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Origins of the Present Crisis
“Two commanding facts confront socialists in Britain today, dominating this moment of our history. British society is in the throes of a profound, pervasive but cryptic crisis, undramatic in appearance, but ubiquitous in its reverberations. As its immediate result, a Labour government seems imminent. So much everyone agrees. . . .” read more
Portugal and the End of Ultra-Colonialism (Part 3)
“Mass forced labour: de facto pass laws: omnipresent foreign capital: an incendiary white lumpenproletariat: a superstructure of magic: an economic and social machine turning in a void, driven by pure terror. This was the system of Portuguese imperialism at the opening of 1961, the most primitive, the most . . .” read more
Portugal and the End of Ultra-Colonialism (Part 2)
“A preliminary remark on method should be made. The account which follows does not attempt to give an exhaustive description of the whole Portuguese colonial system. The method chosen is rather to select various key sectors which appear to be privileged expressions of the whole, and to show . . .” read more
Portugal and the End of Ultra-Colonialism- Part I
“It is now clear that the Portuguese Empire is coming to an end. In its final days, it may be timely to examine the history and structure of this empire, both for their own interest and for the importance they have for any general account of imperialism. Good . . .” read more
The Debate of the Central Committee of the Italian Communist Party on the 22nd Congress of the CPSU
“The Italian Communist Party, in exile and jail for 20 years under Mussolini, was re-formed in 1944 in the throes of the Resistance. Relatively uncompromised by the equivocations and complicities of the 30’s, the Party’s formative experience was national resistance and insurrection. The majority of its cadres were . . .” read more
Sweden: Study in Social Democracy (Part 2)
“the swedish class structure has revealed itself as at once idiosyncratic and typical. Income distribution is vastly more even that in other western countries, but social mobility is fully as sluggish, and the lived distances between classes probably as great. On the other hand, violent hostility between . . .” read more
The Signs in the Street: A Response to Perry Anderson
“Perry Anderson’s discussion of my book, All that is Solid Melts into Air, is both welcome and perplexing. He is so appreciative and generous at the beginning, so dismissive and scornful at the end—not merely toward my book, but toward contemporary life itself. What happens in the middle? . . .” read more
Weapon of Power, Matrix of Management
NATO’s twin dynamics—eastward expansionism within Europe, aggregated military operations outside—have brought it to the brink of a major international war, with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. But what is Washington’s real interest in the Alliance? Grey Anderson provides a sweeping historical analysis of a key instrument of American hegemony.
Exit Suharto
What explains the extraordinary longevity of Indonesia’s ‘New Order’, and what are the legacies of three decades of dictatorship? Benedict Anderson details Suharto’s career, from colonial army to crony capitalism, and explores the consequences of his rule—political, social, cultural—for a disorientated, amnesiac present.
Jupiter Hill
Political education in the dungeons of Barcelona, and the converging tracks of Filipino and Cuban revolutionaries as the 400-year-old Spanish empire enters its final throes. Benedict Anderson concludes his exploration of the late 19th-century world setting of José Rizal’s explosive anti-colonial novels.
In the World-Shadow of Bismarck and Nobel
After the literary revelations of ‘Nitroglycerine in the Pomegranate’ (NLR 27), a new political reading of José Rizal’s astonishing last novel. Imperial power, anarchist bombings and anti-colonial insurrection in the gifted young Filipino’s vision of a 19th-century global landscape.
Indonesian Nationalism Today and in the Future
“In my experience, nationalism is frequently misunderstood. For that reason, I will begin my remarks by discussing briefly two common kinds of misunderstanding, using Indonesia as an example of a phenomenon almost universal in this century which is now crawling to its end. The first is that nationalism . . .” read more
Fundamental Values for a Third Left
“Since 1988 I have been engaged in the launching of a new party of the Left in Finland. It was established in 1990 under the name of Vasemmistoliitto/ Vänsterförbundet (the Left-Wing Alliance). lwa continued the tradition of skdl/dfff (the People’s Democratic League) which included the Communist . . .” read more
Ice Empire and Ice Hockey: Two Fin de Siecle Dreams
“At the beginning of September 1939, the Reichswehr invaded Poland from the West; two weeks later the Red Army invaded from the East. On September 28, Hitler and Stalin signed a partition agreement which gave each tyrant half of a sad country which had only twenty-one years of . . .” read more
Radicalism after Communism in Thailand and Indonesia
“One might think that ‘after Communism’ is an uncomplicated idea, experience, or socio-political condition, but in the two countries of South-East Asia which I intend to discuss—namely, colonized, Muslim Indonesia, and uncolonized, Buddhist Thailand—‘after Communism’ has markedly different meanings, which therefore in turn affect the imaginary of contemporary . . .” read more
The New World Disorder
“It is quite possible that historians of the 2050s, looking back into our now closing century, will pick out, as one deep tectonic movement stretching across more than two centuries, the disintegration of the great polyethnic, polyglot, and often polyreligious monarchical empires built up so painfully in mediaeval . . .” read more
Murder and Progress in Modern Siam
“In 1983, one of the biggest box-office hits in Siam was a remarkable film entitled Mue Puen. English-language advertisements translated this title as ‘The Gunman’, but an alternative, probably better, translation would be ‘The Gunmen’. For the director invited his audiences to contemplate the contrast between two hired . . .” read more
Cacique Democracy and the Philippines: Origins and Dreams
“About this time last year, President Corazon Aquino told a most instructive lie. Addressing the Filipino-Chinese Federated Chambers of Commerce on 9 March 1987, she described her appearance before them as a ‘homecoming,’ since her great-grandfather had been a poor immigrant from southeast China’s Fukien province. Doubtless her . . .” read more
The Neck and The Sword
Rashid Khalidi and Tariq Ali discuss the political and intellectual history of the Palestinian national movement, its fraught entanglement with neighbouring Arab regimes, the realities of the ‘peace process’, Israel’s grip on the Biden Administration and the strategic calculations—or miscalculations—of Hamas.
Therborn’s World-Casting
Critical engagement with Göran Therborn’s global analysis of 21st-century society and its prospects for the left. If the contradictions that anchored 20th-century socialism have been surpassed, what has taken their place? Perspective for an emancipatory politics working aslant the grain of history.
Reflections On ‘Political Capitalism’
In a probing response to Dylan Riley and Robert Brenner’s ‘Seven Theses on American Politics’, Lola Seaton interrogates the claim that a novel regime of accumulation has emerged from the long downturn and unravels the conjunctural complexities—political, economic, environmental, geo-political—at stake in the debate that has ensued.
Rebel Regions
A comparative engagement with Tom Hazeldine’s The Northern Question, setting the trajectory of England’s former industrial powerhouse against that of Belgium’s Wallonia. Rustbelt regions, embedded in national contexts beset by persistent geographical polarizations, yet stubbornly consequential for their political outcomes.
Understanding Podemos
The general secretary of Spain’s new anti-austerity party sets out the strategic thinking behind its bid to become a national force. Incipient crisis of the post-Franco regime, mired in corruption and economic collapse, and opportunities for a popular-political formation, mobilizing the social discontent of the indignados.
The Party and its Success Story
How should the balance-sheet of Chinese Communism be assessed? In a rejoinder to Perry Anderson’s comparison of the Russian and Chinese revolutions, Wang Chaohua delivers a critical verdict on the record of Mao’s utopianism and Deng’s pragmatism, and the bleak legacy of the crushing of popular aspirations in 1989.