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Fra International Socialism Journal nr. 123

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Contents (ISJ 123, Summer 2009)

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Contributors (ISJ 123, Summer 2009)

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Analysis: Toxic shocks: after the Euro elections

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The results of elections to the European Parliament have delivered a devastating shock to New Labour. Its share of the vote was the lowest since something approaching universal suffrage was conceded in 1918, and it trailed behind the right populists of the UK Independence Party (UKIP). David Cameron’s Tories now seem the inevitable victors in the general election set to take place in the next ten months. And the success of the Nazi British National Party (BNP) in gaining two seats adds to the toxicity of the shock.

Analysis: Green shoots or wilting blossoms?

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We do not know whether the green shoots of recovery some observers claim to have seen in the late spring will wither in the summer heat. But they are unlikely to blossom this year or, for that matter, next. Stock exchanges may have risen by about 20 percent between February and June but the underlying reality is that the world economy is continuing to contract, with any limited revival in China or slowing of the decline in the US outbalanced by continued deterioration in continental Europe.

Megan Trudell: Analysis: Obama’s 100 days

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The first 100 days of the Obama administration have made clear that the tremendous expectations driving last year’s dramatic election are already coming into conflict with the realities of US capitalism in crisis.

Sartaj Khan: Analysis: Imperialism, religion and class in Swat

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The Pakistan military claimed at the beginning of June that it had achieved success in its all-out assault on Taliban insurgents after driving more than two million people from the Swat Valley and other areas of the north west of the country.

GM Tamás: Interview: Hungary—“Where we went wrong”

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GM Tamás, a prominent Hungarian dissident and now professor of philosophy in Budapest, spoke to Chris Harman about developments in Eastern Europe since the fall of Stalinism.

Martin Smith: How do we stop the BNP?

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The fascist British National Party (BNP) made a major electoral breakthrough when it won two seats in the European elections in June. BNP leader Nick Griffin won a seat in the North West region and Andrew Brons won a second seat in Yorkshire & Humberside. Across the country the BNP polled 943,598 votes.

Esme Choonara: Marxist accounts of the current crisis

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Just as medical science progresses through pathology, Marxist political economy develops through the analysis of the actual crises of capitalism. It is therefore no surprise that the current paroxysm has sparked both a revival of interest in Marxism and a flurry of responses by prominent Marxists.

Talat Ahmed: Gandhi: the man behind the myths

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“The saint has left our shores, I sincerely hope forever”.1 Jan Christiaan Smuts, a future South African prime minister, uttered these words in 1914. The saint was none other than Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi on his way home to India after 21 years in South Africa.

Mike Haynes: Capitalism, class, health and medicine

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Over the past 30 years—during all the time we have been told that class is dead—something strange has been happening in the study of health. A generation of epidemiologists who study patterns of death (mortality) and illnesses (morbidity) have been obsessing about social inequality.

Roland Boer: The full story: Marxism and religion

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“Religion is the main cause of wars and conflicts through history.” How often do we hear that old idealist argument used in our day of renewed global conflict? In an earlier issue of this journal John Molyneux wrote a useful response to that position. I would like to offer a critical reply to Molyneux, pointing out where he falls short but also developing one or two points further.

Denis Godard: Feedback: The NPA: a space for rebuilding

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The New Anticapitalist Party (Nouveau Parti Anticapitaliste, NPA) is an exciting political development because it responds to a need arising from the struggle in France over the past few years.

Chris Harman: Feedback: Confronting the wolf

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Neil Faulkner accused me in our previous issue of not seeing the “wolf” of economic crisis now that it is upon us.1 It is an accusation that, I must admit, mystified me, since only a year ago Jim Kincaid was accusing me of grossly overestimating the crisis-prone nature of the world system.

Jeong Seong-jin: Book review: Karl Marx in Beijing

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Giovanni Arrighi, Adam Smith in Beijing (Verso, 2007), £14.99
In South Korea the writings of Giovanni Arrighi have become popular among a section of the intellectual left who have wholeheartedly adopted his reworking of Marxism and welcomed his positive appraisal of a possible China-centred future. Jeong’s polemical attack on Arrighi’s concept of a “non-capitalist market society” should therefore also be understood in the context of South Korean left politics.

Charlie Kimber: Book review: Precarious reflections

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Kevin Doogan, New Capitalism? The Transformation of Work (Polity, 2009), £16.99
There is a myth that changes in capitalism have made workers virtually powerless. Many commentators and academics suggest that permanent jobs are a thing of the past and that everyone now faces a world of constant turbulence, transient work and rootless employment. If the great majority of us are permanently insecure at work, the balance of power has swung massively towards the employers.
Kevin Doogan robustly challenges such lazy conclusions and the whole idea of “societal shifts based on a more tenuous connection between employers and workers”.

Henry Heller: Book review: Origins of the French working class

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Samuel Guicheteau, La Révolution des Ouvriers Nantais: Mutation Economique, Identité Sociale et Dynamique Révolutionnaire (1740-1815) (Presses Universitaires de Rennes, 2008), €19
A revisionist school, premised on the notion that the French Revolution was not bourgeois and capitalist, has dominated the historiography of the revolution in the English-speaking world since the 1970s. Its dominance over academic history was made possible by the cultural turn, neoliberalism and lacunae in the scholarship of the previous generation of Marxist historians like Georges Lefebvre, Albert Soboul and George Rudé. Yet today revisionism is increasingly challenged as a result of a rising tide of new research coming from American scholars such as Steven Kaplan and Jeff Horn, but especially from French researchers. Samuel Guicheteau’s study of the development of the working class in Nantes provides a powerful new set of weapons against the entrenched conservative school of historiography.

Farah Reza: Book review: The rights of women

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Jeanne Flavin, Our Bodies, Our Crimes (New York University, 2009), £30.95
Our Bodies, Our Crimes looks at, but also well beyond, the abortion argument, discussing recent government legislation that has introduced “fetal rights” into US law, the treatment of working class mothers, pregnant women, young women whose future reproductive health is being threatened through “abstinence programmes” that neglect the issue of safe sex, and the general lack of affordable sexual health services.

Chris Harman: Book review: Gold dust

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Barry Eichengreen, Globalizing Capital: A History of the International Monetary System (second edition) (Princeton, 2008), £19.95
Occasionally mainstream economists manage to produce works of genuine use. This is one of them.

Jonathon Collerson: Book review: Marx misread

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Stephen Shapiro, How to Read Marx’s Capital (Pluto Press, 2008), £12.99
In How to Read Marx’s Capital, Stephen Shapiro gives a near chapter by chapter reading of the first volume of Capital. But the act of paraphrasing imbues the text with a definite interpretation and Shapiro’s version of Marx’s theory of value undermines his otherwise adequate reading of topics such as the working day, the division of labour and primitive accumulation.

David Seddon: Book review: Starting at the bottom

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Heidi Armbruster and Anna Laerke (eds), Taking Sides: Ethics, Politics and Fieldwork in Anthropology (Berghahn Books, 2008), £45
I enjoyed reading this collection—in part because it reminded me of when I was at the London School of Economics as a graduate student in social anthropology. This was in 1968, when there was a good deal of discussion about the politics of anthropology—mainly coming across the Atlantic from the US and exemplified most memorably by Current Anthropology’s “symposium on social responsibilities”.

Luke Stobart: Book review: Life and works of a Spanish rebel

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Michael Eaude, Triumph at Midnight of the Century: A Critical Biography of Arturo Barea (Sussex Academic Press, 2009), £45
The trilogy The Forging of a Rebel is one of the most powerful and shocking works on the background to the Spanish Civil War, yet as historian Paul Preston writes,1 its author, Arturo Barea (1897-1957), has remained a little known figure. Barcelona-based writer and socialist Michael Eaude redresses this anomaly, producing an essential guide to Barea’s literary work and life.

Ken Olende: Book review: Black star rising

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Jeffrey B Perry, Hubert Harrison: The Voice of Harlem Radicalism, 1883-1918 (Colombia University, 2008), £27
Hubert Harrison was a towering figure in US black and socialist politics in the early years of the 20th century. He was known as the “father of Harlem radicalism” but has now almost disappeared from the history books. Jeffrey B Perry has already edited a collection of Harrison’s writings entitled A Hubert Harrison Reader (Wesleyan University, 2001). He is owed a serious debt of thanks for this, the first part of his exhaustive two-part biography, using Harrison’s own journals and a sympathetic understanding of the time. It rescues a fascinating historical figure from obscurity, and allows us to see how far ahead of its time much of his analysis was.

John Rose: Book review: A history lacking in hindsight

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Gerd-Rainer Horn, The Spirit of ‘68—Rebellion in Western Europe and North America 1956-1976 (Oxford University, 2008), £19.99
When International Socialism’s editors asked me to review this book I was in the middle of a speaking tour of the wave of new year student occupations in solidarity with Gaza. Now, there was a just a hint of 1968 about these protests. So what an excellent accompaniment, I thought, to all those annoying train journeys. Alas, it was not to be. While the book certainly lives up to its title, it collapses over the political legacy of 1968.

Charlie Hore: Book review: China’s place in the world

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Shaun Breslin, China and the Global Political Economy (Macmillan, 2009), £19.99
Jenny Clegg, China’s Global Strategy (Pluto, 2009) £19.99
Nobody knows how long or how deep the world economic recession is likely to be. For China the stakes are especially high. Will the world’s fastest economic growth rate turn into the worst decline? Or will the innate dynamism of the Chinese economy allow the country to survive relatively unscathed?

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