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Fra International Socialism Journal nr. 121

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Contents (ISJ 121, Winter 2009)

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Contributors (ISJ 121, Winter 2009)

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Analysis: The trillion dollar crash

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“History books will document that the global economy experienced a sudden stop after 15 September. The manner in which Lehman Brothers failed disrupted the trust that underpins the smooth functioning of market economies. As a result, virtually every indicator of economic and financial relationships exhibits characteristics of cardiac arrest”.

Analysis: From Bush to Obama

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Barack Obama’s victory in the US was one consequence of the crisis. Of course, there was more to the victory than that. For many African Americans it was an important symbolic gain after more than three centuries of oppression. Tens of thousands of young people redirected their feelings over the Iraq war into electioneering. Millions of Hispanic Americans saw voting for Obama as the logical follow up to demonstrating against restrictions on immigrants.

Analysis: Brown’s left bounce?

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The least expected beneficiary of the September-October 2008 financial crisis was Gordon Brown. The whole media, and at least half the cabinet, regarded him as one of the living dead in the run-up to the Labour Party conference. Within weeks he had been transformed into the conquering hero who knew how to deal with economic crisis not only in Britain but globally.

Megan Trudell: Analysis: Obama and the working class vote

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The election of Barack Obama as president of the United States is tremendous confirmation of the widespread opposition to the wars, racism and economic policies of the Bush administration. The Obama campaign tapped into a deep desire for change among wide sections of the US population and drew large numbers into political engagement, often for the first time. The aspirations that were reflected in support for Obama could form the basis of a movement capable of transforming US politics much more profoundly. One of its most important features is the shift leftwards of millions of working class Americans—white as well as black.

Chris Harman: The slump of the 1930s and the crisis today

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“We are on the edge of the abyss. One slip and we will be into depression like that of the early 1930s.” That message has been repeated a thousand times in one way or another since the banking system imploded and stock markets sank in September and October 2008. However, there has been very little real analysis of what produced the great slump or of the real comparisons with the situation today.

Mike Gonzalez: Chavez ten years on

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On 23 November 2008 Venezuela went to the polls. It was the 14th election in the ten years since the victory of Hugo Chavez in 1998. This time the vote was for state governors, mayors and representatives to Venezuela’s 24 state assemblies. Just over 65 percent of those eligible registered their choice on the new electronic voting machines. The very high turnout was a sign that the election was much more than a vote for local officials. It had become, instead, a vote of confidence in Chavez himself.

Yuri Prasad: Interview with Mushtuq Husain: the struggle in Bangladesh

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Mushtuq Husain is a leading member of the Jatiyo Samajtantrik Dal (Socialist Party) of Bangladesh. He spoke to Yuri Prasad about the history of the organisation and the struggle for socialism today.

Bill Dunn: Myths of globalisation and the new economy

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Social scientists and journalists have bandied about terms such as “globalisation” and the “new economy” for some time. Behind much of this lies the argument that the working class is dead and with it Marxist hopes of working class self-emancipation.

Christian Hogsbjerg: Trotsky on race in the US

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Leon Trotsky’s life and work were intrinsically intertwined with the rise and fall of the Russian Revolution. Trotsky was also an outstanding internationalist and, although he did not write a great deal on the African diaspora as a whole, he did address what was known by revolutionary socialists at the time as the “Negro question”—the systematic racism suffered by black people in the United States.

Simon Behrmann: From revolution to irrelevance: how classical music lost its audience

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For the best part of 50 years it has been common to ask whether “classical” music is dead/dying. More than classical theatre, literature or art, classical music seems more and more to be the preserve of a tiny elite. Are we in danger of losing a living tradition of music that stretches back several hundred years?

François Sabado: Feedback: Building the New Anti-capitalist Party

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Alex Callinicos’s article in the most recent issue of International Socialism shows well the changes that have taken place in the radical left in recent months. The characteristics of the situation, and in particular the deepening of the crisis of the capitalist system and the social-liberal evolution of social democracy, confirm that there is a space “to the left of the reformist left”. This space opens up possibilities for the building of new political formations or for initiatives such as the conferences of the anti-capitalist left, processes that require clarification.

Panos Garganas: Feedback: The radical left: a richer mix

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Alex Callinicos takes the debate on the future of the radical left several steps forward with his article in the previous issue of International Socialism. This is very important. It is crucial to restate the need and the possibility of building a radical left that avoids the twin dangers of sectarianism and opportunism today. The difficulties arise as we try to deal with the problems that have cropped up after the crises in Rifondazione Comunista in Italy and Respect in Britain. Is it possible to deal with the tensions between right and left within such projects in an effective way? And how? No ready made recipe exists and therefore we need to address these questions urgently and clearly.

Neil Davidson: Feedback: Walter Benjamin and the classical Marxist tradition

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Chris Nineham’s article on “Benjamin’s Emergency Marxism” was less concerned with assessing the work under review, Esther Leslie’s book Walter Benjamin, than with assessing the work of her subject, Benjamin himself.1 My purpose here is not to re-review the book, or to challenge all of the claims made by Chris, but Benjamin is a writer who has not been considered by International Socialism until now and it might therefore be worth discussing two further issues which seem to me to be of central importance.

Jack Robertson: Book Review: Ups and downs of the rank and file

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John McIlroy, Nina Fishman and Alan Campbell (eds), The Post-War Compromise: British Trade Unions and Industrial Politics 1945-64 and The High Tide of British Trade Unionism: Trade Unions and Industrial Politics 1964-79 (Merlin, 2007), £18.95 each
These two volumes bring together essays from an impressive array of contributors on different aspects of industrial politics in the British trade union movement in the years after the Second World War.

Simon Basketter: Book Review: The revolutionary trade unions

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Ralph Darlington, Syndicalism and the Transition to Communism (Ashgate, 2008), £60
According to the syndicalist Tom Mann, “The object of the unions is to wage the class war and take every opportunity of scoring against the enemy.” One cannot imagine such a statement passing the lips of a single trade union leader today, and this helps illuminate the inspiration provided by “syndicalism”—the revolutionary trade unionism that sprang up across the world in the first couple of decades of the 20th century.

Feiyi Zhang: Book Review: Laying the groundwork

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Marcello Musto (ed), Karl Marx’s Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy 150 Years Later (Routledge, 2008), £65
The current global financial meltdown highlights the need to both grasp and apply Karl Marx’s analysis of the crisis-prone and exploitative capitalist economy. The Grundrisse is a manuscript in which Marx elaborated his plan for his major work, Capital, and developed his understanding of the central characteristics of capitalism.

Ingrid Lamprecht: Book Review: Challenging the newsmakers

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Robert McChesney, The Political Economy of Media: Enduring Issues, Emerging Dilemmas (Monthly Review, 2008), £25
The US media reform movement seemingly burst out of nowhere in response to the Federal Communication Commission’s attempt to relax media ownership rules in 2003. The movement had gathered force since the 1999 Seattle protests against the World Trade Organisation, but it was the attempt to deregulate the media that gave it momentum. Up to two million people were involved in the campaign to overturn the plan. Where did this anti_corporate public sentiment come from?

Chris Harman: Book Review: MacIntyre's Forgotten answers

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Paul Blackledge and Neil Davidson (eds) Alasdair MacIntyre’s Engagement with Marxism: Selected Writings 1953-74 (Brill, 2008), £101.57
“The man who solved the Irish Question” was how Alasdair MacIntyre described James Connolly in an article in an early issue of New Left Review which is reprinted in this collection. MacIntyre was the man who came close to solving the problem of the relation between Marxism and morality—and then forgot the answer.

Matthew Cookson: Book Review: A history full of lessons

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Pierre Broué and Emile Témime, The Revolution And The Civil War In Spain (Haymarket, 2008), £30
The Spanish Revolution of 1936-7 was the high point of the working class struggles that marked the 1930s. It inspired millions across the world with the belief that it was possible to resist fascism, which had risen to power with minimal opposition in Italy and Germany. But the revolution was crushed not by fascism but by Stalinism, which placed the Republican forces on the road to their ultimate defeat in 1939.

Chris Harman + Joseph Choonara: This quarter's selection

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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.