The A to Z of Marxism by David Walker & Daniel Gray

Author:David Walker & Daniel Gray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scarecrow Press
Published: 2007-05-16T16:00:00+00:00

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MACHEL, SAMORA MOISES (1933–1986). Machel led the Front for the Liberation of Mozambique (FRELIMO) and was the first president of the People’s Republic of Mozambique. Born in Gaza province, southern Mozambique (then a Portuguese colony), Machel worked as a medical assistant before joining FRELIMO in 1962. He went to Algeria in 1963 to receive military training, returning the following year as a guerrilla fighter. He became commander in chief of the military wing of FRELIMO, the People’s Forces for the Liberation of Mozambique, and in 1970 the FRELIMO Central Committee formally made Machel party president. In 1974 Machel led the FRELIMO delegation in peace talks with the Portuguese who had finally conceded that they were losing the protracted war against the independence movement. In June 1975 he was invested as president of the newly formed and avowedly Marxist People’s Republic of Mozambique. He died on 19 October 1986 in an air crash.

MACLEAN, JOHN (1879–1923). A popular agitator and an inspirational orator, MacLean sought to bring about an independent Scottish workers’ republic as part of a socialist international, chiefly through a Marxist reeducation of the working class and the use of mass organized action. He is regarded by present-day Scottish socialists as the founding father of republican socialism in Scotland, and one of the first to call for a parliament independent of Westminster. MacLean had the value of education instilled in him from an early age, and to this end attended the Free Church Training School in order to become a teacher. While here he became a strong advocate of Marxian socialism, studied political economy at Glasgow University, and graduated with an M.A. in 1903 transfixed with the idea of raising the educational levels of those within the labor movement. The Scot began his political life as a member of the Progressive Union, and in 1903 joined the Social Democratic Federation, but split from the group in 1911 as a response to its pro-war position and joined the British Socialist Party (BSP).

MacLean was also the driving force behind a number of other workers’ groups. These included the revolutionary Clyde Workers Committee, arguably the earliest ever shop stewards’ combine, and the Scottish Labor College and Labor College Committee, establishments that aimed to educate workers in Marxist principles as a foundation for revolution. MacLean was also instrumental in the formation of the Tramp Trust Unlimited, a band of Marxist agitators spreading the gospel of Scottish revolutionary politics at outdoor gatherings across the land. He was recognized by illustrious Marxists from abroad including Karl Liebknecht, Rosa Luxemburg, and Vladimir Ilich Lenin, who appointed MacLean honorary president of the First All-Russian Congress of Soviets, and Bolshevik Consul for Scotland.

MacLean was forced out of the BSP in 1920, and disillusioned with that group and others on the left he founded the Scottish Workers’ Republican Party (SWRP) two years later. The party aimed to bring about a “Scottish Workers Republic,” on the basis that Scottish workers (as opposed to their English counterparts, tainted by the trappings of Empire) made the most vehement Marxists.

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