Arkivet – Nummervisning

Fra International Socialism Journal nr. 151

Forfatter: Titel

Nr.

Side

Udgivet

Om

Contents (ISJ 151, Summer 2016)

151

1

jul 16

Tories’ Euro eruption

Contributors (ISJ 151, Summer 2016)

151

2

jul 16

Alex Callinicos: Analysis: Brexit: a world-historic turn

151

3

jul 16

Britain’s vote on 23 June to leave the EU is an event of major geopolitical significance. It will have a disorganising effect on the nexus of alliances through which the Western imperialist powers, led by the United States, manage global capitalism. It is a very serious blow to the European Union.

Eduardo Albuquerque: Analysis: A historic turning point in Brazil

151

17

jul 16

Dilma Rousseff’s suspension is a historic turning point in Brazil—the end of an era of Workers’ Party (PT) national governments that began in 2002 with the election of Lula.

Ralph Darlington: Official and unofficial action in the fight against anti-union laws

151

37

jul 16

The Conservative government’s Trade Union Act 2016—in particular the strike balloting threshold provisions—represents the most radical tightening of the rules on industrial action and trade union organisation since the Margaret Thatcher era of the 1980s.

Camilla Royle: Marxism and the Anthropocene

151

63

jul 16

As you read this article every breath you take in contains about 400 parts per million (ppm) of carbon dioxide, around a third more than your great grandparents breathed 100 years ago. As well as leading to potentially catastrophic global warming, carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has changed the way plants photosynthesise and has also made seas and lakes more acidic, more so than they have been for the last 800,000 years. The effect human activity is having in the world is on such a huge scale that, for a growing number of thinkers, Earth has entered a new geological epoch defined by human activity. Using the Greek word Anthropos (human) they propose to name this epoch the Anthropocene.

Ron Margulies: What are we to do with Islam? The case of Turkey

151

85

jul 16

The question of the relationship between socialists on the one hand and Muslims and Islamic organisations on the other is of burning relevance both in the West and, even more so, in the countries of the Middle East.

John Newsinger: Imperial silences: From Rhodes to Surabaya

151

97

jul 16

The campaign last year to have the statue of Cecil Rhodes removed from Oriel College, Oxford, has provoked more discussion of the British Empire and its crimes than we have seen for many years. Rather than keeping quiet about Britain’s imperial past, the Rhodes Must Fall campaign has actually flushed establishment apologists out into the open. They have been forced to defend the legacy of a man who, if he had not been British and had not given a substantial bribe to Oxford University, would today be generally acknowledged by everyone as a corrupt fraudster, thief, liar and killer for profit, as someone marked out only by the enormity of his crimes.

Miriam Scharf: Book Review: Where does ISIS come from?

151

115

jul 16

A review of Abdel Bari Atwan, Islamic State: The Digital Caliphate (Saqi, 2015), £9.99
Rosa Luxemburg said that capitalism would end in either socialism or barbarism. Looking at the Middle East, as hopes of democracy and social justice have been dashed by counter-revolution and violence, and at the West’s depictions of Islamic State or ISIS, barbarism might seem to have triumphed. Abdel Bari Atwan, editor for 25 years of the Arabic daily AlQuds AlArabi and now running the news website Rai al-Youm, is well placed to give an informed account of the origins, ideology and spread of ISIS.

Donny Gluckstein: The rebirth of social democracy

151

123

jul 16

The arrival of radical politics on the parliamentary stage across many countries has been spectacular. From Bernie Sanders in the Democratic Party in the United States to the unexpected election of Jeremy Corbyn as Labour leader, the emergence of powerful new parties like Syriza in Greece and Podemos in Spain, and electoral breakthroughs in Ireland and Portugal, the prominence of left wing electoral projects creates exciting new opportunities for socialists, but also raise many questions.

Max van Lingen: The stagnation of the Dutch Socialist Party

151

131

jul 16

The Socialist Party (SP) is one of the parties that emerged to the left of traditional social democracy in the last decade of the 20th century. In electoral terms, it is one of the most successful. At its peak in 2006, the SP got 25 out of 150 seats (16.6 percent of the vote), becoming the third party in the House of Representatives. With the European Parliament (2014) and provincial (2015) elections it eclipsed the Labour Party (PvdA) for the first time, becoming the biggest party of the left in the Netherlands. Until Syriza’s election victory in 2015 the Dutch SP was the only left reformist party in Europe to win a bigger share of the vote than the traditional social democratic party.

Leonard Marcel Ares: Book Review: Under Fire: A call for peace from the trenches

151

159

jul 16

In the 1916 novel Under Fire: The Story of a Squad, Henri Barbusse vividly describes the experience of the First World War.

Ralph Tebbutt: Does every child matter?

151

165

jul 16

How do we assess our education system? One way is to measure the extent to which that system is producing the skilled personnel required by the capitalist state in order to determine the cost effectiveness and efficiency of the system. The alternative is to start from what is necessary to enable each and every individual to fulfil their full potential within society. The aim of this article is to challenge the former approach and to discuss how the latter approach can be implemented.

Sabby Sagall: Feedback: Erich Fromm and social character: A reply to Iain Ferguson

151

185

jul 16

Iain Ferguson’s article on Erich Fromm provides a welcome opportunity for readers of International Socialism to engage in a debate not only on the work of this popular but controversial writer but also on the wider issue of the relationship between Marxism and psychoanalysis. Like the other Marxist psychoanalyst, Wilhelm Reich, Fromm was attacked by the left for being a psychoanalyst, and by psychoanalysts for being a leftist.

Rob Murthwaite: Book Review: Disability, resistance and revolution

151

193

jul 16

A review of Roddy Slorach, A Very Capitalist Condition: A History and Politics of Disability (Bookmarks, 2015), £12.99
The number of disabled people has grown from around 10 percent of the world population in the 1970s to 15 percent, 1 billion people, today. The World Health Organisation predicts that this figure will continue to grow as the world’s population ages and chronic diseases such as diabetes, heart disease, respiratory disease and stress related illness increase. Severe physical injury in warfare and road traffic accidents as well as industrial injury, malnutrition and insanitary living conditions also remain major causes of serious impairment. Around the world disabled people are among the most marginalised—suffering poorer health outcomes, lower levels of educational achievement and higher levels of unemployment and poverty than non-disabled people.

Marnie Holborow: Book Review: War from above, resistance from below

151

196

jul 16

A review of Donny Gluckstein (ed), Fighting on all Fronts: Popular Resistance and the Second World War (Bookmarks, 2015), £13.99
As Donny Gluckstein points out in the introduction to this book, understanding the nature of the Second World War is fundamental to our understanding of the world today. Liberal and left wing opinion sees it as a war between democracy and fascism, or “progress and reaction” as Eric Hobsbawm described it. This leads some to see the Allies’ victory as the straightforward triumph of democracy and ushering in American prosperity for all.

Tom Gordon: Book Review: State, power and bureaucracy

151

200

jul 16

A review of Thomas M Twiss, Trotsky and the Problem of Soviet Bureaucracy (Brill/Haymarket, 2015), £25.99
The theory of bureaucratic state capitalism in Russia and elsewhere characterises the International Socialist Tendency and distinguishes us from most other Marxist parties worldwide. So a study of the development of Leon Trotsky’s ideas on the Russian bureaucracy is of particular interest. This book reveals one of the greatest Marxists struggling to come to terms with a wholly new ­phenomenon, the Stalinist bureaucracy.

Jacques Bidet: Book Review: Capital in context

151

203

jul 16

A review of Alex Callinicos, Deciphering Capital: Marx’s Capital and its Destiny (Bookmarks, 2014), £14.99
Deciphering Capital by Alex Callinicos is the impressive balance sheet of some 30 years of research. Its starting point is a thesis completed at Oxford in 1978 entitled “The Logic of Capital”, which distanced him at one and the same time from both the surrounding Hegelian Marxism and the empiricism of Ernest Mandel.

Laura Miles: Book Review: Can we combine intersectionality with Marxism?

151

204

jul 16

A review of Sharon Smith, Women and Socialism: Class, Race and Capital (Haymarket, 2015), £11.99
Neoliberal austerity is impacting particularly hard on women. Capitalism relies on women not just directly as workers who generate surplus value but also to provide the primary carers for the next generation of workers and increasingly for the sick and elderly as social service cuts bite. Reproductive rights face serial attacks and domestic violence and other forms of endemic sexism in capitalist society mean that the fight for women’s liberation and, in the shorter term, the fight to defend those rights women have won so far from being rolled back remain key issues for socialists.

Bob Light: Book Review: Nine days that shaped the words

151

208

jul 16

A review of Charles Ferrall and Dougal McNeill, Writing the 1926 General Strike: Literature, Culture, Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2015), £55
This is an exemplary book which does exactly what it says on the tin, examining how the 1926 General Strike is inscribed in writing in a variety of genres over the subsequent 50 years.

Emma Davis: Book Review: 1956 and after

151

210

jul 16

A review of Evan Smith and Matthew Worley (eds), Against the Grain: The British far left from 1956 (Manchester University Press, 2014), £75
The need for a genuine left alternative to cuts, privatisation, racism, war and climate change is urgent. The huge enthusiasm around the election of left winger Jeremy Corbyn to the leadership of the Labour Party shows the immense potential for unified struggles. However, a glance at the history of the British left will confirm a record of multiple organisations and groups that can be confusing, especially to those new to the movement.

Bob Fotheringham: Book Review: Antonio Gramsc—Academic or Revolutionary?

151

214

jul 16

A review of George Hoare and Nathan Sperber, An Introduction to Antonio Gramsci: His Life, Thought and Legacy (Bloomsbury, 2015), £16.99
A central question confronted by the authors of this book is, what is Antonio Gramsci’s relevance today? It seems to me that there exist two parallel Gramscis—one is the Italian revolutionary activist and founding member of the Italian Communist Party who died shortly after leaving prison in 1937; and the other is the philosopher and theoretician whose prison writings have had a major impact on a wide range of academics trying to make sense of their world in their own particular field of study.

Gail Edwards: Book Review: Putting critical realism to work for education and revolution

151

217

jul 16

A review of Grant Banfield, Critical Realism for Marxist Sociology of Education (Routledge, 2016), £95
Marxists are interested in the role education and schooling play in history and revolution. But classical Marxist studies in the sociology of education have remained marginalised by mainstream, gloomy neo- and post-Marxist assessments of education’s emancipatory potential. In this meticulously researched piece of scholarship, however, Grant Banfield brings Roy Bhaskar’s critical realist philosophy to work as a redemptive conceptual intervention in the field. The result is a powerful rejoinder to those who have dismissed classical Marxism in the study of the relationship between education and the social order.

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

151

221

jul 16

Critique – Jacobin – Monthly Review – London Review of Books – New Left Review

Ron Margulies: Turkey: How to stop the tanks

151

jul 16

The Turkish left has always been very fond of “the people”. Reference is frequently also made to the working class, of course, but it is the people, the oppressed, the poor who are seen as the agents of social change. People’s war, people’s assemblies, people’s liberation are popular concepts and aims.
On the evening and night of 15 July, the people came out onto the streets of all major cities, particularly Istanbul and Ankara. They came out in their thousands, to stop the military from overthrowing the govenment and taking power.