Groucho Marxism
Questions and answers on socialism, Marxism, and related topics
Category: History
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The Cuban Revolution was a left-wing movement that overthrew the dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista, who had ruled Cuba from 1952 to 1959. The revolution was led by Fidel Castro and his brother Raúl, who began by launching an armed assault on the Moncada Barracks, a Cuban military post, in 1953. The attack was a failure…
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If 2026 has had a theme so far, it has been US imperialism. The year has already seen US interventions in Venezuela and Iran, and threats of future interventions elsewhere, such as in Colombia and Greenland. Many seem to be surprised by these events, but they really shouldn’t be. The US has a long history…
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For billions of people around the world, the meaning of Christmas centres on the birth of Jesus. However, Jesus almost certainly wasn’t born on Christmas day. Jesus’ birthday is not stated in the gospels or in any historical sources and the evidence is too incomplete to allow for consistent dating; all that can be said…
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I recently attended a lively group discussion on the English revolution. I have to confess that prior to attending this discussion I wasn’t aware that England had even had a revolution. That’s because the English revolution is usually referred to by another name: the ‘English Civil War’. Of course I was aware that England had…
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Critics of socialism (or Marxism) love to point out how many people died in socialist regimes. Particular examples they like to cite are the Soviet Famine of 1932-1933 which killed around 6 million people, and the Chinese Famine of 1959-1961 which killed around 30 million people. These numbers seem shocking, but as any quantitative social…
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The American Civil War is usually portrayed as a battle of freedom vs. slavery, of good vs. evil. The truth, however, is rather different. The war began in 1861 and lasted four years, ending in 1865. At the time the war broke out, pretty much the entire world had already given up on slavery, or…
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The Luddites were a group of workers in the cotton industry who lived in northern England (Nottinghamshire, Lancashire, and Yorkshire) in the early 19th century. They take their name from Ned Ludd, an apocryphal figure said to have smashed machines back in 1799, although he did not share the later Luddites’ motivations. In modern parlance,…
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Today marks the 52nd anniversary of the overthrow of Chile’s left-wing Popular Unity government led by Salvador Allende, who had been elected President of Chile just three years earlier. Popular Unity had defeated the conservative Christian Democrat government which had been discredited in the eyes of workers by its failure to implement social reforms. These…
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The EU’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, recently created a diplomatic incident by questioning Russia and China’s contribution to winning WWII. This did not go down well with the Russians and Chinese, as you might imagine. But her claim is in accordance with the standard account of WWII we are taught in UK, which is basically…
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We are currently seeing a rise of right-wing population across the Western world. In the UK, Reform, an openly racist party, is leading in the opinion polls; and in the US, populist president Donald Trump seems to be attempting to act like a medieval king. It’s not all bad news though. In the UK, the…
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