Volunteers' Biographies & Contact Page
BEN LEWIS
I became a Marxist as a Sixth Form student in South Wales, radicalised by the protests against the invasion of Iraq in March 2003. I joined the Communist Party of Great Britain (PCC) and now sit on its leadership. I achieved first class honours in Germanic Studies at Sheffield University, where I also helped to found the revolutionary student group, Communist Students.
I have been working on the MIA since early 2009 following a series of Rosa Luxemburg articles I translated to commemorate the 90th anniversary of her murder in Revolutionary History . My interests primarily revolve around the history of the Second International and 'the pope of Marxism' turned 'renegade', Karl Kautsky. I am very interested in making available in English many of the SPD polemics, speeches and journals that shaped the period and steeled a generation of revolutionaries both in Germany and elsewhere - not least the Bolshevik leadership.
My recent translation of Karl Kautsky's Nationality and Internationality was recently published in the Critique Journal. I am currently completing a book with American historian Lars T Lih on the pivotal Halle congress of the USPD (Independent Social Democrats) in 1920, which prints Grigory Zinoviev's famous 'four hour speech' and Jules Martov's counterblast for the first time in the English language. I am currently working on the Karl Kautsky English and German archives.
Email me at: blewis (at) marxists (dot) org.