Arkivet – Nummervisning

Fra International Socialism Journal nr. 148

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Contents (ISJ 148, Autumn 2015)

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In or out? The left and the European Union

Contributors (ISJ 148, Autumn 2015)

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Alex Callinicos: Analysis: Two faces of reformism

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In our last issue we advised the radical left in Britain to be “open to the sudden fissures that the crisis of the British state can…unexpectedly open up, perhaps making possible a qualitative advance”. And the unexpected came very quickly, and in a particularly surprising form.

Panos Garganas: Analysis: Why did Syriza fail?

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How has Syriza ended up this way? This is a question that is tormenting a big part of the left and that all the forces that situate themselves on the left must answer.

Suzanne Jeffery: Analysis: Up against the clock: Climate, social movements and Marxism

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Time is running out. This is not an alarmist call to arms but a reflection of the scientific consensus about what is happening to the climate and what will happen in the coming years unless action to reduce emissions of greenhouse gases happens on a huge scale and begins now.

Fran Cetti: Fortress Europe: The war against migrants

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The contradiction between Europe’s avowedly fundamental principles of human rights and the scenes witnessed in the Mediterranean this year could not be more stark. Yet many on the left persist in their attachment to the European Union, primarily because of its rhetorical commitment to internationalism, workers’ rights, and in particular, human rights, which are in theory guaranteed by the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). Its common asylum and immigration policies and border control practices, however, paint a very different picture.

John Palmer: The EU referendum: The case for a socialist Yes vote

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I would like to preface this discussion with Alex Callinicos, on what attitude socialists should take to the referendum on Britain’s membership of the European Union (EU), on a personal note. This debate has echoes of earlier controversies on the same issue in which I was involved when I was a member of the predecessor organisations of the Socialist Workers Party; first the Socialist Review Group and then the International Socialists.

Alex Callinicos: The internationalist case against the European Union

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For the first time in a generation Britain will vote on its membership of the European Union, probably in the autumn of 2016. How to vote in that referendum is a difficult choice for anyone on the left. Since the 1990s the anti-EU camp has been dominated by the chauvinist and racist right, initially on the Thatcherite wing of the Tory party, but now enjoying separate and increasingly powerful representation in the shape of the UK Independence Party. But anyone who contemplates therefore voting Yes in the referendum is confronted with the reality of the EU as a neoliberal club currently busy nailing the people of Greece to the cross of austerity. Viewing the standoff between the Europhobes and the oligarchs of Brussels and Frankfurt one is reminded of Oscar Wilde’s description of fox hunting as the unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable. This article seeks to address this dilemma, arguing that there is a powerful internationalist case against the EU.

John Newsinger: Hearts and minds: The myth and reality of British counter-insurgency

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Up until ten years ago the British army boasted of an expertise in counter-insurgency warfare from which other armies could learn. Whereas the French had suffered humiliating defeats in Indo-China and Algeria and the United States had been driven out of Vietnam, the British had defeated Communist insurgency in Malaya. Moreover, in their wars, both the French and US militaries had disgraced themselves by their excesses, their use of torture and their disproportionate use of fire-power. By way of contrast, the British had developed a methodology for conducting counter-insurgency that had kept their hands clean.

Joseph Choonara: Paul Mason’s PostCapitalism: Brand new, you’re retro

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A review of Paul Mason, PostCapitalism: A Guide to Our Future (Allen Lane, 2015), £16.99
Some 45 years ago futurologist Alvin Toffler published a breathless evocation of a world transformed. Visions of talking dolphins and a rather disturbing fixation with erotic cyborgs fill the pages of his work, Future Shock.

Anne Alexander + Haytham Cero: Feedback: Fascism and ISIS

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Ghayath Naisse’s article “The ‘Islamic State’ and the Counter-revolution” is an extremely valuable contribution to the discussion about the nature of ISIS. In particular, Naisse’s emphasis on the devastating impact of war on Iraqi and Syrian societies—in the Iraqi case over the course of decades, in the Syrian case over a much shorter timescale—is crucial to our understanding of the political and military struggles playing out across both countries.

We are in agreement with the majority of Ghayath’s thoughtful and succinctly argued article. However, there is one specific point where we feel that his analysis requires a rejoinder and further debate, namely the proposal to consider ISIS “through the experience of fascism”.

Dave Lyddon: Feedback: Bureaucratic mass strikes: a rejoinder

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Mark O’Brien’s article in 2014, “The problem of the one-day strike”, was an attempt to understand “the dominance of very short (usually one-day) national, public sector strikes that have typified industrial action in the UK for at least a decade”. My response to him concentrated on the 30 November 2011 coordinated strike (N30) and the earlier union campaign in 2005-6 against New Labour’s attempted “reforms” of public service pensions. He agreed with my criticism of the “no J30, no N30” narrative within the Socialist Workers Party, which was my main argument. For my own part, I acknowledged Mark’s “particularly useful account of local organisation around N30”. Our areas of disagreement are limited but nonetheless significant and these form the first two parts of this brief rejoinder. The third part engages with Mark’s discussion of the one-day strike.

Fred Moseley: Book Review: Marx’s research notebooks and globalisation

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A review of Lucia Pradella, Globalization and the Critique of Political Economy: New Insights from Marx’s Writings (Routledge, 2014), £90

In this pioneering book Lucia Pradella examines Marx’s research notebooks that have been published for the first time in recent years in the monumental Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe (MEGA) collection (planned to be 110 volumes in all, 69 of which have been published).

Brian O’Boyle: Book Review: Post-Keynesianism and the eurozone crisis

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Mark Baimbridge and Philip B Whyman, Crisis in the Eurozone: Causes, Dilemmas and Solutions (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015), £75

Crisis in the Eurozone has all the hallmarks of academic writing. Written by two Post-Keynesian economists, it takes the reader through sections recounting the economics of monetary union, policy making within the eurozone and proposed solutions to the eurozone crisis. The overarching theme of the book is that European Monetary Union (EMU) has been an unmitigated disaster. Instead of allowing national governments discretionary tools to manage their economies, EMU binds participants into a policy straitjacket inspired by the economics of neoliberalism.

Jacqui Freeman: Book Review: The making and remaking of class

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Leo Panitch and Greg Albo (eds), Socialist Register 2015: Transforming Classes (Merlin Press, 2014), £16.95

The 2015 edition of Socialist Register discusses class formation, class politics and class strategies today in relation to questions of gender and oppression. It is a welcome continuation of themes developed in the 2014 volume with contributions from academics alongside labour and social movement activists.

Stephen Philip: Book Review: A vibrant portrait of Walter Benjamin

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Howard Eiland and Michael W Jennings, Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life (Harvard University Press, 2014), £25

At 700 pages, Walter Eiland and Michael W Jennings’s Walter Benjamin: A Critical Life is the most complete biography available of this fascinating writer whose posthumous fame and reach continue to have an impact in radical intellectual circles. With admirable scholarship, the authors have marshalled a wealth of detail to provide a vibrant picture of Benjamin’s life.

Josh Hollands: Book Review: Trade unions and LGBT activism

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Miriam Frank, Out in the Union: A Labor History of Queer America (Temple University Press, 2014), £20.99

In the past year there has been increased interest, both in the academy and in the broad left, in notions of solidarity between lesbians, gay men, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people and the organised working class. This has been spurred on by the release of the film Pride, which details how a group of activists formed Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners during the 1984-5 strike against Margaret Thatcher’s pit closures. The recent publication of Miriam Frank’s detailed narrative of LGBT people organising within and alongside unions in the United States is therefore timely.

Susie Helme: Book Review: Revisiting a Marxist classic

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Henryk Grossman, Fifty Years of Struggle over Marxism 1883-1932 (Marxist Left Review, 2014), £9.99

The classic Fifty Years of Struggle over Marxism 1883-1932 by Henryk Grossman has recently been translated by Rick Kuhn and Einde O’Callaghan. Originally published as an entry in a German dictionary of economics, it is one of the earliest reviews of Marxist thought and one of the first critiques of revisionism—theories based on a significant revising of Marxist premises.

Maciej Bancarzewski: Book Review: Breaking with neoliberalism

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Lucia Pradella and Thomas Marois (eds), Polarising Development: Alternatives to Neoliberalism and the Crisis (Pluto Press, 2014), £22

Since the collapse of the Berlin Wall neoliberalism has dominated the global economy. The philosophy of TINA (There is No Alternative) became the official orthodoxy which has been preached both in the North and in the South. Keynesian thought was forgotten or at least regarded as old-fashioned and impractical. Governments were advised by international financial institutions (the IMF and World Bank) that real development could only be achieved through adhering to neoliberal principles and that any departure from them would have catastrophic consequences.

Neil Singh: Book Review: Medicine in post-revolutionary Cuba

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P. Sean Brotherton, Revolutionary Medicine: Health and the Body in Post-Soviet Cuba (Duke University Press, 2012), £16.99

Cuba is back in the international news. In December 2014, it was announced that relations between Cuba and the United States were “thawing”; that the 65 year US embargo would soon be lifted and diplomatic relations re-established, as evinced by the opening of the Cuban embassy in Washington in July this year. This marks the latest twist in the love-hate relationship between the US and Cuba.

Alex Callinicos + Camilla Royle: Pick of the quarter: This quarter’s selection

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Monthly Review + New Left Review + Marxism 21 (South Korea)