to which Mr. Luce was exposed, to his own misfortune, during his intellectually formative years.
But Mr. Luce correctly detects a process of radicalization among the world's youth. The question is, at what point will this radicalization break beyond the bounds of the media-vetted pseudo-leftism of people like Sanders and Mamdani and reestablish contact with the the genuine Marxian-socialist political perspective and culture that was exemplified in the October Revolution and figures like Lenin, Trotsky and Luxemburg. This break must and will occur, and the rediscovery of Trotsky's extraordinary political legacy and writing will be a critical element of the reemergence of Marxism as a mass socialist movement based on the working class.
The way forward is the one the working class is being driven to forge in country after country: independent organization, new institutions of struggle, and a conscious break with the bureaucracies that have served as the principal obstacle to the international workers’ movement.
"There is nothing more improbable, impossible, and fantastic than a revolution the hour before it breaks out, and there is nothing simpler, more natural, and self-evident than a revolution after it has fought its first battle and won its first victory." Rosa Luxemburg, 1905
The May Day rally of the International Committee of the Fourth International denounced the Iran War and declared solidarity with all class war prisoners. The ICFI stressed that 2026 has witnessed the resurgence of a global working class movement against capitalism.