The Heritage We Defend by David North has been published in Turkish and is available for immediate purchase through Mehring Yay ıncılık (Mehring Publishing), and soon through Mehring Books and Mehring Verlag. Along with The Heritage We Defend, Mehring Yayıncılık has also published four other important books and pamphlets: Castroism and the Politics of Petty-Bourgeois Nationalism; 2017 International May Day Online Rally; The Historical and International Foundations of the Socialist Equality Party (US); and Socialism and the Fight Against War .
In a country where the working class and socialist movement in general has been dominated by Stalinism, Maoism and petty-bourgeois nationalist tendencies for decades, these books are of prime importance in developing socialist consciousness among workers and youth. Publications of the contemporary Marxist literature produced by the world Trotskyist movement in Turkish, we believe, will contribute to the laying of the theoretical and political foundation for the building of the Turkish section of the International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI).
The Heritage We Defend
For Turkish readers, North’s book is essential in providing a detailed review of the history of the ICFI’s struggle against Pabloite revisionism in defense of Trotskyist principles and perspectives.
As David North stated in his preface to the book, “It is not only the relationship between Trotsky’s Turkish exile and the history of the Fourth International that imparts special significance to the publication of this new translation of The Heritage We Defend. The critical position occupied by Turkey in the geopolitics of the world imperialist system guarantees that the class struggle in this country will assume gigantic dimensions. The building of the Trotskyist movement in Turkey is, therefore, an essential strategic task of the Fourth International. This requires the education of the advanced sections of the Turkish working class and youth in the history of the long struggle waged by orthodox Trotskyists against the different forms of anti-Marxist revisionism—especially that associated with the liquidationist conceptions of Michel Pablo (1911–1996) and Ernest Mandel (1923–1995).”
Castroism and the Politics of Petty-Bourgeois Nationalism
This 118-page book includes Bill Van Auken’s lecture delivered to the 1998 international symposium on Marxism and the Fundamental Problems of the 20th Century by the ICFI in Sydney, Australia.
In addition to Van Auken’s lecture on the Cuban revolution and Castroism, the book also includes articles and perspectives about the ensuing Cuban developments published on the World Socialist Web Site.
The work provides Turkish readers with a Marxist perspective on the petty-bourgeois radicalism that has inflicted heavy damage, both ideologically and politically, upon the working class and the youth, for decades. The ideological and political exposure of Castroism is of vital importance to the building of a socialist working class movement in Turkey.
2017 International May Day Online Rally
The 84-page book includes speeches delivered to the 2017 International May Day Online Rally.
The rally marked a significant development in the building of the Fourth International as the world party of socialist revolution. It attracted an audience of thousands of listeners from more than 50 countries and provided them with a Marxist assessment of the international crisis of capitalism and an international socialist perspective to confront the dangers of militarism, dictatorship and war.
Historical and International Foundations of the Socialist Equality Party (USA)
This 260-page book consists of two seminal resolutions that were unanimously adopted at the founding congress of the Socialist Equality Party (US) held in Ann Arbor, Michigan on August 3-9, 2008.
Tracing essential historical events and political experiences spanning more than a century, the Historical and International Foundations of the SEP establishes the theoretical and political basis of the struggle for socialism. The book also includes the Statement of Principles of the SEP (US).
By publishing these documents, Mehring Yayıncılık provides Turkish readers with the knowledge of the theoretical and political struggle waged by the international Trotskyist movement against capitalism, as well as its political agents within the working class including social democracy, Stalinism, various forms of petty-bourgeois nationalism and Pabloite revisionism.
Socialism and the Fight against War
This 176-page book contains statements and resolutions of the ICFI and Socialist Equality Parties in the United States, Germany, Britain, Australia and Sri Lanka on the fight against imperialist war.
The International Committee of the Fourth International insists that the international working class is the only force that can put an end to war by linking the struggle against war with the struggle against capitalism and for socialism.
Amid ongoing military interventions by the Turkish army in Syria and Iraq, as well as operations in Turkey’s largely Kurdish populated south-eastern and eastern regions, and growing war preparations by the imperialist powers internationally, the book provides Turkish workers and youth with a clear socialist perspective to confront the danger of another and even greater bloodbath. It warns that another world war is inevitable unless the international working class intervenes on the basis of a revolutionary Marxist program.
Within the next few months, Mehring Yayıncılık will publish Turkish editions of The Russian Revolution and the Unfinished Twentieth Century by David North, Why Study The Russian Revolution? Volume I and Leon Trotsky’s Lessons of October. Mehring Yayıncılık will also reproduce the DVD, Tsar To Lenin, for the Turkish market.