On February 3, 120 socialists took part in a Toronto meeting to celebrate publication of Toward the United Front: Proceedings of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, 1922, available in paperback from Haymarket Books. This 1,300-page volume is the seventh book of documents on the world revolutionary movement in Lenin’s time edited by John Riddell. Riddell’s address to the Toronto meeting, below, explains the purpose of the book and the publishing project. For the video record, see LeftStreamed. Read more…
By Sarah Berliner. Toward the United Front, John Riddell’s edition of the Communist International’s Fourth Congress, is “an outstanding achievement in the recuperation of pivotal historical experiences for the revolutionary left of today and the future,” Marxist author David McNally told an enthusiastic gathering of 120 people in Toronto, March 3.
The Fourth Congress proceedings, 1,300 pages long, make up the seventh installment in a series of documentary volumes edited by Riddell, which present a record of the world revolutionary movement in Lenin’s time. The soft-cover edition has just been published by Haymarket Books. Read more…
By John Sharkey. This guest article expands on a presentation to a study session on “Toward the United Front”. As a Toronto community activist living in the Bain Apartments Housing Cooperative, affectionately known as The Bain, it was an eye-opener to read the debates on the role of the co-operative sector during the Russian Revolution. Read more…
The following interview with John Riddell was conducted by Andrew Sernatinger, an activist and journalist based in Madison, Wisconsin. It was originally published in New Socialist Webzine.
Can you explain what’s happening in Canada with the tar sands pipelines, what they are, and what they’re going to do?
It really starts with Canada’s rulers. They have a dream that Canada is going to become the new world oil superpower. The oil that is locked up in Canada’s tar sands is greater in quantity than all the conventional oil reserves in the world put together. The tar sands could make Canada a rival to Saudi Arabia on the world oil market. Read more…
By John Riddell. This year marks the fortieth anniversary of the U.S.-inspired rightist coup in Chile that overthrew the leftist government of Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973. The coup was a historic disaster for working people in Latin America and globally. Socialists worldwide saw it coming. How did they attempt to counter this danger? Read more…
A popularly priced paperback edition of the Communist International Fourth Congress proceedings is now available from Haymarket Books.
The Chicago-based socialist publisher is shipping Toward the United Front: Proceedings of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, 1922, edited by John Riddell, for US$55 per copy.
Read more…
By John Riddell. The following five study guides are designed for use by any group of readers, anywhere in the world, to enable them to organize participatory study sessions on the Fourth Congress of the Communist International (1922) without the assistance of a teacher.
The readings are available in John Riddell, ed., Toward the United Front: Proceedings of the Fourth Congress of the Communist International, 1922, Leiden: Brill 2012; Chicago: Haymarket, 2012. Many of the texts are available online at Marxists Internet Archive. For more information on text availability, please contact this website. — JR
The five topics are:
- For an anti-imperialist united front
- United front and workers’ government
- The Comintern’s struggle for social hegemony
- Toward an alliance with working farmers
- Women at the Fourth Comintern Congress
The following brief talk on work by the Communist International to gather material aid for the Soviet Republic was given by Suzanne Weiss at the fourth Toronto study session on Toward the United Front, a 1,300-page edition the Fourth Communist International Congress (1922). Read more…
Speaking in Toronto, November 17, conference against tar sands pipelines, Art Sterritt of the Coastal First Nations in British Columbia gave a dramatic account of his peoples’ initiatives for ecological justice in the province. Sterritt is among the main spokespersons of the powerful campaign in B.C. against tar sands pipelines.
Sterritt’s talk (below) offers insight into three important issues in current Canadian social struggles: Read more…
By John Riddell. We have been having study sessions in Toronto on Toward the United Front, my book publishing the Fourth Comintern Congress proceedings, now available in paperback from Haymarket Books. Here’s my account of a recent session on discussion of anti-colonial struggle at the congress, reprinted from Socialist Worker (Canada). Read more…
By John Riddell. The November 17 conference, “The Tar Sands Come to Ontario: No Line 9,” was a big success. Three hundred people jammed into a lecture theatre at University of Toronto for the plenary session. Every seat was taken, more than 50 people stood or sat in the aisles, and an equal number listened from just outside the door.
The unusually large turnout for an educational teach-in shows clearly that there is now a basis for organized public initiatives against the threat of hazardous tar sands oil being piped across southern Ontario and Quebec through Enbridge Inc.’s “Line 9.” Read more…
By John Riddell. Nicaragua’s adoption this year of a sweeping law for prevention and punishment of violence against women marks an important gain for women’s rights in this Central American country, says Sandra Ramos, founder and director of the “Maria Elena Cuadra” Movement for Working and Unemployed Women (MEC).
Addressing a meeting at Casa Maíz in Toronto November 9, Ramos noted that “the law recognizes that there is hatred of women and strongly penalises physical violence against them. It also widens the concept to encompass psychological violence.” Read more…
By John Riddell. A day-long grassroots conference in Toronto on Saturday, Nov. 17 will discuss plans by Enbridge Inc. to pipe dangerous tar sands crude from Sarnia to Montreal through its Line 9. The event, “The Tar Sands Come to Ontario: Stop Line 9,” will be held from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Sidney Smith Hall, 100 St. George St. Read more…
By John Riddell. On September 7, 2012, Toronto socialists presented and discussed the thoughts of delegates to the Communist International’s Fourth World Congress, 90 years earlier, on the freedom struggle in the colonies and semi-colonies. Six of these short talks are reproduced below, with the presenters’ permission. For a description of how this innovative study session was organized, see “Self-guided Tours of Revolutionary History.” Read more…
By John Riddell. The Canadian government’s present plan to build a pipeline carrying environmentally disastrous tar-sands oil through northern B.C. “has prompted an outpouring of opposition unlike anything seen in years,” wrote Les Whittington in the Toronto Star on September 9. He quoted Green Party leader Elizabeth May as saying the pipeline was unlikely to be built, “because the level of public unrest over this will be sufficient to force [Prime Minister Stephen] Harper out of office.”
Far-fetched? Not really. There is a precedent in 1957, when a pipeline controversy galvanized public opposition to the Liberal government, ultimately driving it from office. And I, as a 15-year-old Toronto high school student, played a role in that drama – a small role – or perhaps not so small. Read more…