Lawrence Parker

Lawrence Parker is a Marxist historian. His area of expertise is the old CPGB (1920-91) and he has produced monographs on the CPGB’s post-1945 left oppositions and the National Left-Wing Movement of the 1920s.
18a8cb2b-timothee-chalamet-afp-pic-221124

Seen This Movie Before: Dylan Comes Round Again

Lawrence Parker, March 5, 2025

Why is Bob Dylan’s ‘apostasy’ in turning his back on the liberal-left folk establishment in the mid-1960s endlessly replayed? Lawrence Parker investigates. Read Article.

Screen_Shot_2024-05-09_at_2.27.07_PM.png

What’s the Problem with Lenin’s Materialism and Empirio-Criticism?

Lawrence Parker, May 10, 2024

The modern-day left continues to repeat fairy tales that Lenin’s early philosophical work is vulgar, undialectical and abandoned by its author in later years. None of these stories stack up, writes Lawrence Parker. Read Article.

cpgb-1939.jpg

More or Less Erfurt? The CPGB’s 1939 Draft Programme

Lawrence Parker, October 20, 2023

Lawrence Parker details the history of and reception to the document which, he argues, drew upon "disgraced" figures such as Kautsky and Bukharin and captured the CPGB’s Janus-faced nature at the outset of the Second World War. Read Article.

BiroKrausWPTeaser.jpg

Two Souls Within His Breast: Georg Lukács, 1925-29

Lawrence Parker, January 10, 2023

Lawrence Parker argues that existing Trotskyist schemas around the revolutionary career of Georg Lukács in the mid-to-late 1920s are fallacious in the extreme. Read Article.

dem_fed.jpg

Anti-Hyndman: The Struggle Against Militarism in the pre-1914 British Socialist Movement

Lawrence Parker, October 11, 2022

Through a historical analysis of the struggle against the militarism of Henry Hyndman in the pre-WWI British socialist movement, Lawrence Parker demonstrates the ways in which the informal, moral authority of the Second International was capable of making significant interventions in the politics of its national constituent parties. Read Article.