Preface

We are publishing here two articles by Trotsky putting the socialist case against terrorism which are of great relevance today, with an introduction, The False Methods of Terrorism, by Peter Taaffe, General Secretary of the Socialist Party, written following the September 11 suicide attacks on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Building in the USA in 2001. (From The Socialist, 5 October, 2001).

Why Marxists Oppose Individual Terrorism,” by Leon Trotsky, first appeared in Der Kampf (“Struggle”), the theoretical monthly of the Austrian Social Democratic Party, which at that time claimed to base itself on Marxism.

The second article, “The Bankruptcy of Terrorism“, also by Leon Trotsky, first appeared in the Polish social democratic paper, Przeglad Socyaldemokratylczny, in May 1909.

In addition we publish an excerpt from “Marxism Opposes Individual Terrorism” by Peter Taaffe, which relates the fundamental ideas dealt with in Trotsky’s articles to the rise of terrorism in the 1970’s, and was first printed in the British Militant, paper of the Militant tendency, the forerunner of the Socialist Party, in November 1975.