Arkivet – Nummervisning

Fra International Socialism Journal nr. 127

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Contents (ISJ 127, Summer 2010)

127

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Contributors (ISJ 127, Summer 2010)

127

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Analysis: The second bank bailout

127

3

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Analysis: Britain: the mould cracks

127

10

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In Britain the drive to austerity is framed by the formation of the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government. The novelty of such an arrangement in recent British politics has provoked an intense media hullabaloo focused on the persons of the new prime minister, David Cameron, and his Lib Dem deputy, Nick Clegg.

Analysis: Rogue state at sea

127

20

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News of the Israel Defence Forces’ (IDF) atrocious attack on the flotilla bringing aid to Gaza reached us as this journal was going to press. It falls into the pattern of behaviour that Israel’s rulers have displayed in recent years.

Judith Orr: Marxism and feminism today

127

25

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According to Sir Stuart Rose, the outgoing executive chairman of Marks and Spencer, women (or “girls” as he puts it) “have never had it so good”.

Shlomo Sand + John Rose: Interview: Zionism, socialism and nationalism

127

59

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Shlomo Sand’s The Invention of the Jewish People (Verso, 2009), which offers a devastating critique of Zionist historical myths, has had a major impact. Following up on his review article of the book, John Rose interviewed Sand for International Socialism.

Richard G Wilkinson + Iain Ferguson: Interview: Reviving the spirit of equality

127

67

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Richard G Wilkinson is a prominent British researcher in social inequalities in health and the social determinants of health. His work shows that societies with more equal distribution of income have better health outcomes than ones in which the gap between the richest and poorest in society is greater. Iain Ferguson spoke to him for International Socialism about his most recent book (with Kate Pickett) The Spirit Level: Why Equality is Better for Everyone (Allen Lane, 2009).

John Newsinger: 1937: the year of the sitdown

127

81

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The first New Deal that Franklin Roosevelt’s administration began implementing in 1933 was accompanied by an explosion of working class unrest. Workers flooded into the unions and in the course of 1933 and 1934 confronted America’s open shop employers in hundreds of battles across the country, some of which reached near insurrectionary proportions.

Gonzalo Pozo: Reassessing the permanent arms economy

127

111

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In his 1938 Transitional Programme (entitled “The Death Agony of Capitalism and the Tasks of the Fourth International”), Leon Trotsky had predicted an imminent collapse of the Soviet Union and an equally imminent crisis of Western capitalism. However, the world landscape after the war was fundamentally different, if not diametrically opposed to the one anticipated by Trotsky.

Sebastian Budgen: The Red Hussar: Daniel Bensaïd, 1946-2010

127

143

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Time is currently extracting a heavy blood tribute from the thinkers of the radical left. It is enough to list the names of those we have lost recently to get a measure of the hecatomb—Georges Labica, Giovanni Arrighi, Peter Gowan, GA Cohen, Howard Zinn.

Gareth Jenkins: Empire and literature

127

167

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A review of Jonah Raskin, The Mythology of Imperialism: A Revolutionary Critique of British Literature and Society in the Modern Age (Monthly Review Press, 2009), £15.95

Ian Birchall: Feedback: Another side of anarchism

127

175

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Paul Blackledge’s article “Marxism and anarchism” is a most useful contribution. It provides a sound exposition of the fundamental differences between Marxism and anarchism; it is based on careful and thorough documentation and is argued in a sober and unsectarian tone. Yet at times the article only tells half the story.

Xanthe Whittaker + Gareth Dale: Feedback: A response to the sex work debate

127

183

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With trade unions and feminists divided over the question of how to understand sex work in terms of women’s oppression and whether to relate to sex workers when they organise, it is timely that International Socialism has opened up this debate.

Joseph Choonara: Book review: Economic development

127

199

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Dimitris Milonakis and Ben Fine, From Political Economy to Economics: Method, the Social and the Historical in the Evolution of Economic Theory (Routledge, 2009), £33.99
Dimitris Milonakis and Ben Fine, From Economics Imperialism to Freakonomics: The Shifting Boundaries between Economics and other Social Sciences (Routledge, 2009), £31.99
These two books are a genuine achievement in Marxist scholarship. The second deservedly won the authors the 2009 Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Prize. Together they form a timely examination of the history of economic thought and its relationship to wider social theory.

Penny Howard: Book review: Sharing history

127

202

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Thomas C Patterson, Karl Marx, Anthropologist (Berg, 2009), £19.99
Karl Marx, Anthropologist is a fascinating and very wide ranging book, which draws on Patterson’s almost 50 years of study of both Marxism and anthropology.

Chris Bambery: Book review: Gramsci rendered whole

127

205

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Peter Thomas, The Gramscian Moment: Philosophy, Hegemony and Marxism (Brill, 2009), £104
So much quoted, less read and even less understood, Antonio Gramsci’s Prison Notebooks must be one of the most cited works by any Marxist. Peter Thomas has produced a fine book, which readers of this journal should beg, steal or borrow to obtain a copy, placing Gramsci firmly, not just in the revolutionary camp, but as a Leninist rooted in the early, revolutionary years of the Communist International.

G Francis Hodge: Book review: Driving American decline

127

208

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Gabriel Kolko, World in Crisis: The End of the American Century (Pluto, 2009), £12.99
In his introduction to World in Crisis Gabriel Kolko writes provocatively that “American capitalism is tending towards committing suicide—and is taking other nations with it.” Kolko argues that the century of US global dominance is drawing to a close, driven by factors deeply embedded in the structure of US capitalism.

Stacey Whittle: Book review: Philosophy on the barricades

127

209

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Peter Hudis and Kevin B. Anderson (eds), Raya Dunayevskaya: The Power of Negativity—Selected Writings on the Dialectic in Hegel and Marx (Lexington Books, 2002), £16.95
The relationship of Marx and historical materialism to Hegelian dialectics has long been a source of argument amongst Marxists and non-Marxists alike. The great value of Raya Dunayevskaya’s work, and of these selected writings, is to leave no shadow of doubt that Marx’s entire work (despite allegations of an “epistemological break” between his early “philosophy” and later “economic” work) is indebted to Hegel’s historical and philosophical dialectic. Her aim is to demonstrate the relationship of the Hegelian revolution in philosophy to Marx’s philosophy of revolution.

Louis Bayman: Book review: Drama in three acts

127

211

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Emilie Bickerton, A Short History of Cahiers du Cinéma (Verso, 2009), £12.99
This book charts the story of the most significant film journal in history, not only in its native France, but throughout the world. Cahiers (“notebooks”) was an active—and sometimes activist—participant in the culture and society whose relationship it so keenly theorised. At the same time the trajectory of the journal is also the trajectory of the post-war French left, from radicalisation to disastrous embrace of the free market.

Martin Empson: Book review: Dispelling “the Malthus myth”

127

213

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Fred Pearce, Peoplequake: Mass Migration, Ageing Nations and the Coming Population Crash (Eden Project Books, 2010), £12.99
In the 200 years since the Reverend Thomas Malthus first penned his tract An Essay on the Principle of Population the question of the “carrying capacity” of the planet has repeatedly appeared. Most recently, mainstream debates around how to solve the question of climate change have boiled down to the simplistic argument that “there are too many people”.

Adam Fabry: Book review: Poles apart?

127

216

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Jane Hardy, Poland’s New Capitalism (Pluto Press, 2009), £ 13.99
Throughout the Cold War, Poland played a central role in developments within the Soviet bloc, often representing a beacon of workers’ struggle against its inherently sclerotic economy and repressive Stalinist regime. As the largest economy and most populous country in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) with more than 38 million citizens, Poland today remains a key puzzle for understanding political and economic developments not just within the ex-Stalinist states, but also in Europe as a whole.

Paul Blackledge: Book review: Irrational records

127

217

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Terry Thomas, Criminal Records: A Database for the Criminal Justice System and Beyond (Palgrave, 2007), £45
In this important, historically informed mapping of contemporary criminal records policy Terry Thomas overviews the emergence and growth of criminal records from the Victorian period through to the present day to illuminate the modern system as a whole.

Leo Zeilig: Book review: Contesting the revolutionary tradition

127

220

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Michael Schmidt and Lucien van der Walt, Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism (AK Press, 2009), £18
Black Flame is the first of a two-volume project that attempts to re-examine the history and theory of “anarchism’s democratic class politics” over the last 150 years. Its scope is wide. The two volumes aim to cover the emergence of 19th century anarchism, the anti-capitalist movements at the start of this century, and the intellectual history of the tradition.

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

127

223

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Historical Materialism – Monthly Review – Revolutionary History – Interface – Research in Money and Finance group