The return of revolutionary politics: Historical lessons for today’s Left

Nathan Richardson

Platypus Review 182 | December 2025 – January 2026

THE GLOBAL POLITICAL CLIMATE of the 2020s is marked by the apparent resurgence of far-Right populism, particularly in the United States with the consolidation of the MAGA movement under Donald Trump. Yet beneath the surface, there are signs of a renewed interest in leftist traditions. Marxism, Leninism, and Trotskyism — ideologies long pronounced “dead” after 1989 — are finding new resonance among young people, especially as systemic crises of capitalism deepen and political polarization accelerates. While this phenomenon is still emergent and fragmented, it echoes earlier moments in the 19^th and 20^th centuries when the failures of bourgeois liberalism and the advance of reactionary forces stimulated the reawakening of radical politics. To critically reflect on the history of the Left, therefore, is to see both the limitations of current movements and their potential trajectory.

The youth and the American Left in the 21^st century

The resurgence of Left-wing politics in the United States is particularly striking given the country’s entrenched anti-communist history. Surveys consistently show that younger Americans are more open to socialism than previous generations. According to a recent Pew Research Center survey, about 48% of adults under 30 held a positive view of socialism, in contrast to only 29% of those over 65.

Young activists are also rediscovering the classical Marxist tradition. Marxist study circles proliferate on college campuses, while works such as The Communist Manifesto (1848) and Trotsky’s The Revolution Betrayed (1937) are reappearing on bestseller lists.

As Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels wrote in 1848, “What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.”¹ Many young Americans are beginning to perceive themselves as those “grave-diggers,” charged with resisting not only capitalism in general but also its specific embodiment in the authoritarian populism of MAGA politics.

Historical precedents: The 19^th century

The present turn toward Marxism among the youth bears resemblance to the rise of socialist movements in the 19^th century. Following the failed revolutions of 1848, European liberalism entered a period of crisis. The bourgeoisie proved incapable of fulfilling its own democratic promises, leaving working classes disillusioned. In this context, Marx and Engels articulated a vision of proletarian emancipation that transcended the narrow horizons of liberalism.

The Paris Commune of 1871 was the most powerful symbol of working-class initiative in the 19^th century. Marx praised it as “the political form at last discovered under which to work out the economic emancipation of labor.”² Though it was brutally suppressed, the Commune provided both a model and a warning. Its lessons were studied by Lenin in State and Revolution (1917), where he argued that the proletariat could not simply inherit the bourgeois state but must “smash it” and replace it with new organs of workers’ power.³

Just as the failures of bourgeois liberal revolutions opened space for socialism in the 19^th century, so too have the failures of neoliberalism in the 21^st century created a vacuum that younger generations are filling with revived interest in Marxist and Trotskyist politics.

The early 20^th century: The Russian Revolution and beyond

The Russian Revolution of 1917 served as a turning point in the Left’s ascent to unprecedented political heights in the early 20^th century. Lenin’s insistence on the need for a disciplined, revolutionary party, capable of leading the proletariat to power, reshaped the Marxist tradition. As Lenin famously put it, “Without revolutionary theory there can be no revolutionary movement.”⁴

Trotsky, meanwhile, developed his theory of permanent revolution, contending that in countries of belated capitalist development, the bourgeoisie was too tied to imperialism and too cowardly to carry out the tasks of democratic transformation. The completion of the democratic revolution, he argued, “is conceivable only through the dictatorship of the proletariat, which bases itself upon the peasantry.”⁵

Just as the Russian Revolution emerged from the incapacity of liberal and reformist parties to solve systemic crises, the current crisis of American liberalism may open space for revolutionary alternatives. If history does not repeat mechanically, its patterns nonetheless echo.

The mid-20^th century: Trotskyism and anti-fascist struggles

The 1930s marked another decisive moment. The Great Depression devastated global capitalism, creating fertile ground for both fascism and communism. In Germany, the failure of the Social Democratic Party and the sectarianism of the Stalinized Communist Party facilitated Hitler’s rise. Trotsky, in his writings on Germany, warned with prophetic urgency that “If the German proletariat does not smash fascism, fascism will smash it.”⁶ The tragedy of German communism illustrates the dangers of fragmentation, a warning highly relevant to today’s Left. In the U.S., the Popular Front of the late 1930s brought communists into alliances with liberals and progressives, expanding their cultural and labor influence. While such alliances enabled short-term gains, they also blunted revolutionary potential, leading to the eventual marginalization of communism under McCarthyism. This tension — between reformist integration and revolutionary independence — remains alive today.

The contemporary parallel

The analogy between these historical moments and the present is not exact but instructive. In each case, the Left rose in response to the failure of liberal institutions to address systemic crises. Today, as neoliberalism collapses under the weight of inequality, climate catastrophe, and geopolitical fragmentation, young people are again turning toward radical traditions. The appeal of Marxism, Leninism, and Trotskyism lies precisely in their uncompromising analysis of capitalism’s contradictions and their insistence on working-class agency.

Opponents argue that the Left is too fragmented, marginal, or tied to historical defeats. Yet history suggests otherwise. Periods of apparent weakness have often preceded great surges of revolutionary activity. The crisis of 1848 produced the First International; the devastation of World War I produced the Russian Revolution; the despair of the Depression produced powerful anti-fascist movements. In each case, the Left rose to meet the challenge, though not without errors and tragedies.

The question is whether today’s radicalizing youth will develop the organizational forms capable of transcending sectarian divisions. If history is a guide, unity in struggle — not abstract agreement — will be decisive. The recognition that the MAGA movement represents not simply an electoral phenomenon but a crystallization of capitalist reaction may provide the impetus for such unity.

The renewed interest in Marxism, Leninism, and Trotskyism among American youth should not be dismissed as a passing fad. Rather, it reflects deeper structural contradictions within global capitalism and the inability of liberal politics to resolve them. History demonstrates that the Left has repeatedly revived itself in moments of profound crisis, often when least expected. While today’s movements remain fragmented, the potential for growth is significant. The task is to learn from the lessons of the past — not to repeat its failures but to seize its possibilities.

As Marx observed in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (1852), history repeats itself “the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.”⁷ The challenge for the contemporary Left is to ensure that its revival is neither tragedy nor farce but the beginning of a new revolutionary epoch. |P

1 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (New York: International Publishers, 2004), 34.

2 Karl Marx, The Civil War in France (New York: International Publishers, 1993), 74.

3 V. I. Lenin, State and Revolution (London: Penguin, 1992), 77.

4 V. I. Lenin, “Dogmatism and ‘Freedom of Criticism,’” in What Is To Be Done? (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1973), 25.

5 Leon Trotsky, “What is the Permanent Revolution? Basic Postulates,” in The Permanent Revolution (1930), <https://www.marxists.org/archive/trotsky/1931/tpr/pr10.htm>.

6 Leon Trotsky, The Struggle Against Fascism in Germany (New York: Pathfinder Press, 1971), 112.

7 Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte (New York: International Publishers, 1963), 15.