In Defense of Marxism: Against the petty-bourgeois opposition in the Socialist Workers Party

Writing in 1939-40, Leon Trotsky replies to those in the revolutionary workers movement who were beating a retreat from defense of the Soviet Union in face of looming imperialist assault.

He describes how the rising pressures of bourgeois patriotism in the middle classes during Washington’s buildup to enter the spreading imperialist war in Europe were finding an echo even inside the communist movement. And he explains why only a party that fights to bring growing numbers of workers into its ranks and leadership can steer a steady revolutionary course.