• About Ian Birchall

    I am a socialist writer and translator. I have written the following books: France: the Struggle Goes On [with Tony Cliff, 1968]; Workers Against the Monolith [1974]; Bailing Out the System [1986]; The Spectre of Babeuf [1997]; Sartre Against Stalinism[2004]; A Rebel’s Guide to Lenin [2005]; Tony Cliff: A Marxist For His Time [2011].  I have translated Alfred Rosmer and Victor Serge, and published numerous articles in political and academic journals.

    For many years I taught in a grossly mismanaged institution called Middlesex Polytechnic, but I try not to think about it. I am on the Editorial Board of Revolutionary History and a member of the London Socialist Historians Group. In 1962 I joined the International Socialists (forerunner of the Socialist Workers Party) and remained a member for over half a century. The future, in Joe Strummer’s words, is unwritten.