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Information as Gift and Commodity
“‘The current phase of capitalist development’, says Gareth Locksley, ‘is one characterized by the elevation of information and its associated technology into the first division of key resources and commodities. Information is a new form of capital’, and as such it undergoes a change of form: rather than . . .” read more
Spectres of the Aesthetic
“Questions on art which were once seen as overloaded with liberal sentiment are now being taken seriously by the philosophical Left in the English-speaking world. At the heart of this swirl of revision and revival, art is being employed by aesthetic discourse to re-examine questions of subjectivity, judgement, . . .” read more
Bosnia and the Revival of US Hegemony
“The primary concern of us policy-makers, Democrats and Republicans, since the Second World War has been ‘world leadership’. Where necessary and possible domestic issues have been subordinated to the overarching goal of constructing and sustaining us hegemony over allies, confrontation with adversaries and domination of clients. . . .” read more
An Ecofeminist Bio-ethic and What Post-Humanism Really Means
“A holocaust goes on among us: tomorrow at dawn, another ancient plant or bird will be extinct; nine-hundred million people starve; dammed-up rivers run sour and parched soils crack open; continents swarm with environmental refugees; man-made viruses are unleashed; silently, an ozone hole and electro-magnetic radiation cull new . . .” read more
Identity Politics and the Left
“My lecture is about a surprisingly new subject. We have become so used to terms like ‘collective identity’, ‘identity groups, ‘identity politics’, or, for that matter ‘ethnicity’, that it is hard to remember how recently they have surfaced as part of the current vocabulary, or jargon, of political . . .” read more
Misreading Gorz
“André Gorz’s work has been described as ‘pop sociology’, ‘journalistic impressionism’, and ‘sociological punditry’. He has been accused of both ‘bourgeois individualism’ and ‘backward-looking romanticism’. Depending on the critic, Gorz is an erstwhile ‘quasi-Stalinist’ or a reformed ‘anti-Stalinist’, an advocate of ‘postmodern politics’ or simply an ‘intellectual charlatan’. . . .” read more
Myths and Realities: A Reply to Cecile Jackson
“The myths that Cecile Jackson identifies in her article in nlr 210 are that self-determination and freedom are better achieved through identification with ‘nature’ rather than separation from it; the utopian assertion of the superiority of subsistence economies and communal life; the rejection of scientific knowledge in . . .” read more
Eastern Reformers and Neo-Marxist Reviewers
“Peter Gowan has written an ambitious article. In it, he aims to show that the Group of Seven major industrial states (g7) and the international financial institutions (ifis) have, with a good deal of success, sought to impose at least an economic imperialism over the post-communist . . .” read more
A New American Politics: Who Will Answer the Invitation?
“Joel Rogers (nlr 210) has done the Left in the us a great service in pointing out that the current political conjuncture in the us ‘is the unstated invitation to progressive action, our opportunity to do some good.’ As Rogers argues, liberalism is dying, the . . .” read more
Gramsci, Bakhtin and the Semiotics of Hegemony
“Antonio Gramsci and Mikhail Bakhtin were very different types of thinkers. While the former spent the 1920s maximally involved in the Italian revolutionary movement as leader of the Communist Party, the latter, living in Petrograd at the time of the revolution and throughout the second half of the . . .” 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
Why Gorbachev Failed
“At the height of perestroika, Mikhail Gorbachev had a dream. The familiar system of one-party rule would smoothly open up to allow for the free play of other political forces, and, in the strange new world of electoral competition, the Communist Party would remain the voters’ favourite. Faced . . .” read more
Neo-Liberal Reform and Popular Rebellion
“Tenacious and combative strikes in the public services, millions of demonstrators on the streets, broad support from public opinion: last December’s events in France were a lot more than a strike, indeed it is no exaggeration to call them an uprising by the working, producing, caring, teaching population. . . .” read more
Dialectics of Modernity: On Critical Theory and the Legacy of Twentieth-Century Marxism
“Students of parliamentary history are familiar with the idea of ‘Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition’. Marxism, as a social-historical phenomenon, has been Her Modern Majesty’s Opposition to modernity. Always critical of and fighting against her predominant regimes, but never questioning the legitimate majesty of modernity and, when needed, explicitly . . .” read more
The Russian Parlimentary Elections: Results and Prospects
“In the weeks after the Russian parliamentary elections of 17 December last year, the view of the results that prevailed in official and businesscircles could be summarized as follows: ‘Nothing terrible has happened, and there won’t be big changes.’ Evidence that this view was shared by the Russian . . .” read more
The Autobiography of the Twentieth Century
“How will we and our times be remembered by our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren? What will they, the next century’s historians, and the media of their times, make of us, of our ideas, hopes, fears, efforts and illusions—of our victories and defeats? Will these last even matter? Of . . .” read more
As the Twentieth Century Ages
“Eric Hobsbawm’s The Age of Extremes deserves to repeat the success of its predecessors, The Age of Revolution, The Age of Capital and The Age of Empire. In what is presumably his final volume in this series, Hobsbawm’s vivid style and humanist vision again illuminate an enormous range . . .” read more
The Crisis of Conservatism
“The Conservative Party has always been one of the great certainties of British politics. It has been so dominant throughout the twentieth century that some observers have begun to speak of this period as the ‘Conservative Century’. Between 1945 and 1995, the Conservatives formed majority governments for thirty-two . . .” read more
Renewing the Left
“The two works under review make important contributions to the reformulation of Left perspectives in the light of the failure of traditional models, whether communist or social-democratic. Elmar Altvater seeks to renew the critical force of the Marxist tradition in the face of the now universal dominance of . . .” read more
The Luck of a Crazy Youth (Interview with Ernest Mandel)
“Ernest, you were ten years old when Hitler seized power in Germany and sixteen when World War Two broke out. It was surely an awful time to be young, especially for someone like you, from a Jewish background. What are your first memories of that period?” read more
Sources of Variation in Working-Class Movements in Twentieth-Century Europe
“David Lockwood’s classic essay ‘Sources of Variation in Working-Class Images of Society’ (1966) distinguished three ideal-typical images of society found among workers: proletarian, deferential and privatized. Lockwood was firstly reminding us of the sheer variety of workers’ beliefs, from classconscious proletarians, to conservative status-conscious deferentials, to the calculative, . . .” read more
A Radical Agenda for Britain
“As the Conservative Party threatens to break up on the contradiction between market dogma and traditional Conservative values and institutions, it is sobering to reflect that neither the Labour Party nor the academic Left has produced a hegemonic interpretation of this event, or a persuasive alternative vision of . . .” read more
Political Ecology, Distributional Conflicts, and Economic Incommensurability
“Environmentalism is sometimes seen as a product of prosperity, an approach usually known as the ‘post-materialist’ thesis. But this fails to do justice to the scope of environmentalist movements today; there is also the ‘environmentalism of the poor’ which grows out of distribution conflicts over the use of . . .” read more
An Anti-Hayekian Manifesto
“Whither Socialism? poses as an attack on the possibility of market socialism. But that pose is superficial. The central object of Stiglitz’s attack is the conventional general equilibrium model of twentieth-century economic theory, fathered by the French economist Léon Walras in the late nineteenth century, and brought . . .” read more
Reflections on the Non-Revolution in Uruguay
“Even by the standards applied to Latin America, Uruguay is under-reported in the English-speaking world. If it is mentioned at all, it is in terms of the battle of the River Plate (the war movie, more often than the actual event), or the Tupamaros, an alliance of agrarian . . .” read more
The 'Triumph' of Capitalism as a Topic in the Theory of Social Selection
“By ‘capitalism’ I mean a mode of production in which formally free labour is recruited for regular employment by ongoing enterprises competing in the market for profit. This is an evidently Weberian definition: it takes up more or less directly Weber’s account of the rise of bü rgerlicher . . .” read more
Radical Environmental Myths: A Gender Perpective
“Environmental activism has reached high levels of public visibility since late 1994 when protests over the transport of live animals at Coventry, Shoreham and Brightlingsea attracted new supporters to the animal-rights movement, revealing the growth of Green politics in unexpected social corners and the changing content of Green . . .” read more
Rethinking Imperial Histories: The Reform Act of 1867
“In Birmingham, Britain’s second city, the Art Gallery celebrates the civic heritage of a place which became rich in the nineteenth century. The gallery itself is a beautiful Victorian building. It was a part of the new town centre designed by Joseph Chamberlain, at that time the Liberal . . .” read more
Feminism and the 'Crisis of Rationality'
“There is a measure of consensus within feminist theory that rationalist values are in crisis—that the very arrival of women on the scene of intellectual activity necessitates a reappraisal of those values. Sometimes the claim is that conventional scientific research procedure reflects an objectifying, control-seeking attitude to its . . .” read more
The New Politics of the Irish Republic
“In the last two years, a series of events has occurred which, taken together, seemed to signify developments of such importance that even those observers of Irish politics most prone to relish or lament its apparent barren continuities have begun to contemplate the possibility of a radical opening . . .” read more
A New Social Interpretation
“In this coherent, sophisticated and intellectually compelling book, Robert Brenner provides an important reformulation of the Marxist interpretation of the English Revolution of the mid seventeenth century. Few scholars will fail to be impressed by his mastery of the vast secondary literature on this subject, as well as . . .” read more
England’s Transition to Capitalism
“Robert Brenner’s formidable reputation as one of the leading Marxist historians of his generation has rested till now on a series of bold interpretive essays in which he has sought to develop a distinct account of the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Chief among these are two articles, . . .” read more
Success and Failure of Peter Fuller
“The British have not been well served by their most popular critics of modern art. Their specious prose and philosophical posturing often masked confused, contradictory thought, producing a writing that was both patronizing and mystifying. They tended to be isolated by an atmosphere of philistine hostility which rarely . . .” read more
Nationalism and the Left in Germany
“A new/old spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of nationalism. Everyone underestimated its force and potential before 1989, and in the post-Cold War world, almost everyone is struggling to come to terms with it. There is a long history of the Left, in Germany in particular, being accused of . . .” read more
Barbarism: A User’s Guide
“I have called my lecture ‘Barbarism, A User’s Guide’, not because I wish to give you instructions in how to be barbarians. None of us, unfortunately, need it. Barbarism is not something like ice-dancing, a technique that has to be learned—at least not unless you wish to become . . .” read more
Ralph Miliband 1924-1994
“The death of Ralph Miliband in May, shortly after his seventieth birthday, takes from us an outstanding advocate of democratic socialism, the leading Marxist political scientist in the English-speaking world, and someone who was an inspiration to several generations of the New Left. Ralph Miliband was, of course, . . .” read more
The Return of the Great Powers
“On the surface, the situation in the Balkans may look rather optimistic at the moment: the Croats and Muslims have ceased fighting; some sense of normality has been restored to Sarajevo; and the crisis around Gorazde has been defused. In a broader context of European security, however, it . . .” read more
Roots of the Postmodern Rebellion in Chiapas
“The Indian uprising in Chiapas that burst upon the world scene in January is a postmodern political movement. The rebellion is an attempt to move beyond the politics of modernity, be they of the Salinas de Gortari government or of past national liberation movements. And even more fundamentally, . . .” read more
The Modern Women’s Movement in Italy
“Modern Italian feminism established itself in the early 1970s, expanding with remarkable strength and radicalism from its middle-class base to become a popular mobilization with an extensive network of activists throughout the organized labour movement. By the end of the decade, however, feminism was in decline; and the . . .” read more
European Cities, the Informational Society, and the Global Economy
“An old axiom in urban sociology considers space as a reflection of society. Yet life, and cities, are always too complex to be captured in axioms. Thus the close relationship between space and society, between cities and history, is more a matter of expression than of reflection. The . . .” read more
The Agonies of Liberalism: What Hope Progress?
“We meet on a triple anniversary: the 25th Anniversary of the founding of Kyoto Seika University in 1968; the 25th Anniversary of the world revolution of 1968; the 52nd Anniversary of the exact day (at least on the us calendar) of the bombing of Pearl Harbor by . . .” read more
Confronting the African Tragedy
“Sub-Saharan Africa became independent roughly thirty years ago, and it is already hard to remember the optimism that African leaders, and most western Africanists, then felt about the future. Yet the history of the previous ninety years—i.e. since 1870—seemed to justify optimism. The colonial regimes established in the . . .” read more
Post-Populist Argentina
“Falling dictatorships and troubled transitions to democracy in Latin America have dominated the agenda of social scientists of the region. These regime changes have largely been appraised within conjunctures of suddenly shifting political balances and economic crises. Such an approach seems all the more valid in light of . . .” read more