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Labour’s Future and the Coalition Debate
“Slightly adapting Dr. Johnson, we can say that the prospect of political execution concentrates the collective mind wonderfully—on the elementary need to survive. This has been the preoccupation of the Labour Party, especially its leadership, in the wake of its catastrophically poor performance in the 1983 general election. . . .” read more
Spanish Socialism in the Atlantic Order
“In March 1986, the first popular referendum on a military alliance in history was held in Spain. The ruling Socialist Party (psoe)—committed only four years earlier to withdrawal from nato—campaigned for Spanish integration into the Atlantic Alliance, deploying a massive battery of official manipulation, threats and . . .” read more
The Crisis in Bolivia
“On the morning of Thursday, 29 August 1985 the government of Bolivia presented Supreme Decree no. 21060 to the nation. The 166 articles of this charter for a ‘New Economic Policy’ constituted the most radical shift in planning and policy in the country for over thirty years. Wages . . .” read more
The Lesser Evil? The Left and the Democratic Party
“In the summer before the 1984 presidential elections, Michael Harrington and Irving Howe, in a widely noted interview in the New York Times Magazine, boasted that ‘by now practically everyone on the left agrees that the Democratic Party, with all its faults, must be our main political arena’. . . .” read more
Capital Flight and Exchange Controls
“The difficulties faced by a Labour Government in carrying out socialist policies in the UK assume their most dramatic form in the threat of capital flight. If free movement of financial capital is allowed, domestic UK interest rates are bound by a golden chain, via Euromarkets, . . .” read more
The Women’s Movement in West Germany
“Today the women’s movement in the Federal Republic of Germany is everywhere and nowhere. This ubiquitous non-existence has perhaps long been a feature of the new women’s movement, but the recent shifts may be best understood in the contradictory terms of a successful defeat. The State, initially under . . .” read more
'Resurgent Democracy': Rhetoric and Reality
“During the past year Reagan administration officials and the us press have pointed with frequency and enthusiasm to a resurgence of democracy in Latin America. Secretary of State George Schultz, for example, has spoken of ‘more people voting in more elections in more countries than ever before . . .” read more
The Lost World of British Communism
“British political life at the present moment seems peculiarly fissiparous. Four major parties are competing for the popular franchise (in Wales and Scotland five) where previously there were two, and there is an amoeba-like growth of minorities and tendencies within the parties themselves. With the rise of the . . .” read more
The Rajiv Congress in Search of Stability
“Never since the early days of independence has any government in New Delhi received the kind of acclaim that Rajiv Gandhi’s has enjoyed from bourgeois commentators at home and in the West. The eastern bloc, if not so vociferous, has certainly not sounded a dissenting note. The ‘Rajiv . . .” read more
Crisis in British Communism: An Insider’s View
“The Communist Party of Great Britain is in the throes of a severe crisis. Political scissions and antagonisms between different tendencies, struggles for control of the Party machine and its publications, expulsions of leading militants, forced suspension of the work of major structures present a dramatic spectacle of . . .” read more
Historical Materialism, Answer to Marxism’s Crisis
“Has any period since Marx’s death been marked by weaker conviction among Marxists than our own? Doubts and doubters have been with us for as long as Marxism itself, but those of today no longer face a compelling politicaltheoretical field of force, dominated by an individual, movement, party, . . .” read more
A Philosophico-Political Profile
“Could you tell us something of the sequence of the principal intellectual influences on your work? You are often represented as an heir of the Frankfurt School who gave its legacy a ‘linguistic turn’, with a move from a philosophy of consciousness to one of language. Is this . . .” read more
The New Revisionism in Britain
“Since the late seventies, and particularly since the arrival in office of the Thatcher government in May 1979, a vast amount of writing has been produced on the left to account for the troubles which have beset the Labour Party and the labour movement as a whole. The . . .” read more
The Language of African Literature
“The language of African literature cannot be discussed meaningfully outside the context of those social forces which have made it both an issue demanding our attention, and a problem calling for a resolution. On the one hand is, let us call a spade a spade, imperialism in its . . .” read more
The Declassing of Language
“The novelty of Gareth Stedman Jones’s Languages of Class lies, as its title suggests, in its contention that the study of language must be the starting point for any understanding of political activity. To some readers this proposition may seem a trifle obvious and not really novel at . . .” read more
Jackson and the Rise of the Rainbow Coalition
“The 1984 presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson represented a new stage of development in Afro-Americans’ struggle for equality in the context of us bourgeois democracy. Even white American political analysts unsympathetic with the Jackson campaign recognized this, and groped for words to define Jackson’s achievement. After Jackson . . .” read more
The Myth of Germany’s Missing Revolution
“It is now over half a century since Hitler came to power in Germany, inaugurating twelve years of bloodshed and destruction without parallel in human history. Throughout this period the Nazi phenomenon has posed a major challenge to human understanding. Why should fascism, in such an extreme, racist . . .” read more
Chinese Communism and Democracy
“Just a few years ago many socialists in the West saw China as the stronghold of true socialism in the world and Mao Zedong as its wise leader. Now China has few such ‘foreign friends’ and Mao-bashing has taken over from Mao-worship, with some of yesterday’s main worshippers . . .” read more
The British Women’s Movement
“A complete overview of British feminism would require a book rather than an essay. Within the context of a brief history of the movement we therefore aim in this article at an assessment of the developments within one section of the movement, socialist feminism, since the second half . . .” read more
Nuclear War Planning and Strategies of Nuclear Coercion
“In March 1954 a us Navy captain, William Brigham Moore, travelled to Nebraska to the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command. He and some thirty fellow officers were there to be briefed on that Command’s plans for nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Some at least of . . .” read more
The Eclipse of Spanish Communism
“In the brief political history of Eurocommunism, which emerged as a public international current in 1974 and has lived only the shadowiest existence since the break-up of the Union de la Gauche in 1977–78, the course of the Communist Party of Spain (pce) merits at least as . . .” read more
The Origins of the Second Cold War
“In the seventies writings on the crisis of imperialism proliferated in leftist social science. Their focus of attention was the revolutions in the Third World, the relations between North and South, the incipient economic crisis in the centre, and the sharpening of economic rivalry among the main capitalist . . .” read more
The Conjuncture of the Seventies and After: A Reply to Ougaard
“Morten Ougaard’s critique of The Making of the Second Cold War is most welcome: it establishes a common terrain for socialist discussion of contemporary world politics, one that delimits a shared and distinct area of political analysis. At the same time, within that common terrain, it becomes possible . . .” read more
Freud’s 'Roman Phobia'
“It is well known that, about the turn of the century, Sigmund Freud had a persistent desire to visit Rome that was repeatedly frustrated on account of a neurotic inhibition. He planned several trips to Rome, and even set out on some of them, but a powerful phobia . . .” read more
The Rise and Decline of Southern European Socialism
“The rise of Southern European Socialist parties (sesp) to government was as sudden and dramatic as their subsequent shift away from social welfare policies and their declining influence. The image that the sesp projected before their ascent was one of youthful radicalism. In contrast to the . . .” read more
How the French Left Learned to Love the Bomb
“The election of a Socialist, François Mitterrand, as President of the French Republic on 10 May 1981 aroused hopes in a European left that by the end of the seventies had to console itself as best it could. Mitterrand himself was, indeed, a Fourth Republic war-horse, a patriotic . . .” read more
'Drop the Glass Industry': Collaborating with E.H.Carr
“Carr and I first corresponded in 1955, after he had borrowed my thesis on The Development of the Soviet Budgetary System. We met a year later in 1956, when he gave a seminar in Glasgow, where I had my first academic job. In January 1958 he proposed that . . .” read more
Behind and Beyond Social Democracy in Sweden
“As the tide of Eurocommunism has subsided, the evolution of labour movements hegemonized by social democracy has come to assume a more pivotal role for the debate on strategies of transition in the advanced capitalist countries. With good reason, the Swedish case is frequently cited in this context. . . .” read more
Peru: Capitalist Democracy in Transition
“The writing of this article greatly benefited from discussions with numerous friends and colleagues in Peru: An¢al Quijano, Rodrigo Montoya, Orlando Plaza, Otto Flores, Helan Jaworski, José Matos Mar, Ricardo Letts, Carlos Urrut¡, Victor Villanueva, Edmundo Murragara, Alberto Grana, Jaime Giannella, Hugo Blanco, Armando Pillado, Baltazar Caravedo, Carlos . . .” read more
Determinacy and Indeterminacy in the Theory of Ideology
“The analysis of ideologies and forms of knowledge and belief is in a state of disorder. In contemporary Marxism, the autonomy and independent importance of ideology have been stressed at the expense of a discredited economic reductionism. In many ways this is a desirable development, although, as we . . .” read more
Reflections on Williamsburg
“It has been clear for some years that an economic struggle is going on between the usa and the rest of the industrialized world, particularly Western Europe. Any remaining pretences to the contrary were finally exposed at the Williamsburg summit, not least on account of the confused . . .” read more
Cold War in the Caribbean
“Amidst the general worsening of East-West relations, and the sharply antagonistic policy of the usa towards the Third World, a new political situation has emerged in the Caribbean. The region itself has a population of around twenty-nine millions, and comprises thirteen independent island states, numerous European and . . .” read more
The Threat of War and the Struggle for Socialism
“Several times during the last three years the threat of a third world war seemed to loom large. Impressionist commentators did not hesitate to draw this conclusion. In fact a panic wave arose. The powerful and promising anti-war movement, which is growing today in the imperialist countries, was . . .” read more
Feminism at Work
“The most important political phenomenon of the last two decades and one that will continue to mark the politics of the next has been the development of a new feminist consciousness and a movement for women’s liberation. In Canada and Quebec, as elsewhere in the advanced capitalist world, . . .” read more
Kosovo Between Yugoslavia and Albania
“On 2 April 1981, massive demonstrations took place in the Socialist Autonomous Province of Kosovo, an area of Yugoslavia inhabited mainly by ethnic Albanians, to demand republican status within the Yugoslav federation. By the end of the next day, the army had moved in with tanks and armoured . . .” read more
Ghana’s Precarious Revolution
“When Flight Lieutenant Rawlings seized power for the second time in Ghana on 31 December 1981 it was, like similar coups in Liberia and Ethiopia, under the pressure of intolerable economic crisis which had brought in its wake social and political crises of equally daunting proportions. Rawlings’s first . . .” read more
Why Labour Lost
“Before discussing the post-electoral situation in Britain and its possible consequences for the Labour Party, I would like to ask you just one ‘personal’ question. Soon after you were elected Leader of the Greater London Council (glc) you spoke at a left-wing rally where you shared . . .” read more
Canvassing for Socialism
“Immediately after June 9th I went round in a daze, feeling like an alien, not a citizen of this country at all. I half expected everybody to have turned bright blue, or to hear military music blasting out of unseen amplifiers. Now, oddly enough, after this initial period . . .” read more
The Polish Vortex: Solidarity and Socialism
“The greatest and most sustained popular upsurge in Europe for decades has left both bourgeois and working-class opinion in the West profoundly bewildered as to its basic historical meaning. A standard formula—used by both The Times and miners’ leader Arthur Scargill—has been that Solidarity was an excellent thing . . .” read more
Trotsky’s Interpretation of Stalinism
“Trotsky’s interpretation of the historical meaning of Stalinism, to this day the most coherent and developed theorization of the phenomenon within the Marxist tradition, was constructed in the course of twenty years of practical political struggle against it. His thought thus evolved in tension with the major conflicts . . .” read more
The Hurricane That Shook the Caribbean
“In the wake of the Depression, a series of labour rebellions ripped through the British Caribbean archipelago like a powerful hurricane. Starting in St. Kitts in 1935, unrest and strikes rapidly moved southeasterly to St. Vincent, St. Lucia and Guyana. After a year of relative calm, the cycle . . .” read more
Monetarism in London
“In May 1979 when Mrs Thatcher came to power, there were 132,000 people unemployed in Greater London. In September 1982 there were 390,107. This amounts to a trebling of those without a job. For London as a whole, when allowance is made for unregistered women and for commuters, . . .” read more
A Statutory Right to Work
“It was widely believed after the Second World War in Britain that the ‘right to work’ had been generally won; the greatest economic evil of the prewar years seemed to have been overcome through reforms. Yet now, again, unemployment has returned in a seemingly permanent form and there . . .” read more
The Freeze Movement Versus Reagan
“Although of very recent origin, the ‘freeze’ movement in the United States has already stimulated the first successful rebellion against a major weapons programme in American history. Prior to December 1982, when Congress turned down Reagan’s request for the immediate manufacture of the mx missile, no modern . . .” read more
The AFL-CIO’s Second Century
“The American Federation of Labor celebrated its centenary last year. It is one of the world’s great conservative institutions, with a stability of internal rule and ideology that might make even the Bank of England gasp. Although the United States has had nineteen presidents since the founding of . . .” read more
'The Dollar and Its Rivals'
“The 1980s will be a decade of escalating conflict between Western Europe, the United States and Japan over trade, financial and monetary policies. This heightened economic competition has already revived one of the most long-standing debates in Marxism—the polemic between Lenin and Kautsky on ‘ultra-imperialism’. It will be . . .” read more
Space and Agency in the Transition to Socialism
“It is now over a decade since John Saville’s survey of the Labour Party’s history led him to the view that ‘at least some things should become clearer as time moves along: that Labourism has nothing to do with Socialism: that the Labour Party has never been, nor . . .” read more