On this day in 1940, Trotsky died of injuries inflicted by a Stalinist agent. Despite the lies of Stalin’s epigones, there is nothing in Trotsky’s ideas that cannot also be found in Lenin. The two men reached the same political conclusions and led the Russian Revolution to victory in 1917, at the head of the Bolshevik Party. Both understood the necessity of world revolution; and after Lenin died, Trotsky continued to defend his real ideas and legacy against Stalin’s bureaucratic counterrevolution. It was for this reason that he was marked for death.

Today, 25 April, is a day of celebration in Italy. It is the anniversary of the final fall of the hated Fascist regime in 1945. The official history books tell us that the anti-fascist movement, the hundreds of thousands of armed partisans who fought in the resistance, were fighting for a democratic republic, which is what was finally established. This ignores the fact that what was taking place was a social revolution – not just for democracy, but for workers’ power. In this brilliant text written in 1930 – 15 years before these events – Leon Trotsky predicted that a “democratic republic”, i.e. a bourgeois-democratic regime, would only emerge from a defeat of the revolutionary

Today is the 175th anniversary of the publication of that founding document of the Marxist movement, the Communist Manifesto. Written in 1847 by Marx and Engels, and published the following year, the Manifesto retains an astonishing vitality today. Indeed, it is more relevant now than when it was written. We publish below an article by Trotsky written in 1937 on the occasion of the Manifesto's 90th anniversary.

Thousands tuned in for an online rally on 25 November to launch a Brazilian campaign in support of the Leon Trotsky House Museum in Mexico. The meeting was hosted and introduced by Roberto Robaina a PSOL (Party of Socialism and Freedom) councillor in Porto Alegre and leader of the MES tendency within the party, Serge Goulart (from the Esquerda Marxista, Brazilian section of the IMT) and Israel Dutra, the PSOL International Relations Officer. Speaking at the meeting were Esteban Volkov, Trotsky’s grandson, Gabriela Noriega, the Museum’s Director, Leonardo Padura, the renowned Cuban writer who wrote “The Man Who

We republish here the ‘Report on the World Economic Crisis and the New Tasks of the Communist International’, written by Leon Trotsky in June 1921. In this masterpiece of perspectives, which is highly relevant to the world situation to day, Trotsky analyses the nature of the organic, global crisis of capitalism, of a system being suffocated by its own mountains of debt, speculation and inflation.

Since we launched our appeal to help save the Trotsky Museum last Thursday, we have raised no less than €7,700. This is a great achievement but we would like your help to raise even more.

In the year 2000 we published this article by Leon Trotsky on capitalist development. The purpose then was to underline the fact that although capitalism was experiencing a boom, the period we had entered was actually one of overall capitalist decline. As we explained in the introduction “Rather than a new upswing, capitalism is heading for a new slump and a downward curve of development similar to the interwar period.” This was confirmed by the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent events. We are republishing it as an aid to understanding the period we have been through and where we are going.

（编按：本文为《保卫马克思主义》网站主编艾伦·伍兹（Alan Woods）为国际马克思主义趋势(IMT）印尼支部出版发行的《过渡纲领》印尼文版所写的序言，原文于2012年5月15日发表）

（編按：本文為《保衛馬克思主義》網站主編艾倫·伍茲（Alan Woods）為國際馬克思主義趨勢(IMT）印尼支部出版發行的《過渡綱領》印尼文版所寫的序言，原文於2012年5月15日發表）

The following are new translations of excerpts from Trois points c’est tout by Fred Zeller (1912-2003). Zeller, who, at the time, was the secretary of the Seine (Paris) Young Socialists and a sympathiser of the Trotskyist movement in the mid-1930s, visited Trotsky in Norway at the end of October 1935. This was at the time when the Socialist Party leaders were expelling the left from the Young Socialists as well as dissolving the Bolshevik Leninist tendency, whose members had joined the SFIO in late 1934.

The following letters, originally in Russian, were only recently found in the police files on Andres Nin in the National Historical Archives in Madrid (Ministerio de gobernación, policía [histórico], h.394). This material represents a significant historical discovery. Most importantly, Trotsky’s correspondence is an important political weapon for today’s revolutionary movement.

Re-visiting the question of the United States of Europe in the wake of the war and the creation of the Soviet Union, Trotsky once again put forward the slogan of a “United States of Europe” in his 1923 article, "Is the Time Ripe for the Slogan: ‘The United States of Europe’" published in Pravda. Again, Trotsky emphasises the revolutionary significance of the demand for the democratic unification of Europe but this time with an even clearer class content, asserting that the demand for a United States of Europe cannot be isolated from the demand for a “Workers’ Government”.

On 21 August 1940, Leon Trotsky, the great revolutionary leader of the October Revolution, died in Mexico, murdered by a Stalinist agent. We publish his autobiography with forewords by In Defence of Marxism editor, Alan Woods, and Trotsky's grandson, Esteban Volkov.

My high (and still rising) blood pressure is deceiving those near me about my actual condition. I am active and able to work but the outcome is evidently near. These lines will be made public after my death.

Today marks the anniversary of Leon Trotsky’s assassination. Struck down 78 years ago by an ice-pick to the head from a cowardly Stalinist assassin, he soon fell into a coma and died the following day, 21^st August 1940. Here we republish an article from the anniversary in 2012, the fight for Trotsky's ideas remain as relevant as ever and we commemorate the life and ideas of this inspiring revolutionary, theoretician and leader.