NLR 88

articles
Emily MorrisUnexpected Cuba

Alone among the ex-Comecon countries, Cuba has forged a distinctive path since 1991—not transition to capitalism but careful adjustment to external change, safeguarding its gains in social provision and national sovereignty. Emily Morris challenges the view that Havana will have to embrace the market and submit to foreign capital if it is to survive.

Marco D'EramoUNESCOcide

From Venice to Edinburgh, Porto to Rhodes, San Gimignano to Luang Prabang—the World Heritage label as vital tool for the global tourist industry, but death sentence for the hurly-burly of real urban life.

interview
Gleb PavlovskyPutin’s World Outlook

Former Kremlin advisor and election manager offers a unique account of the Russian leader’s ideological formation and worldview. A Soviet-realist analysis of the failings of the USSR and the actual motivations of the capitalist states.

articles
Kevin PaskMosaics of American Nationalism

Annealed through expansionism after the Civil War, could America’s sectional divisions re-emerge if the empire falters? Kevin Pask explores the changing parameters—closing frontiers, rising Sunbelt—of the nationalism that dares not speak its name.

Jean-Paul SartreMarxism and Subjectivity

Transcript of Sartre’s 1961 Lecture at the Istituto Gramsci in Rome, previously unpublished in English. A sustained philosophical riposte to Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness and argument for a concept of subjectivity as process, vividly illustrated in concrete situations.

Fredric JamesonSartre’s Actuality

Reflections on the occasion of the Rome Lecture and on its themes. Dialectic of the inside and the outside, the surprising role of non-knowledge in subjectivity—and new technologies and labour processes as experiential grounds for transformation in class consciousness.

reviews
The Politics of Exit

Wolfgang Streeck on Peter Mair, Ruling the Void. Diagnosis of Western democracy’s hollowing in the final work of a political-science master.

A Mind of the Left?

Michael Christofferson on Christophe Prochasson, François Furet. A former colleague supplies the case for the defence.

Re-selling Japan

Kristin Surak on David Pilling, Bending Adversity. Hopes for a Thatcherized Japan in Fukushima’s wake from the FT’s man in Tokyo.

Canadianization

Hung Ho-Fung on Leo Panitch & Sam Gindin, The Making of Global Capitalism. Canada provides the model for America’s frictionless rise to global supremacy.