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Contentious Commitments: French Intellectuals and Politics

“As Sunil Khilnani observes, in a characteristic turn of phrase, the marxisant intellectual culture of France after the Liberation ‘came to play a fundamental role in the entire afflatus of Western progressive thought’. Nettled by the Anglophone fashion for French modes in the 1960s and 70s, which invariably . . .” read more

'C'est la lutte initiale': Steps in the Realignment of the French Left

“In the last two years, a string of elections and the Maastricht referendum have confirmed the rapid realignment of forces on the French Left. The Socialist Party has been brutally expelled from government, at the end of a decade that saw it tarnished and compromised by office and . . .” read more

The Plausibility of Socialism

“Socialism itself must be viewed as part of a democratic movement which long antedates it, but to which socialism alone can give its full meaning. The idea of democracy has been drastically narrowed in scope and substance in capitalist societies so as to reduce the threat it posed . . .” read more

The Imperious Austrian: Schumpeter as Bourgeois Marxist

“The last temptation is the greatest treason: to do the right deed for the wrong reason.” 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

Hierarchic Democracy

“This is no bad time to ask two real questions again. What is the actual nature of the liberal democracies? Hence, what is to be said for them?” read more

Overcoming the Past

“I would like your very different biographies and your experiences with the European Left to encounter each other as it were in a discussion on Germany, on ‘overcoming the past’, on the legacy of socialism, on Europe and the lack of synchrony between Germany and Poland. The . . .” read more

Democracy and the Ends of Marxism

“The relationship between socialism and democracy has been a complex and a contested one. To large numbers of socialists it was axiomatic that their project, both the goal of socialism and the movement for it, must be democratic. They saw socialism as the heir to older, liberal and . . .” read more

Second-Hand Dealers in Ideas: Think-Tanks and Thatcherite Hegemony

“[T]he ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the . . .” read more

Reinventing Federalism: Europe and the Left

“Europeans have lived for so long in the warm cocoon of the Community system that we have almost forgotten what our history was like before the astonishing burst of institutional inventiveness that culminated in the Rome Treaty a generation ago. If present trends are allowed to continue we . . .” read more

Class Analysis, History and Emancipation

“In both the popular press and the scholarly media we hear a lot about the crisis of Marxism, even of its death. Frequently the collapse of regimes ruled by Communist parties is equated with the collapse of Marxism as a social theory. However, while there is unquestionably a . . .” read more

Our Post-Communism: The Legacy of Karl Kautsky

“Recently, as a result of preparing for this paper, I read for the first time Karl Kautsky’s Bolshevism at a Deadlock, published in German, in September 1930, as Der Bolschewismus in der Sackgasse—which we could better translate perhaps as No Way Through for Bolshevism. I found this an . . .” read more

Political Ecology: Expertocracy versus Self-Limitation

“for Dick Howard” read more

Shaping Ends: Reflections on Fukuyama

“Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man has been widely regarded as a celebration of the triumph of the West. Its message, on the accepted view, is that, with victory in the Cold War and the death of Communism, the Western way of life has . . .” 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

Representing Solidarity: Class, Gender and the Crisis in Social-Democratic Sweden

“The 1991 Swedish election produced the victory of a coalition of four bourgeois parties dedicated to bringing about a ‘system shift’. Their preparedness to break with the Swedish social-democratic model stands in marked contrast to the bourgeois governments of 1976–82. The change can be understood only in relation . . .” read more

The Balance Sheet of the Left

“In nlr 194, Göran Therborn, adopting a broad historical-comparative perspective, tried to draw up an overall balance sheet of the achievements and failings of the Left. One of his major arguments was that the crisis of both the social-democratic and the Communist Left was more conjunctural than . . .” read more

The Sole Survivor

“This Review is two hundred issues old. All sorts of things can be hung on commemorative hooks, and one of them is rueful retrospect. About five crises ago I found myself before an audience of us academics, trying to persuade them that a National Government would be . . .” read more

The Personal and the Political

“Sheila Rowbotham: Your new book, Outsiders, suggests to me a general feature of your work—an awareness of class as a general feature of society but also of the cultural nuances which bind or separate people into or between classes. Was there something in your family background which . . .” read more

Reply to Mouzelis

“To assess the complex historical experience of what has claimed to be socialism, or efforts in a socialist direction, is an enormous task, which will take a long time, deep digging and hard thinking. It will be enlivened by controversy. Nicos Mouzelis’ reply to my initial bird’s-eye . . .” read more

The Entrails of Thatcherism

“Margaret Thatcher was leader of the Conservative party for almost sixteen years and Prime Minister for eleven years. Under her leadership the Conservatives won three general elections and re-established themselves as the dominant party in the British state, while Labour declined to its interwar level of support. It . . .” read more

Toward a More Representative Voting System: The Plant Report

“Reform of the British electoral system has been much discussed in recent years. It is advocated by all centre parties—by the present Liberal Democrat Party, by its predecessors the Liberal and the Social Democrat Parties, and by the Green Party as well. The Labour Party, as a body, . . .” read more

The Question of Electoral Reform

“Representative government in the United Kingdom has a very special character with respect to that elsewhere in Western Europe. In the first place, the British House of Commons at Westminster is the only parliament in Western Europe which neither now nor in the recent past has been elected . . .” read more

The Life and Times of Socialism

“As the light of socialist hopes and expectations fades, and the need for clear vision and historical perspective grows imperative, we might look to the owl of Minerva, trusting she will neither be dazzled by the fires of capitalist celebration (or crisis?) nor succumb to the absolute darkness . . .” read more

The Future of Socialist Legality: A Reply to Hunt

“My book The Concept of Socialist Law challenges the view that an ideal socialist society would have no need of law. While thinkers on the Left advocate socialism in the name of justice, they have traditionally dismissed those legal institutions which have provided some measure of justice in . . .” read more

Fukuyama and the Socialist Alternative

“Since Francis Fukuyama’s essay takes up some key themes from his book The End of History and the Last Man, I think it would be useful for the purposes of this symposium if I were to focus part of my comments on that work itself. The core of . . .” read more

No Exit from Capitalism

“Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man is the book of its historical moment, of Western triumph, as Paul Kennedy’s Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1988) was of a slightly earlier phase of American self-doubt. Its thesis, that capitalist democracy is the final . . .” read more

An Encounter with Fukuyama

“In conversation after a television discussion of his The End of History and the Last Man, an occasion somewhat deviated by the interventions of a bibulous Labour dignitary, Francis Fukuyama revealed that his maternal grandfather had studied in Germany under Werner Sombart. The grandfather had subsequently purchased Sombart’s . . .” read more

Migration, Racism and Identity: The Caribbean Experience in Britain

“It is the white man who creates the Negro. But it is the Negro who creates négritude.” read more

The Crisis of Today’s Ideologies

“I have been asked to speak on ‘the crisis of ideology, culture and civilization’ today—an enormous subject, and one not easy to define. Yet very few people will doubt that there is today such a crisis, even if they cannot say precisely in what it consists. So let . . .” read more

A Socialist Interest in Law

“The momentous events that have taken place in the Communist world since 1989 have underlined, even though it may prove to have been too late, the necessity for socialists to take law seriously. I understand the slogan ‘taking law seriously’ to embrace the following ideas: one, contrary to . . .” read more

Citizenship and Charter 88

“The great written constitutions, from which the idea of constitutional reform unavoidably borrows some of its aura, have set out to redefine the fundamental relationships of citizens, society and government as these were perceived at the time of their writing. The American Declaration of Independence asserted the rights . . .” read more

The Ruins of Westminster

“Britain, or the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland as it is still officially known, resembles an ungainly, dilapidated, half-refurbished Victorian pile threatened by the simultaneous onslaught of subsidence, storm damage, woodworm and dry rot. This year brings an election that could be dangerously inconclusive and . . .” read more

The Autonomy of Scottish Politics

“The Scottish Assembly referendum in 1979 took place in the context of intense political divisions. All sections of the labour movement were divided on the issue, and particularly in local government where many local councillors supported the ‘No’ campaign. The Scottish National Party was divided: although official policy . . .” read more

The Case for Dismantling the Secret State

“smear, which describes in meticulous detail the activities of the security services, over many years, in seeking to discredit and destroy the Left in British politics, and Harold Wilson in particular, is by far the most important book that has been published on this subject. It . . .” read more

The True Realm of Freedom: Marxist Philosophy after Communism

“This article is an attempt to consider the implications for Marxist philosophy of the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. It would be well to start by saying what Marxist philosophy is taken to be here. A convenient map of the field is provided . . .” read more

The Ecological Challenge to Marxism

“Contemporary Marxism has responded in a number of ways to the challenge posed by ecology. Broadly speaking, three currents of thought can be distinguished. The first I shall call the ‘Marxist dissident’ response. Its proponents have abandoned central elements of Marx’s theory, claiming that the new questions posed . . .” read more

The Gulf War, Iraq and Western Liberalism

“The states of the North Atlantic have, since the days of Palmerston, frequently hoisted the flag of liberalism on their way to war. But rarely since 1945 have the principles of right, law and justice been invoked as strongly as in the call to arms for Desert Storm. . . .” read more

Fin de Siecle: Socialism after the Crash

“As we enter the last decade of the twentieth century, the ruin of ‘Marxist-Leninist’ Communism has been sufficiently comprehensive to eliminate it as an alternative to capitalism and to compromise the very idea of socialism. The debacle of Stalinism has embraced reform-communism, and has brought no benefit to . . .” read more

Whose Left? Socialism, Feminism and the Future

“Political generations appear and disappear with astonishing speed. Thirty years ago, a budding anarchist and sixties student radical, I shared with certain others of my generation and class a politics of generalized anti-authoritarianism and free love. In Australia at the time, coming out of the rigid conformity of . . .” read more

From Stalinism to Post-Communist Pluralism: The Case of Poland

“The classical theories of totalitarianism, as elaborated in the 1950s, described totalitarian systems as imposing total ideological conformity, effectively controlling minds and consciences, eliminating all forms of opposition, and thus being virtually immune to internal change. It is no wonder that the gradual dismantling of Stalinism, which began . . .” read more

Liberal Militarism and the British State

“The British contribution to the Gulf war, the Cold War rhetoric of Margaret Thatcher, and the fresh memory of the Falklands war remind us of the military propensities of the British state. Yet Britain has not had conscription since the fifties, its generals keep out of political life, . . .” read more

Explaining Everything or Nothing?

“Alan Carling accuses me of ‘everythingism’—that is, of believing that ‘you need a complete explanation of something before you can have any explanation of something.’ Do I really? I thought I was stating a rather more modest requirement, namely that a ‘paradigm’ like rcm, which claims to . . .” read more

In Defence of Rational Choice: A Reply to Ellen Meiksins Wood

“Ellen Meiksins Wood has delivered a sweeping broadside against the idea that Rational Choice Marxism (rcm) might hoist a standard around which the intellectual forces of the left could rally. Many of her arguments regarding the limitations of rcm I accept (indeed, some of them I . . .” read more

The Limits of 'Political Marxism'

“It was hard to read Ellen Wood’s article ‘Rational Choice Marxism: Is the Game Worth the Candle?’ without mixed feelings. The general thrust of her critique is undoubtedly correct: in the hands of Jon Elster, John Roemer, Adam Przeworski et al., the attempt to reinterpret historical materialism along . . .” read more

What Does Socialism Mean Today? The Rectifying Revolution and the Need for New Thinking on the Left

“There has recently been a spate of articles about the end of the socialist illusion, about the failure of an idea, and even about West European or German intellectuals finally coming to terms with the past. In them, rhetorical questions always prepare the way for the refrain that . . .” read more

A Culture in Contraflow--II

“A movement from modes of production to those of communication, which marks the historical anthropology of Jack Goody was, of course, also one of the central themes of the work of Raymond Williams. The parallels in the development of an original cultural materialism in the two bodies of . . .” read more

Still a Question of Hegemony

“The analysis in nlr 179 by Bob Jessop, Kevin Bonnets and Simon Bromley of Thatcherism’s current difficulties in terms of the weaknesses of its economic strategy, demonstrates the power and indispensability of ‘traditional’ political economy. But it also shows some of the limitations of that approach. They . . .” read more

The Ends of Cold War

“The events of the latter half of 1989 represent an earthquake in world politics. They have restated, in a dramatic form, the most neglected facet of political life, one spurned in east as much as in west, namely the capacity of the mass of the population to take . . .” read more

A Culture in Contraflow--I

“Few subjects can be so elusive as a national culture. The term lends itself to any number of meanings, each presenting its own difficulties of definition or application. Towards the end of the sixties, I tried to explore what seemed one significant structure to fall under such a . . .” read more