Pablo Picasso (1881) – Vastly gifted, mutable Spanish artist, modern art almost unthinkable without him. Some prefer what’s known as his Blue Period. The paintings, dealing with the tragic conditions of the poor and socially outcast, “stand as his most successful and moving work”
Russian novelist Gleb Uspensky (1843), wrote Trotsky, was a populist. But this “chronicler of the village” is a superb artist and a remarkable realist. With him, “artistic intuition replaces the Marxist method and, judging from its results, can in many respects compete with it."
Georges Bizet (1838) entered the Conservatoire at 9 and won every prize available. In Paris during the Franco-Prussian war, he did not support the Commune. However, the “trauma of the war, siege and civil unrest” left a mark on the “dark realism and societal conflicts” in Carmen.
Lenin: "Revolutions are the festivals of the oppressed and the exploited. At no other time are the masses of the people in a position to come forward so actively as creators of a new social order as at a time of revolution. At such times the people are capable of miracles."
“There were two ‘Reigns of Terror’...the one wrought murder in hot passions, the other in heartless cold blood; the one lasted mere months, the other had lasted a thousand years; the one inflicted death upon a thousand persons, the other upon a hundred million ..." –Mark Twain
“Est-ce qu'il y a des opinions, aujourd'hui ? il n'y a plus que des intérêts.”
[“Are there such things as opinions nowadays? There are only interests.”]
Balzac, Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes
[The Splendors and Miseries of Courtesans]
Marx had strong words for those hunting for "a formula for the 'solution of the social question' ... to be devised a priori, instead of deriving science from a critical knowledge of the historical movement, a movement which itself produces the material conditions of emancipation"
Adrian Mitchell (1932) – Left-wing English poet. Translator of Marat/Sade (“Four years after the Revolution / and the old king’s execution…”). Best known for poems like “To Whom It May Concern”:
So fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam...
Sonny Terry (1911) – He became blind as the result of childhood accidents. Began playing harmonica, “at tobacco warehouses, fish fries, and house parties.” In 1941, teamed up with Brownie McGhee. Participated in the left-wing music scene in New York, including at Café Society.
A minute-by-minute account documents repeated attempts to find a vein, burning pain as pentobarbital entered Christa's arm and prolonged gasping and choking - Attorney’s minute-by-minute account exposes Christa Pike’s torture in Tennessee death chamber
wsws.org/en/articles/2026/10…
Who will determine the course of society? The billionaire oligarchs, the corporate bosses and their politicians? Or the working class, the vast majority of the population - Europe’s student protests and the intervention of the working class
wsws.org/en/articles/2026/10…
A break with the silence, evasions that characterise British media’s Gaza coverage. An exposure of UK complicity in Israel’s war and the mechanisms used to conceal it - Gaza Secrets Exposed: Governments buried war crimes to protect Israel and arms trade
wsws.org/en/articles/2026/10…
The Israeli government, in alliance with Trump, is extending the Gaza genocide to the West Bank. The ethnic cleansing of Palestine is a corollary of the Trump-Netanyahu war plans - Israel launches invasion of West Bank amid preparations for new war on Iran
wsws.org/en/articles/2026/10…
The crisis driving the bourgeoisie to war is drawing ever broader sections of the working class into struggle. The eruption of war produces the conditions for social revolution - The global rebellion of youth and workers and the capitalists' war frenzy
wsws.org/en/articles/2026/10…
"True art, which is not content to play variations on readymade models but rather insists on expressing the inner needs of man and of mankind in its time –true art is unable NOT to be revolutionary, NOT to aspire to a complete, radical reconstruction of society." Trotsky, Breton
“Life is not an easy matter...You cannot live through it without falling into frustration and cynicism unless you have before you a great idea which raises you above personal misery, above weakness, above all kinds of perfidy and baseness.”
― Leon Trotsky, Diary in Exile, 1935
Marx, "On the Freedom of the Press," 1842
“The writer does not at all look on his work as a means. It is an end in itself, it is so little a means for him himself and for others that, if need be, he sacrifices his existence to its existence."
MY FRIENDS, FEAR THE TOUCH OF WEALTH
"My friends, keep your old friends. My friends, fear the touch of wealth. Let my example teach you a lesson. Poverty has its freedoms; opulence has its obstacles."
Denis Diderot, "Regrets for My Old Dressing Gown," 1769
The establishment across Latin America has prepared by normalizing states of emergency, criminalizing opposition and building up the repressive apparatus - Rattled by French protests, Latin American governments adopt “Bukele model” to quell social unrest
wsws.org/en/articles/2026/10…
The one-day strike expressed deep anger among California workers who keep essential services operating but cannot afford to live in the state they serve - California state workers strike against Newsom: “We will strike for as long as it takes”
wsws.org/en/articles/2026/10…
