Advanced search
Refine search
- NLR
- Sidecar
Base and Superstructure in Marxist Cultural Theory
“Any modern approach to a Marxist theory of culture must begin by considering the proposition of a determining base and a determined superstructure. From a strictly theoretical point of view this is not, in fact, where we might choose to begin. It would be in many ways preferable . . .” read more
Saudi Arabia: Bonanza and Repression
“The imperialist states have suddenly realized that in the next decade the survival of their economies will depend on importing oil from the Middle East. A wave of panic, expressed in speeches and articles on the ‘energy crisis’, has gripped the bourgeoisies of Western Europe, the United States . . .” read more
The Working Class and the Birth of Marxism
“The theory of historical materialism makes it possible to situate Marxism itself—just as much as market economics or normative sociology—in relation to capitalist development and the bourgeois revolution. Historical materialism emerged in the second half of the 1840s, in the heartlands of industrial capitalism. Its birthplaces were the . . .” read more
Politics and Culture in Bengal
“Bengal was the microcosm of British rule in India, the original seat of Imperial power, the base from which the East India Company set out on its career of aggrandisement, ending in the complete subjugation of the subcontinent from the Khyber to Cape Comorin. Private loot, the organized . . .” read more
Two Years of Popular Unity in Chile: A Balance Sheet
“The Allende government, representing the Unidad Popular coalition in Chile, has now been in office for over two years. It is time enough to make an assessment of it. The stated goals of the up were to end the monopoly structure of the Chilean economy, break Chilean . . .” read more
Imperialism and Bourgeois Dictatorship in the Philippines
“On 23 September 1972, President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law throughout the Philippines. Appearing on television, Marcos claimed that ‘Maoist subversive elements’ were plotting the overthrow of the Philippine Government and that this threat necessitated the introduction of extraordinary measures. The martial law proclamation, hardly a unique event . . .” read more
Labour and the Economy
“Britain’s fifth Labour government came to power in October 1964 at a time of rapidly maturing economic crisis for the capitalist system. The political existence of the Labour Party, as of all reformist, social democratic parties, rests on its ability to gain reforms for the working class within . . .” read more
The State in Post-Colonial Societies: Pakistan and Bangladesh
“The object of this article is to raise some fundamental questions about the classical Marxist theory of the State in the context of post-colonial societies. The argument is premised on the historical specificity of post-colonial societies, a specificity which arises from structural changes brought about by the colonial . . .” read more
Spain--The Untimely Revolution
“The Spanish revolution was the only revolution to take place in Europe during the existence of the Communist International, with the transient exception of the 1919 Hungarian soviet republic: but it took the leaders of the ‘world party’ unawares. In Manuilsky’s report to the Comintern Executive in February . . .” read more
White-Settler Colonialism and the Myth of Investment Imperialism
“‘Financial’ imperialism is a fashionable term. It is supposed to be different in nature from the ‘mercantile’ imperialism of the 17th and 18th centuries, to have matured during the last quarter of the 19th century and to have led to the ‘informal’ and then the ‘formal’ take-over of . . .” read more
Capitalist Planning and the State
“Formalized medium or long-term economic planning has by now been attempted by nearly all the principal industrialized capitalist countries, including the United States—which with the sweeping wage and price controls introduced by Nixon in late 1971 has belatedly joined the ranks of the other capitalist powers in this . . .” read more
The New Regime in Iceland
“The elections of June 1971 in Iceland, which brought a self-proclaimed left-wing government to power, caused some initial alarm in imperialist circles. Iceland is a key outpost of nato, and us troops have been stationed there continuously since 1951. nato strategists view the island as . . .” read more
The Struggle for Socialism in Czechoslovakia
“We would like to begin by asking something about the period in which you first became politically active, just before World War Two. We understand that you joined an anti-fascist organization in 1937, while still at school, and became a member of the Czech Communist Party in 1939. . . .” read more
A Reply to Martin Shaw: Whose Crisis?
“The verve of Martin Shaw’s critique in nlr 70 of my book The Coming Crisis of Western Sociology derives largely from his effort to safeguard something he calls ‘Marxism’ from subversion by something called ‘Radical Sociology.’ It is on this issue, a matter of some substance, that . . .” read more
The Thai Coup
“On 17 November, 1971, the praetorian clique that has ruled Thailand for the past 13 years declared a total military dictatorship, less than one month after General Lon Nol had made a similar declaration in Cambodia. This was not a surprising step; it was indeed a logical one . . .” read more
The Heath Government: A New Course for British Capitalism
“The eruption of the international financial crisis last August has thrown into sharp relief an often neglected dimension of inter-imperialist contradictions—namely the relation between the domestic class struggle and the international competition of the major imperialist states. There are two ways of neglecting this relationship: one simply regards . . .” read more
The Split in the Spanish Communist Party
“The Communist Party of Spain (pce) was among the communist parties which went furthest in its condemnation of the Soviet military intervention in Czechoslovakia and the Husakian ‘normalization’. This led to a serious deterioration in its relations with the cpsu and provoked a deep internal crisis . . .” read more
The Marxism of the Early Lukacs: an Evaluation
“Nearly half a century after its original publication in Germany, Georg Lukács’s History and Class Consciousness has at last become available in English. Those who now read the book for the first time may find its contents surprising. For the notoriety of this forbidden volume of the early . . .” read more
The Ceylonese Insurrection
“In April 1971 a revolutionary insurrection exploded in Ceylon. Unanticipated by imperialism, and unexpected by revolutionaries elsewhere, sections of the rural masses rose in organized rebellion against the very government they had voted into power in the previous May. This upsurge marks a totally new phase in the . . .” read more
Bangla Desh--Results and Prospects
“The struggle in Bangla Desh between the Bengali liberation forces and the armed might of West Pakistani capital represents both a continuation of the mass movement which erupted in 1968–69 and a qualitative break. In that sense we can say that the present course of events in East . . .” read more
Literature and Sociology: In Memory of Lucien Goldmann
“Last spring Lucien Goldmann came to Cambridge and gave two lectures. It was an opportunity for many of us to hear a man whose work we had welcomed and respected. And he said that he liked Cambridge: to have trees and fields this near to lecture-rooms. I invited . . .” read more
On the PFLP and the September Crisis
“The Popular Front is best known in the non-Arab world for its hijackings in September 1970. A lot of criticisms of the hijackings have been made. Some of these are bourgeois criticisms. But there are two others which I would like to pose here. The first criticism has . . .” 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
Italian Communism in the Sixties
“The last few weeks have seen a new wave of resignations and expulsions from the Italian Communist Party. Attempts by the pci leadership to brand the ‘scissionist manoeuvres of Il Manifesto’ as the cause of these phenomena need hardly be taken seriously. We have made no efforts . . .” read more
The Student Left in Japan
“The Japanese student movement has won world-wide publicity in recent years for its militancy. Repeated images have been conveyed of helmeted, stave-wielding students doing massive and heroic battle with the police, of their holding out against helicopter-borne assaults on their university strongholds, or of their hi-jacking aircraft at . . .” 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
The Class Nature of Israeli Society
“Israeli society, like all other class societies, contains conflicting social interests—class interests which give rise to an internal class struggle. Yet Israeli society as a whole has been engaged, for the last fifty years, in a continuous external conflict: the conflict between Zionism and the Arab world, particularly . . .” read more
The Crisis of British Anthropology
“Two events have transformed the background of post-war anthropology: the colonial revolution leading to the rise of struggles against imperialism, now on the defensive, and, at a different level, the growth of structural anthropology. The one reflects the other, for the work of Claude Lévi-Strauss is an extended . . .” read more
Sexual Oppression and Political Practice
“The problematic of Reimut Reiche’s Sexuality and Class Struggle is still largely foreign to socialist thought in Britain. In Germany, however, the necessity for Marxists to supplement their revolutionary theory in the light of Freud’s discovery of the unconscious was already made clear by the rise of Hitlerism. . . .” read more
Counter-Revolution in the Yemen
“The September 1962 revolution in the Yemen transformed it from an isolated and archaic survival from the Middle Ages which even imperialism was content to let slumber, into the fulcrum of the liberation struggle in the Arabian peninsula throughout the ensuing decade. The embattled Yemeni Republic became the . . .” 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
Argentina--Imperialist Strategy and the May Crisis
“Argentina is probably the most industrialized major country in the so-called Third World. Well over 60 per cent of its population live in towns, a proportion higher than that in many European countries. The urban and rural proletariat, organized in solidly developed trade unions, comprises two-thirds of its . . .” read more
Second Thoughts on a Rock Aesthetic: The Band
“In replying to Richard Merton’s comment on my first article, in nlr 59 I take the opportunity to clarify and correct some of my own positions, and also to attack, some basic errors in Merton’s conception of the aesthetic status of rock music and its relationship to . . .” read more
Uruguay’s Urban Guerrillas
“Among the many protests staged by Latin Americans to demonstrate their opposition to us policies during Governor Nelson Rockefeller’s 1969 visit was the destruction of the General Motors offices in Montevideo, Uruguay, by a commando of the Movimiento de Liberación Nacional (mln), also known as the . . .” read more
Soviet Fabians and Others
“Reading the clandestine political literature which percolates from the ussr to the West through ever-widening channels, it is evident that two Russias exist side by side: le pays légal and le pays réel. We become familiar with more and more names of Soviet dissenters and protesters, with . . .” 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
Confronting Defeat: The German Communist Party
“Hermann Weber has added about nine hundred pages to the already long bibliography of German Communist history, with his massive work Die Wandlung des deutschen Kommunismus. The first question prospective readers will ask is: did he have to? The answer, on the whole, is yes. These two volumes . . .” 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 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
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 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
Comment on Chester’s 'For a Rock Aesthetic'
“The impulse behind Andrew Chester’s attack on the notion of pop music is correct. ‘The pop critic’s attitude towards the music is generally patronizing in the extreme,’ Indeed. After contumely or scandal, patronage is the entrenched mode of bourgeois consumption of plebeian art. The question arises, however, if . . .” 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
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
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