John Molyneux

John Molyneux (2 September 1948 – 10 December 2022) was a British Trotskyist, academic and author. He was a leading member of the Socialist Workers Party before retiring to Ireland, where he became active in the Irish SWP and was editor of Irish Marxist Review. Biography Molyneux was born on 2 September 1948. Molyneux joined the International Socialists in Britain in 1968 after being radicalized by the antiwar movement and the revolt of that year. He became one of the Socialist Worker's Party's leading theorists and a popular speaker. He was a lecturer at the School of Art, Design and Media, University of Portsmouth, from 1992. During his years in Portsmouth he was a significant influence in the city left as well as a lecturer at the polytechnic-university there. He organised a number of demonstrations, including getting 12 coaches of people to the 2003 demonstration against the Iraq War, in London. In January 2009 he was arrested for organising a peace rally of 400 people against the Israeli attacks on Gaza. His book Marxism and the Party (1978), analyzes the revolutionary left approach to the political party and the question of the revolutionary organisation and the discussion of Marx, Luxemburg, Lenin, Trotsky, and Gramsci. In 1981 he published Leon Trotsky's Theory of Revolution (1981), which critically explored Trotsky's weaknesses and his strengths. What is the Real Marxist Tradition? (1983/85) started life as a long article and was later published as a short book and is perhaps his most widely read publication. He wrote a weekly column, “The ABCs of Marxism,” published in Socialist Worker (UK) for almost 15 years some of which were collected into a book Arguments for Revolutionary Socialism (1987) and a pamphlet on The Future Socialist Society (1987).