Tony Cliff on Lenin and Trotsky

Can you imagine anything more exciting than the news that the first two volumes of Tony Cliff's biography of Lenin and the full four volumes of his biography of Trotsky are now online in their entirety?

Well, lets face it, in all likelihood you can. But this is surely still a landmark event in the history of the internet and a tribute to the people over at the Marxists Internet Archive. For those who have not already got these works in print (which, lets face it given they are pretty much all out of print and some volumes - for example the last volume of the Trotsky quartet - are next to impossible to get hold of for love nor money is quite a lot of people) this is an important advance. While these biographies - like Cliff's 1959 study of Rosa Luxemburg - make no pretence of being 'definitive' studies - and naturally they have their limitations - the appearance of them online can only serve to raise the general level of discussion about the rich past legacy of classical Bolshevism as well as to help educate a new generation in the theory and practice of revolutionary Marxism.

Lenin 1: Building the Party (1893-1914), Pluto Press, London, 1975.

Lenin 2: All Power to the Soviets (1914-1917), Pluto Press, London, 1976.

Trotsky: Towards October 1879-1917, Bookmarks, London 1989.

Trotsky: 2. The Sword of the Revolution 1917-1923, Bookmarks, London 1990

Trotsky: 3. Fighting the rising Stalinist bureaucracy 1923-1927, Bookmarks, London 1991.

Trotsky: 4. The darker the night the brighter the star 1927-1940, Bookmarks, London 1993.