Arkivet – Nummervisning

Fra International Socialism Journal nr. 120

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Contents (ISJ 120, Autumn 2008)

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Contributors (ISJ 120, Autumn 2008)

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Analysis: Four unknowns and a certainty

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Those who preside over the system face unknowns on every side—as do those of us who fight them. There is, however, one certainty about the next few months. There will be sudden turns in the political situation, nationally and internationally, which will create new challenges—and new opportunities—for the left.

Analysis: New Labour pains

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The smell of death around this government is so overpowering it seems to have anaesthetised them all… The imaginary Blair/Brown ideological distinction has now been exposed as the sham it always was… The sad truth is that he [Brown] opposed Blair, not Blair policies.

Analysis: Dented hegemony and Georgia’s nasty little war

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The media has been full of talk of a “new Cold War” since the brief war between Russia and Georgia. It is more accurate to talk of the latest episode of the “war on terror”—that is, of the US’s attempt to use military might to assert global hegemony.

Ernesto Gonzalez: Analysis: Latin America and the future of the Farc

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In February this year the Colombian army launched a cross-border raid on a Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Farc) camp within Ecuador, killing 18 people. One of the victims was the organisation’s second in command, Raúl Reyes.

Owen Miller: Interview: Korea’s summer of discontent

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South Korean socialist Kim Kwang-il spoke to Owen Miller about the country’s recent protest movement

Jonathan Neale: Afghanistan: the case against the “good war”

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Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on earth. More than a million Afghans have died in 30 years of war, and almost everyone has lost someone close to them. Now George Bush, John McCain, Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, and even Barack Obama, call for more troops to be sent, more planes and more death.

Andrew Kliman: A crisis for the centre of the system

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The United States is caught up in the most serious financial crisis since the Great Depression. This crisis calls into question the stability and indeed the very survival of capitalism. Unlike the savings and loan crisis 20 years ago, which was confined to a single industry, or the Asian currency crisis ten years ago, which was mostly confined to less developed and developing countries, the present crisis affects financial markets generally and emanates from the major centre of capitalism. It thus threatens to become a global crisis.

Chris Harman: Snapshots of union strengths and weaknesses

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Workers in Britain face the twin crises of recession and inflation with union organisation that has, in general, been on the retreat for nearly 30 years. A complacent attitude to the problem of rebuilding union strength and organising new groups of workers would clearly be misplaced. However, the frequently repeated claim that unions have declined to the extent that they no longer matter is also false.

Alex Callinicos: Where is the radical left going?

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The past decade has seen the emergence of a new left, particularly in Europe. Fragile and uneven though this process has been, it represents a real attempt to develop a progressive alternative to neoliberalism, war and indeed capitalism itself, giving a political voice to the new movements of resistance that have developed since the Seattle protests of November 1999.

Donny Gluckstein: Decyphering The Internationale: the Eugène Pottier code

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The Internationale has long been the anthem of the workers’ movement throughout the world. Its power to move people has survived the repression of fascism, the cruel parody that was Stalinism and free market capitalism. Those who sing it need know nothing about it, and be familiar with only the first verse and the chorus, yet feel a strong sense of international unity. Why has it proved both so durable and inspirational?

Paul Blackledge: Marxism and ethics

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There is a widespread myth that Marx either rejected ethics altogether or that his comments on ethics and morality are at best incoherent. These claims have a superficial plausibility.

Ian Birchall: A fiftieth birthday for Marxist theory

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September 1958 saw the first issue of a journal called International Socialism. It was in duplicated form and undoubtedly had a very limited circulation, being produced and distributed by the tiny Socialist Review Group which counted its members in tens rather than hundreds.

John Newsinger: Philadelphia Wobblies

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A review of Peter Cole, Wobblies on the Waterfront: International Unionism in Progressive Era Philadelphia (University of Illinois, 2007).
On 14 May 1913 longshoremen on the Philadelphia docks walked out on strike demanding a 10 cent an hour pay rise, a ten-hour day, time and a half for night work and double-time for Sundays.

Neil Faulkner: Book review: Practising Marxist archaeology

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Randall H McGuire, Archaeology as Political Action (University of California Press, 2008), £17.95
Archaeology is political. It can even provoke bloody confrontation. Over 3,000 people died during communal riots in India and Bangladesh after a Hindu nationalist mob destroyed the Babri Mosque in Ayodhya. The attack had been triggered by archaeological claims that in 1528 the first Mogul emperor had demolished an earlier Hindu temple on the site in order to build the mosque.

John Rose: Book review: Zionism under the microscope

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Gabriel Piterberg, The Returns of Zionism: Myths, Politics & Scholarship in Israel (Verso, 2008), £14.99
This is an exhaustive analysis by an uncompromising Israeli scholar of many of the intellectual and literary documents, based on their original languages, that bind the Zionist project together. Hence it is a very important though not an easy read.

Andy Durgan: Book review: Aid for Spain

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Lewis H Mates, The Spanish Civil War and the British Left: Political Activism and the Popular Front (Tauris Academic Studies, 2007), £52.50
Few international events have had such an impact on British domestic politics as the Spanish Civil War. Despite the rich and powerful favouring Franco and the National Government backing non_intervention, by the end of the war, according to opinion polls, 71 percent of the population supported the beleaguered Republic.
What became known as the Aid for Spain Movement was based on hundreds of local committees and labour movement organisations. It not only raised thousands of pounds for the Republican cause, but sent over 200 medical personnel, 29 food ships and in May 1937 organised the reception in Britain of 4,000 Basque refugee children. Parallel to this was the recruitment of some 2,300 volunteers for the International Brigades.

Anne Alexander: Book review: The tragedy of Iraq’s Communists

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Tareq Ismael, The Rise and Fall of the Communist Party of Iraq (Cambridge University Press, 2007), £50
Early on the mornings of 14 and 15 February 1949 a macabre sight met the eyes of passers-by in Baghdad. Bodies dangled on public display from gibbets erected in three of the city’s main squares. Notices posted nearby informed the general public that the three dead men were Yusuf Salman Yusuf, otherwise known as Comrade Fahd, secretary general of the Iraqi Communist Party (ICP); Zaki Basim and Husain al-Shabibi, two leading Communist activists.

Colin Wilson: Book review: Hidden histories of sexuality

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BR Burg, Boys at Sea: Sodomy, Indecency and Courts Martial in Nelson’s Navy (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), £50
Neville Hoad, African Intimacies: Race, Homosexuality and Globalization (University of Minnesota Press, 2007), £12.50
Katherine O’Donnell and Michael O’Rourke (eds), Love, Sex, Intimacy and Friendship Between Men, 1550-1800 (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), £16.99

Helen Davies: Book review: Taking the care out of social care

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Iain Ferguson, Reclaiming Social Work: Challenging Neoliberalism and Promoting Social Justice (SAGE, 2007), £21.99

Andy Zebrowski: Book review: Still fighting old battles

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Jerzy Borzecki, The Soviet-Polish Peace of 1921 and the Creation of Interwar Europe (Yale University, 2008), £35
After 1917 it was not just the best known Bolsheviks who saw the October Revolution as the beginning of the international revolution—millions of ordinary people did as well.

Colin Barker: Book review: A study in African resistance

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Leo Zeilig, Revolt and Protest: Student Politics and Activism in Sub-Saharan Africa (Tauris, 2007), £47.50
The revolutions in “Third World” countries in the three decades after 1945 posed some problems for Marxist theory. Leadership in those revolutions did not come from the “traditional” bourgeoisie.

Pepijn Brandon: Book review: The rise of the modern state

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Heide Gerstenberger, Impersonal Power: History and Theory of the Bourgeois State, translated by David Fernbach (Brill, 2007), £139.10
Heide Gerstenberger’s Impersonal Power is an ambitious book. It tries to give an explanation for the form and content of the bourgeois state, rooted in a wide-ranging description of over 1,000 years of English and French history.

Joseph Choonara + Chris Harman: Review: Pick of the quarter

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A regular survey of articles which readers will find useful. Some, although by no means all, are available on the web.

IS-tendensen: International Socialist Tendency statement on the global economic crisis (online only)

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The following statement was issued by the Coordination of the International Socialist Tendency on 13 October 2008.