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The Modes of Production Controversy
“Marxist writing on development and underdevelopment, which barely a decade ago was largely confined to the shrill critiques of a few voices crying in the wilderness, seems well and truly now to have ‘taken off’. Indeed, the growth of this new (or rediscovered) paradigm has been such that . . .” read more
'Aesthetics and Politics'
“The historic debates of the 1930s between Ernst Bloch, Georg Lukács, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Benjamin and Theodor Adorno have now been assembled into a single volume, with an Afterword by Fredric Jameson. Readers of nlr have already had a foretaste of its contents: Brecht’s sardonic deflation of . . .” read more
Democracy and Dictatorship in Lenin and Kautsky
“As G. D. H. Cole rightly said in his History of Socialist Thought, after the Russian Revolution Kautsky became the ‘principal theoretical antagonist of Bolshevism’. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat, published in September 1918, and Terrorism and Communism, which appeared about a year later, are the two basic . . .” read more
The Alternative in Eastern Europe
“I would like to start by discussing my book’s point of departure and purpose. Its original title was ‘A Contribution to the Critique of Socialism as it Actually Exists’—perhaps somewhat old-fashioned. Now this is simply the subtitle. It is deliberately reminiscent of Marx’s celebrated analysis of social formations, . . .” read more
The Italian Road to Socialism
“We may distinguish, schematically, three ‘models’ of the road to socialism, three types of strategy for transition. The first is the Leninist, or ‘classical’ model, on Which the revolutionary left bases itself. The growth and intensification of capitalist contradictions heighten working-class combativity and increase class consciousness until these . . .” read more
Engels and the Genesis of Marxism
“Since his death in London in 1895, it has proved peculiarly difficult to arrive at a fair and historically balanced assessment of Engels’s place in the history of Marxism, both within the Marxist tradition and outside it. Engels was both the acknowledged co-founder of historical materialism and the . . .” read more
Presentation of Deutscher/Brandler
“Isaac Deutscher and Heinrich Brandler had in common the fact that they were among the small number of communist oppositionists from the twenties and thirties who survived into the post-war era without modifying their fundamental political stance: without succumbing to cold-war, social-democratic or Stalinist pressures. In short, both . . .” read more
Marxism and the National Question
“I believe that a little philosophy is needed on the subject of the nation. It was the nation which first led me to question Marxism seriously. This was the real breach in the walls which let me make an outside tour of the fortress, rather than go on . . .” read more
Some Reflections on 'The Break-up of Britain'
“Nationalism has been a great puzzle to (non-nationalist) politicians and theorists ever since its invention, not only because it is both powerful and devoid of any discernible rational theory, but also because its shape and function are constantly changing. Like the cloud with which Hamlet taunted Polonius, it . . .” read more
The Workers Councils: the Second Prague Spring
“Although a great deal has been written and spoken about the Prague Spring, it has tended to focus on politics in the narrow sense of the term (democratic freedoms, relations with the Soviet Union, flags, tanks and blood) rather than on what François Châtelet has called ‘the political’—that . . .” read more
On the Twenty-Second Congress of the French Communist Party
“I should like to thank the Sorbonne Philosophy Circle of the Union of Communist Students for inviting me to participate in this discussion. I was left free to choose my own subject. I felt that in France today, not only for Communists but also for all who want . . .” read more
The Fall of Congress in India
“The outcome of the 1977 general election represents a watershed in the history of modern Indian politics. For four whole days the Indian electors—almost 200 million men and women—flocked to the polling booths in town and countryside. Deprived by the Emergency of virtually all forms of extra-parliamentary dissent . . .” read more
Stalin, Lenin and 'Leninism'
“It has been rightly said that the relationship between Lenin and Stalin ‘is certainly one of the most complex problems that has to be faced’ in studying Soviet history and analysing Stalinism. However, the principal difficulty is not in understanding how deep the differences are between Lenin’s conceptions . . .” read more
The Twilight of the British State
“‘External conflicts between states form the shape of the state. I am assuming this “shape” to mean—by contrast with internal social development—the external configuration, the size of a state, its contiguity (whether strict or loose), and even its ethnic composition . . . We must stress that in . . .” read more
The Third Round in Poland
“At first sight, the victorious Polish workers’ strike against price increases in June 1976 was a dazzling example of Marx’s observation about historical repetitions: the first time, on the Baltic in 1970, as tragedy; and now a farcical re-run of Gomulka’s attempt to cut living standards by raising . . .” read more
Revolutionary Strategy in Europe--A Political Interview
“The revolutionary Left, and especially the Fourth International, is often accused—for example, by the leaderships of the PdUPC in Italy or the PSU and CFDT in France—of mechanically superimposing onto the reality of the advanced capitalist countries of Western Europe a ‘model’ derived from the Russian revolution: breakdown . . .” read more
Romanticism, Utopianism and Moralism: The Case of William Morris
“Over the past two decades, my study of William Morris has come to be recognized as a ‘quarry’ of information, although in one or two instances it appears that it was a suspect quarry, to be worked surreptitiously for doctoral advancement. One ought not to object to this: . . .” read more
Sadat’s Egypt
“The evolution of the crisis in Lebanon during the past eighteen months has provided striking evidence of a major change in the Middle East since Nasser’s death. As that country plunges ever deeper into its morass of manipulated violence, Egypt, for two decades the central actor in Arab . . .” read more
Marxism: Theory of Proletarian Revolution
“The real originality of Marx and Engels lies in the field of politics, not in economics or philosophy. They were the first to discover the historical potential of the new class that capitalism had brought into existence—the modern proletariat, a class that could encompass a universal liberation from . . .” read more
The Reconsolidation of American Hegemony
“During the early part of this decade, a number of writers asserted that we were entering a new historical period marking the end of us world supremacy. Mustering an impressive set of dramatic events, the argument against the American century was quite convincing. In the so-called third . . .” read more
Rejoinder to Jean Monds
“Jean Monds draws a valuable distinction between the workerist belief that ‘the struggle for power at the point of production leads to advances in class consciousness in and of itself and without the intervention of political organization in the working class’ and the correct assumption that ‘the key . . .” read more
Paradoxes of the Italian Political Crisis
“It is still too early to say whether the regional elections of 15 June 1975 marked the beginning of a new stage in the post-war history of Italy. What is, however, certain is that they left all the main actors in the country’s political life with their backs . . .” read more
Capitalism and Dictatorship in Post-War Greece
“The seven year rule of the Greek Junta, from 1967 to 1974, has attracted much attention but little satisfactory analysis. It has been used as the basis for case studies of imperialism, cia conspiracy or third world development. But the specificity of the Greek social formation and . . .” read more
Intellectual Opposition in the USSR
“In ‘The Autocracy is Wavering’, written in 1903, Lenin observed that ‘there is no more precarious moment for a government in a revolutionary period than the beginning of concessions, the beginning of vacillation.’ The Soviet hierarchy is, of course, perfectly well aware of the dangers of ‘vacillation’. Yet, . . .” read more
Criticism and Politics: The Work of Raymond Williams
“It is difficult to see criticism as anything but an innocent discipline. Its origins seem spontaneous, its existence natural: there is literature, and so—because we wish to understand and appreciate it—there is also criticism. Criticism as a handmaiden to literature—as a shadowing of literature, a ghostly accomplice which, . . .” read more
Detente and Destabilization: Report from Cyprus
“The short-lived independence of Cyprus was always a standing reproach to the capacity of the great powers to order events. When Disraeli contrived to acquire it from the Sultan of Turkey in 1878, in exchange for some very dubious guarantees against Tsarist incursion, Gladstone described the transaction as . . .” read more
Marxism and the Dialectic
“In this essay, I shall attempt to clarify somewhat a question discussed in my interview with New Left Review—although one that is very difficult to deal with briefly: the problem of the difference between ‘real opposition’ (Kant’s Realopposition or Realrepugnanz) and ‘dialectical contradiction’. Both are instances of opposition, . . .” read more
Introduction to Damodaran
“On 26 June, Indira Gandhi introduced a State of Emergency which led immediately to the arrest of several hundred opposition leaders and to the imposition of a draconian press censorship on the country’s normally vigorous bourgeois press. Emboldened by the feeble response to these measures, Indira Gandhi induced . . .” read more
Dialectical Materialism and Literary History
“All sociologies of thought agree that social life influences literary creation. This is also a fundamental assumption of dialectical materialism; which in addition, however, gives particular emphasis to the importance of economic factors and the relations between social classes. Many writers and philosophers dispute such an influence: they . . .” read more
The Industrial Cycle in Late Capitalism
“It is well known that ever since large-scale capitalist industry achieved domination of the world market, its development has assumed a cyclical character, peculiar only to this mode of production, with successive phases of recession, upswing, boom, overheating, crash, depression and so on. Although Marx left no finished . . .” read more
What Is the Historical Past?
“Albert Soboul’s work on the Parisian Sans-Culottes in the Year Two of the French Revolution begins with the victory of the Montagnards over the Girondins, a bloodless political triumph despite the fact that it was won with the support of the armed people of Paris: ‘On 2 June . . .” read more
Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution
“John Foster’s Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution is a remarkable contribution to English historiography. It represents both a continuation of, and a stark contrast to, the impressive tradition of social history which has grown up in Britain in the last two decades. If the best work of . . .” read more
Rosa Luxemburg after 1905
“As is well-known, a number of different strategic lines on the nature of the Russian revolution crystallized during and immediately after 1905, out of a debate which received its impetus from the revolutionary upheaval of that year. Rosa Luxemburg was a participant in this debate within Russian and . . .” read more
'The Housewife and her Labour under Capitalism'--A Critique
“The political significance of Wally Seccombe’s analysis of domestic labour’s relation to capital lies in his attempt to show the material basis for the strategic unity of the struggle to liberate women and the struggle for proletarian revolution. Against those who view the family solely as an ideological . . .” read more
Women’s Domestic Labour
“This contribution to current debates about the political economy of housework has two specific objectives. Firstly, it presents a critique of Wally Seccombe’s article in nlr 83, ‘The Housewife and her Labour under Capitalism’. Secondly, it looks at two questions currently under discussion amongst Marxist feminists concerning . . .” read more
China 1974: Problems not Models
“Deep down, French public opinion is still anti-Chinese. For example, l’Aurore and Paris Match do not hesitate to play on ignorant and quasi-racist fears of the ‘yellow peril’. Consequently, the pro-Chinese sentiments which travellers and leftists have combined over the past few years to disseminate should be seen . . .” read more
The Test in Portugal
“The Military revolt which seized Lisbon and overthrew the Caetano government on 25 April 1974 toppled in a morning the most long lived fascist State in history and one of the most stable capitalist regimes anywhere this century. By the same stroke it set the stage for the . . .” read more
Hong Kong: Britain’s Chinese Colony
“There are 300,000 hard drug addicts; 80,000 triad gang members; several hundred thousand squatters; sickness and squalor all around. The post boxes are red. It is hot. The policemen wear short trousers. No doubt about it: this must be a British colony. Of the past one would think. . . .” read more
The Theorists of Capitalism
“Even the most abstract theoretical discourses and scientific endeavours are the product of particular societies in a particular historical period. As human beings live in societies and as these societies—like the rest of the universe—have a time dimension, the products of the human mind always have some kind . . .” read more
Brezhnevism in Finland
“Finland today presents the unique spectacle within the advanced capitalist world of a mass Communist Party that is now vertically divided into two hostile blocs on a semi-permanent basis. For over six years, Finnish Communism has lived amidst institutionalized schism, but has not yet formally split—unlike Greek or . . .” read more
Observations on a New History of Modern France
“It is first of all as an historian, but secondly as an attentive and involved witness, that I have read Theodore Zeldin’s new book France 1848–1945. As a budding parliamentary journalist, I had personal experience of three French Parliaments, from 1919 to 1924. The last Chamber of Deputies . . .” read more
The Marxist Aesthetics of Christopher Caudwell
“For British intellectuals, the years after the economic catastrophe of 1929 were a devastating experience. Before their incredulous gaze, the old revenants of European history—mass action and the threat of revolution—turned to trouble the serenity of life under the Constitution. The certitudes of liberalism seemed unequal to these . . .” read more
Myths of Development versus Myths of Underdevelopment
“Bill Warren’s article Imperialism and Capitalist Industrialization in nlr 81 is a very important text, although I believe his fundamental line of argument to be misconceived. There is no doubt that he draws attention to many aspects of the vexed question of development in the Third World . . .” read more
A Critique of Political Ecology
“As a scientific discipline, ecology is almost exactly a hundred years old. The concept emerged for the first time in 1868 when the German biologist, Ernst Haeckel, in his Natural History of Creation, proposed giving this name to a sub-discipline of zoology—one which would investigate the totality of . . .” read more
Problems of Democratization and Detente
“Some four to five years ago the international situation was still a source of serious anxiety to all who cared for peace, democracy and socialism. The enormous scale of the continuous American intervention in Indochina, the incursion of the Warsaw Pact troops into the territory of the Czechoslovak . . .” read more