Revolution Follow

For the third time in three years a spontaneous uprising has forced a neoliberal president to flee from a presidential palace in South America.

"BY SUPPORTING the struggles of the world's oppressed and exploited against capitalist globalisation, Socialist Worker has helped continue the internationalist tradition at the heart of socialist politics. At a time when other sections of the left have vacillated or capitulated in the face of the new imperialism, Socialist Worker has stood firm. It has provided activists throughout the UK with detailed and uncompromising arguments against Bush and Blair's 'war without end'." NEIL DAVIDSON, author of The Origins of Scottish Nationhood and Discovering the Scottish Revolution

"The workers loved L'Ordine Nuovo because in it they found something of themselves, the best part of themselves, because in it they sensed their own inner striving: how best can we be free? How can we become ourselves?" So wrote the 28 year old Italian revolutionary socialist Antonio Gramsci in August 1920.

HARTLEPOOL IS a town in revolt. Hundreds of ordinary people are up in arms about the toxic ships. And they are furious with a system that wants to turn their town into a dumping ground for polluted waste. Geoff Lilley, a former Labour councillor and bus driver, told Socialist Worker, "After it got out that the ships were coming here there was a near revolution by the public." He continues, "People on the protests are ordinary grandmothers and mothers. They have never done anything like this before."

In your area there may well be a longstanding Socialist Worker reader who has a video of the marvellous film about the Polish/German revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg. If so, borrow it. Among other outstanding scenes is one where Rosa Luxemburg's friends implore her to leave Berlin as the forerunners of the Nazi stormtroopers hunt her down.

The Russian Revolution began in February 1917 with an uprising that brought down the hated Tsar. By October a new government was founded led by the Bolsheviks. What happened?

Pravda (Truth) was a key part of the great wave of upheaval that swept Russia before the First World War. It was also important in taking forward the Russian Revolution of 1917.

THE anti-war protests around the world this weekend are another step in the development of a genuinely global movement of resistance to the present rulers of the world. Many protesters recognise that the problem goes much deeper than George W Bush and Tony Blair.

OLIVIER BESANCENOT is the young postal worker who shocked the French establishment when he won 1.2 million votes standing as a revolutionary socialist in the presidential election in April last year. One in seven of the people under 25 who voted backed Olivier. He is a leading member of the socialist Revolutionary Communist League. He spoke to Socialist Worker about the build-up in France towards the European Social Forum.

THE FRENCH Revolution between 1789 and 1794 was the first time in history that revolutionary newspapers played a decisive role in shaping the course of events. The revolution was the key battle in the birth of the modern capitalist world. It swept away the old feudal order of aristocrats and kings. In its place it forged a national state dominated by the middle class of merchants, doctors, lawyers.

Review of 'Discovering the Scottish Revolution', Neil Davidson, Pluto Press, £17.99

Vive la Revolution by Mark Steel is a lively and witty history of the French Revolution. It is an accessible history which reclaims the 1789 revolution from the widely held idea that it was a period of terror, murder and mayhem. Steel celebrates the revolution as a time when masses of disenfranchised people played a part in radically changing the society in which they lived.