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Fra International Socialism Journal nr. 126

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Contents (ISJ 126, Spring 2010)

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Contributors (ISJ 126, Spring 2010)

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The radical left and the crisis

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A tale of two journals --- This year marks the 50th anniversary of New Left Review (NLR). Not purely coincidentally, this journal also began its regular appearance (after an abortive launch two years earlier) in 1960. Launched against the background of the rise of a New Left in rebellion against both Western capitalism and Eastern Stalinism, International Socialism and NLR represent contrasting trajectories for journals of socialist theory.

Luke Stobart: Venezuela at the crossroads: Voices from inside the revolution

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In recent years Venezuela has been the centre of attention for much of the international left, since mass mobilisations defeated a military coup and oil industry lockout, and left wing President Hugo Chávez famously launched his plan to create “socialism in the 21st century”. However, previous analyses in this journal have shown the revolution is at a key junction, with increased disenchantment in the population due to corruption, bureaucratisation and the slow pace of change which has reopened the door to victory for the right wing opposition in referendums and regional elections.

Yuri Prasad + Sartaj Khan: Crisis and conflict in Pakistan

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Sartaj Khan of the International Socialists of Pakistan spoke to Yuri Prasad about growing nationalist and ethnic tensions and the need for a working class response.

Jonathan Neale: Climate politics after Copenhagen

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The global economic crisis of the last two years has transformed the nature of climate politics in two ways. The turning point was Copenhagen.

Richard Seymour: The changing face of racism

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Racism, according to the New Labour communities secretary John Denham, is on the decline. The government’s progress in promoting racial equality in the last decade is, he argues, substantially responsible for this state of affairs. Denham’s claim is astonishing in light of a documented rise in the incidence of racism in the UK, the growth of support for the far right BNP, the emergence of violent street gangs under the rubric of the English Defence League (whom Denham himself has compared to Mosley’s British Union of Fascists), the reappearance of anti-immigrant politics in labour disputes such as at the Lindsey oil refinery, and the extraordinary increase in media-led hostility towards Muslims.

Christian Hogsbjerg: CLR James and the Black Jacobins

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Aimé Césaire, the late, great Martinican poet and activist, once noted that it was in Haiti that the “colonial problem” was first posed in all its complexity.

Jack Robertson: 25 years after the Great Miners’ Strike

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The year-long miners’ strike which started in March 1984 marked a decisive turning point in the history of the class struggle in Britain. In the 20th century it is only matched by the General Strike of 1926.

Leo Zeilig: Tony Cliff: Deflected permanent revolution in Africa

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If Tony Cliff credited the theory of permanent revolution as Trotsky’s most outstanding and original contribution to Marxism, then Cliff’s own revisions to the theory in 1963 were similarly remarkable. An appraisal of Cliff’s work, ten years after his death, must include his theory of deflected permanent revolution.

Gilbert Achcar: Rethinking imperialism: past, present and future

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A review of Alex Callinicos, Imperialism and Global Political Economy (Polity, 2009), £17.99
“Knowing Empire is part of fighting it”: this short statement concludes this remarkable 280-page book. It is certainly one of the most outstanding works in Alex Callinicos’s impressive list of publications—a list that covers an amazingly broad range of topics and keeps getting longer at an amazing pace.

Kevin Murphy: Conceding the Russian Revolution to liberals

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A review of Simon Pirani, The Russian Revolution in Retreat, 1920-24: Soviet Workers and the New Communist Elite (Routledge, 2008), £20.00
Readers of this journal who have not had the unpleasant experience of wading through liberal studies of the Soviet working class will nevertheless find the narrative itself all too familiar. These studies acknowledge that there was indeed a popular revolution in 1917, but the nasty and intransigent Lenin and Trotsky refused to share power with the “moderate” socialists.

Brian Richardson: Book review: Getting the “Change We Need”

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Manning Marable, Beyond Black and White: Transforming African-American Politics (Verso, 2009), £12.99
“Although it seems heaven-sent we ain’t ready to see a black President.” Tupac Shakur, the author of these lines, was one of the most iconic and outspoken representatives of what the black American historian and commentator Manning Marable characterises as the “hip hop generation”. The sense of political disenfranchisement felt by this generation was one of the key starting points for Marable’s 1995 book Beyond Black and White, which has now been republished in an updated edition.

Siân Ruddick: Book review: Fighting for women’s liberation today

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Nina Power, One Dimensional Woman(Zero Books),£7.99
Nina Power’s One Dimensional Woman is an important contribution to the latest string of books on feminism and women’s liberation, most importantly Female Chauvinist Pigs by Ariel Levy and Sexism and the System by Judith Orr.

Tim Evans: Book review: Socialism through devolution?

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Nick Davies and Darren Williams, Clear Red Water: Welsh Devolution and Socialist Politics (Francis Bootle Publishers, 2009), £7.99
Nick Davies and Darren Williams have written a thought-provoking book, which has been compared to the classic 1912 pamphlet The Miners’ Next Step. The authors call for Welsh Labour to put into practice a more consistently socialist programme. They argue for a distinctive way of delivering public services which avoids the marketisation and outsourcing characteristic of New Labour and for a greater engagement with Plaid Cymru, the Greens and other left, campaigning and political groups. They argue that “the members of all these groups should be encouraged to become part of a red-green alliance based on a renewed Welsh socialist project”.

Dan Swain: Book review: Refusing to be pessimistic

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Alain Badiou, Pocket Pantheon: Figures of Postwar Philosophy (Verso 2009), £9.99
In the preface to this new collection, the French philosopher Alain Badiou offers a withering assessment of the state of contemporary philosophy. He attacks those modern philosophers content to echo and clarify the ruling ideas of society and “wear themselves out trying to infect us with little articles, debates, blazing headlines (“The Ethics of Stock Options: Philosophers Speak Out at Last”) and boisterous roundtable discussions (“Philosophers: the G-String or the Veil?)” When confronted with the sight of Bérnard-Henri Lévy, supposedly France’s foremost thinker, speaking at the NATO summit or joining the clamour to ban the burqa, it is easy to see what he means.

Matthew Cookson: Book review: Resisting revisionism

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Tom Behan, The Italian Resistance: Fascists, Guerrillas and the Allies (Pluto Press, 2009), £18.99
The Italian people played a central role in liberating themselves from fascist dominance and Nazi occupation in 1943-5. Hundreds of thousands of people, mainly from the working class and with women playing a central role, took up arms, aided the partisan fighters and resisted fascism. This legacy remains powerful in Italy today, where every town and city has streets and squares named in honour of the liberation. But it is a contested legacy. A revisionist discourse, on the left and the right, has appeared in recent decades arguing that those who fought on both sides, during what was in part a civil war, should be remembered and respected equally.

Nathaniel Mehr: Book review: Apologising for the Chilean coup

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Alistair Horne, Kissinger’s Year: 1973 (Orion Books, 2009), £20
Grace Livingstone, America’s Backyard: The United States and Latin America from the Monroe Doctrine to the War on Terror (Zed Books, 2009), £18.99
The reviled Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, who came to power in a US-sponsored coup in 1973 and remained in power until 1990, died three years ago this December. In a new book examining the political career of US secretary of state Henry Kissinger during that tumultuous year, British historian Alistair Horne has sought to rehabilitate Kissinger’s reputation. The book has met with the approval of Kissinger, who has personally endorsed it.

John Newsinger: Book review: Vote for Prisoner 9653

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Ernest Freeberg, Democracy’s Prisoner: Eugene Debs, the Great War and the Right to Dissent (Harvard University, 2008) £22.95
On 16 June 1918 Eugene Debs, one of the leaders of the American Socialist Party, spoke at a mass meeting in Canton, Ohio. Although he had reservations about the party’s anti-war policy, he nevertheless felt obliged to speak out in solidarity with those of his comrades who had already felt the weight of government repression. He opened his speech with a reference to three imprisoned party activists. They had learned “that it is extremely dangerous to exercise our constitutional right of freedom of speech in a country fighting to make democracy safe in the world”.

Christakis Georgiou: Book review: Finance and capitalism in Europe

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John Grahl (ed), Global Finance and Social Europe (Edward Elgar, 2009), £79.95
Over the last 30 years European economies and their financial systems have undergone profound structural changes. Capital markets (bonds and equity) have become the main source of borrowing for firms. Barriers to capital mobility have been lifted, and a wave of directives from the European Commission have promoted the integration of financial markets and the privatisation of health and pension provisions.

Ken Olende: Book review: A true reflection of the system

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Michela Wrong, It’s Our Turn To Eat: The Story of a Kenyan Whistle Blower (Fourth Estate, 2009), £12.99
Kenya was long seen in the West as a stable country where journalists, NGOs and Western businesses could set up their headquarters. In 2002 the long entrenched and notoriously corrupt government of Daniel Arap Moi was finally removed in a remarkable election. Two central features were the degree of public participation and the break from the entrenched “tribalism” that has plagued the country since independence.

Jonny Jones + Alex Callinicos: Pick of the quarter: This quarter's selection

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