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Jurgen Habermas: A New Eclecticism

“Jürgen Habermas is at present the most celebrated of the successors of the Frankfurt School and the only one as yet well-known outside the Federal German Republic. In an article in nlr 63, I discussed the work of Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse, the original nucleus of the . . .” read more

Armed Insurrection and Dual Power

“The years 1928–35 are famous in Comintern history as the ‘Third Period’, the period of class against class, of ‘social-fascism’, and of the all-out struggle of Communist Parties in Europe and the usa to overthrow democratic and fascist bourgeois states in complete isolation from any other political . . .” read more

Instructions for an Uprising

“An insurrection in Paris today, based on old models, has no chance of success. In 1830 popular enthusiasm alone could overthrow a power surprised and terrified by an armed uprising: an unthinkable event which went far beyond any of its predictions. This could work once. The government then . . .” read more

Antonio Gramsci and the Italian Revolution

“One of the most dramatic, yet shadowy, events touched upon by Guiseppe Fiori in his Antonio Gramsci: Life of a Revolutionary is the disagreement between Gramsci on the one hand and Togliatti and the Italian Communist Party on the other, after the political ‘turn’ brought about by the . . .” read more

Presentation of Blanqui

“The lifetime of Auguste Blanqui (1805–81) coincides with the rise and fall of the secret society as an effective harbinger of socialism. Auguste Blanqui was the son of a low rank imperial official; his first recorded political involvement was in 1827 when he was wounded on the barricades; . . .” read more

The First Circle

“‘For a country to have a great writer is like having another government,’ remarks one of the characters in The First Circle. This observation has always been especially true of Russia and a reading of Solzhenitsyn’s work confirms that it has as much relevance today as at any . . .” read more

The Frankfurt School

“In France and Italy, the post-War period has seen the emergence of new schools of Marxist thought (Althusser, Della Volpe). In the German-speaking world, on the other hand, there is a complete continuity from the pre-War years. The veterans Lukács and Bloch are still active and influential, but . . .” read more

Enoch Powell: The New Right

“Every nation, to live healthily and to live happily, needs a patriotism. Britain today, after all the changes of the last decades, needs a new kind of patriotism and is feeling its way towards it . . .” read more

The Naxalites

“On May 1st, 1969, Kanyu Sanyal, leader of the Naxalbari peasant movement in West Bengal, announced at a rally in Calcutta the formation of the ‘Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist)’. The emergence of the new party aroused torrents of criticism from all other political organizations in India. Demands . . .” read more

The Question of Stalin

“When in November 1917 the Bolshevik Party unleashed an insurrection and took power, Lenin and his comrades were convinced that this was the first act in a world revolution. The process was started in Russia, not because Russia was considered internally ripe for a socialist revolution, but because . . .” read more

Vortex in India

“A Socialist revolution in India would be an event of fundamental significance to the international class struggle. An immense population of 550 million whose rural and urban masses are plunged in abysmal misery and unemployment make India one of the great potential storm-centres within world capitalism. In the . . .” read more

Problems of the Marxist Theory of the Revolutionary Party

“It would be useless to try and find in Marx’s writings a complete and systematic theory of the proletarian party, its nature and characteristics, just as it would be useless to seek a fully worked-out notion of the concept of class. These are two important points of Marx’s . . .” read more

The Twin Crises

“Comrade Lukács, how do you see your own life and the era of history in which you have lived? In five decades of revolutionary and scientific work you had your share both of honours and of humiliations. We also understand that your life was in danger after the . . .” read more

Introduction to Magri

“The central paradox of Italian Marxism since the war has been the intellectual dominance of a school whose philosophical inspiration was directly opposed to that of Gramsci. Galvano Della Volpe and his pupils, in particular Lucio Colletti, were to develop an original and radical anti-Hegelian oeuvre, characterized by . . .” read more

The Fateful Meridian

“‘The history of a party’, wrote Antonio Gramsci, ‘cannot fail to be the history of a given social class . . . writing the history of a party really means nothing but writing the history of a country from a particular, monographic point of view, throwing one aspect . . .” read more

The Capitalist State--Reply to N. Poulantzas

“I very much welcome Nicos Poulantzas’s critique of The State in Capitalist Society in the last issue of NLR: this is exactly the kind of discussion which is most likely to contribute to the elucidation of concepts and issues that are generally agreed on the Left to be . . .” read more

Presentation of Kautsky 1914

“The article by Karl Kautsky printed below is a singular text. It is well-known that Kautsky evolved a theory of ‘ultra-imperialism’, a supreme phase of capitalist development which would banish all inter-imperialist wars forever, because Lenin denounced this conception in his own work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of . . .” read more

The Laws of Uneven Development

“Before answering Martin Nicolaus’s critique of ‘Where is America going?’, the origins and intended function of that article should be explained. It is the transcript of a speech given to a seminar of Finnish students at Helsinki, in the framework of a symposium on ‘American imperialism today’. It . . .” read more

Notes on Gramsci

“I” read more

The Universal Contradiction

“Messengers of revolution are always welcome. Ernest Mandel’s thesis in ‘Where Is America Going?’ (NLR 54) that a socialist revolution within the United States is on the agenda of the next decade or two is an important corrective to the more gloomy theses being advanced from other quarters. . . .” read more

The Marxist Critique of Rousseau

“In State and Revolution, Lenin quotes and then comments on a passage in Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme as follows: ‘“Equal right” [of everyone to an equal product of labour] we certainly do have here [i.e. in the first phase of communism]; but it is still a . . .” read more

Ultra-Imperialism

“‘The article below was complete several weeks before the outbreak of the War. It was intended for our number which was to have greeted the planned Congress of the International. Like so much else this Congress has been brought to nothing by the events of the last days. . . .” read more

Regis Debray and the Brazilian Revolution

“The article below was written in October 1968, when I was a militant of the Vanguardia Popular Revoludonaria (VPR). It was an effort to criticize and surpass the theses of Régis Debray expressed in Revolution in the Revolution? Initially published in the clandestine review America Latina—then the theoretical . . .” read more

The Problem of the Capitalist State

“Ralph Miliband’s recently published work, The State in Capitalist Society, is in many respects of capital importance. The book is extremely substantial, and cannot decently be summarized in a few pages: I cannot recommend its reading too highly. I will limit myself here to a few critical comments, . . .” read more

The New Spain

“Thirty years have passed since the Spanish Civil War, which shook all Europe. From that time, Spain has been marginal to the history of the continent. Apparently sunk in poverty and isolation, stifled by a torpid dictatorship, the whole country has often been viewed from abroad as immobile . . .” read more

Fighting to Win

“This Penguin edition of Clausewitz contains Books I, II and III of Vom Kriege complete, all but one chapter of Book IV, and most of the incomplete Book VIII, i.e., well under half of the original three volumes. The selection is introduced by a 70-page essay on Clausewitz’s . . .” read more

Linguistics and Politics

“It is clear from your writings that you were thinking deeply about politics long before the Vietnam war became a dominant issue in America. Could you tell us something about the background to your present political stand?” read more

Introduction to Colletti

“Lucio Colletti, the Italian philosopher and political theorist, is a pupil of the late Galvano Della Volpe, whose interpretation of Marxism he has developed and extended in a number of important essays, including introductions to the Italian translations of Il’ienkov’s Dialectic of the Abstract and Concrete in Marx’s . . .” read more

Power and Democracy in Socialist Society

“The basic theme of State and Revolution—the one that indelibly inscribes itself on the memory, and immediately comes to mind when one thinks of the work—is the theme of the revolution as a destructive and violent act. The revolution cannot be restricted to the seizure of power, it . . .” read more

Avineri’s View of Marx

“The May events in France last year detonated in England an explosion of Marxian literature. Within 12 months several important texts have been newly translated, others brought out in cheap editions. So far the field has been heavily dominated by work of neo-Hegelians within the Marxist tradition: the . . .” read more

Trotsky’s Marxism: A Rejoinder

“Nicolas Krassó attempted to explain Stalin’s victory in the inner-party struggle of the Bolshevik party during the twenties by two alleged basic weaknesses of ‘Trotsky’s Marxism’: his ‘sociologism’, i.e. his constant underestimation of the autonomous role of political institutions; and his ‘administrativism’, which tended to identify him with . . .” read more

Re-examination of the Concept of Revolution

“The concept of revolution in Marxian theory telescopes an entire historical period: the final stage of capitalism; the transitional period of proletarian dictatorship, and the initial stage of socialism. It is in a strict sense a historical concept, projecting actual tendencies in the society; and it is a . . .” read more

Revolution from Without

“The struggle of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie must eventually result in the seizure of State power by the proletariat. One would naturally expect this to take place independently in each individual State, and Marx has pointed out that ‘in form, if not in essence, the struggle of . . .” read more

Introduction to Tukhachevsky

“Mikhail Tukhachevsky, whose meteoric career illuminates certain episodes of the Soviet past that still have significance today, was born in Penza province of Czarist Russia in 1893. According to a colleague who knew him in the twenties, he came from an impoverished family of aristocrats, originally of Flemish . . .” read more

A Talk on Strategic Dispositions

“as published in Shaoshan, a newspaper of Red Guards of the ‘Red Flag’ tendency.” read more

Where Is America Going?

“Today, profound forces are working to undermine the social and economic equilibrium which has reigned in the United States for more than 25 years, since the big depressions of 1929–32 and of 1937–38. Some of these are forces of an international character, linked with the national liberation struggles . . .” read more

Chile

“Four years have gone by since the Christian Democrat régime of Eduardo Frei took power in Chile. In every election since, the voters, especially the urban workers and the rural peasantry, those most concerned with basic social reforms, have expressed their disapproval of Frei’s policies. In the municipal . . .” read more

Two Tactics

“the four firsts: ‘First place must be given to man in handling the relationship between man and weapons; to political work in handling the relationship between political and other work; to ideological work in relation to routine tasks of political work; and in ideological work to the . . .” read more

The Way Forward

“Votes, as Marx and Engels used to say, give the right to govern, they do not give the power to do so. Conversely, to win votes, or to win by votes, the opposition must already have shown that it is capable of taking and exercising power in a . . .” read more

Lessons of May

“The revolutionary wave of May 1968 constitutes an immense reservoir of social experience. The inventory of this experience is as yet far from complete. What characterized that wave was precisely the irruption onto the historical stage of the creative energy of the masses, multiplying forms of action, initiatives . . .” read more

Strategy and Revolution in France 1968

“Bourgeois revolutions, like those of the 18th century, storm swiftly from success to success; their dramatic effects outdo each other; men and things seem set in sparkling brilliance; ecstasy is the everyday spirit; but they are short lived; soon they have obtained their zenith, and a long crapulent . . .” read more

Introduction to Special Issue on France May 1968

“The May Revolution in France was foreseen by nobody. It burst upon the world without warning. It did not fit any pre-conceived pattern. At first glance France seemed the capitalist country least likely to be shaken by social upheaval. Unlike Britain it was not in the throes of . . .” read more

Trotsky’s Marxism

“Roberto Yepe writes: Dear Comrades—the theoretical journal Pensamiento Crítico here has recently published Nicolas Krassó’s article ‘Trotsky’s Marxism’, and promises Ernest Mandel’s reply ‘Trotsky: an Anti-Critique’; readers have been very concerned with it. I would like to make some comments on the debate.” read more

Introduction to Gramsci 1919-1920

“The impact of the Bolshevik Revolution and the aftermath of the First World War transformed Western and Eastern Europe after 1918 into a storm-zone of unrest that has never since been equalled. A wave of political and industrial insurgency unfurled across the continent: this was the time of . . .” read more

Reply to Tamara Deutscher

“Nicola Krassó replies to Tamara Deutscher (see NLR 50)” read more

Soviets in Italy

“An urgent problem today faces every socialist with a lively sense of the historical responsibility that rests on the working class and on the Party which represents the critical and active consciousness of the mission of this class.” read more

On Krasso’s Reply to Mandel

“This fiftieth issue of New Left Review opens with a critique, by Perry Anderson, of the structures of bourgeois culture in Britain. The task of forging a revolutionary and internationalist political culture in this country has always been a central preoccupation of the Review. This involves attacking the . . .” read more

Components of the National Culture

“This fiftieth issue of New Left Review opens with a critique, by Perry Anderson, of the structures of bourgeois culture in Britain. The task of forging a revolutionary and internationalist political culture in this country has always been a central preoccupation of the Review. This involves attacking the . . .” read more

Trotsky and the Debate on Socialism in One Country

“This fiftieth issue of New Left Review opens with a critique, by Perry Anderson, of the structures of bourgeois culture in Britain. The task of forging a revolutionary and internationalist political culture in this country has always been a central preoccupation of the Review. This involves attacking the . . .” read more

Structural Reform in Italy--Theory and Practice

“This fiftieth issue of New Left Review opens with a critique, by Perry Anderson, of the structures of bourgeois culture in Britain. The task of forging a revolutionary and internationalist political culture in this country has always been a central preoccupation of the Review. This involves attacking the . . .” read more