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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

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

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

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

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

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

After the Cold War

“East Europeans always emphasize the power of words. This has been the essence of much of Havel’s political writings. The way we describe the world, the words we use, shape how we see the world and how we decide to act. Words and history—a collection of words used . . .” read more

Farewell to Thatcherism? Neo-Liberalism and 'New Times'

“There can be no doubt that the Thatcher government over the last year or so has encountered a crisis of public confidence: some even believe the end of Thatcherism is nigh. Signs of impending doom were already discerned in June 1989 when the Conservative party suffered its first . . .” read more

Marxist Century, American Century: The Making and Remaking of the World Labour Movement

“In the closing paragraphs of the first section of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, Marx and Engels advance two distinct arguments why the rule of the bourgeoisie will come to an end. On the one hand, the bourgeoisie ‘is unfit to rule because it is incompetent to . . .” read more

The Importance of Being Marxist

“I hope that the almost Wildean title of my lecture is not misleading. I intend to be totally serious. If there is a place for irony in today’s talk, then it is as one of those ‘ironies of history’ about which Isaac Deutscher wrote so prophetically. I have . . .” read more

'The Poetry of the Past': Marx and the French Revolution

“Like so many German intellectuals of his generation, Marx was literally fascinated by the French Revolution: in his eyes it was quite simply the Revolution par excellence or, more precisely, ‘the most colossal revolution that history has ever known’. We know that in 1844 he was intending to . . .” read more

The Upturned Utopia

“The catastrophe of historical communism stands literally before everyone’s eyes—the catastrophe of communism as a world movement, born of the Russian Revolution, promising emancipation of the poor and oppressed, the ‘wretched of the earth’. The process of decomposition is continually speeding up, beyond anything predicted. This does not . . .” read more

Rational Choice Marxism: Is the Game Worth the Candle?

“Some time ago, in the pages of the New Left Review, a claim was made on behalf of ‘rational-choice Marxism’ as ‘a fully fledged paradigm, which deserves to take its place beside the two other constellations of theory currently discernible within the broad spectrum ofprogressive social thought—namely, post-structuralism . . .” read more

Hillsborough, 15 April 1989: Some Personal Contemplations

“When news of the Hillsborough disaster began to reach me, I was still living in Ottawa, Canada—only two weeks before returning to take up an academic position in England. A phone call from a Canadian relative giving the bare outline of the events was followed by ever more . . .” read more

Reflections on the Crisis of Communist Regimes

“The massacre in Tiananmen Square last June is unlikely to be the last violent expression of the deep and multiple crises—economic, social, political, ethnic, ideological, moral—which grip many Communist regimes, and which will in due course most probably grip them all. A vast ‘mutation’ is going on throughout . . .” read more

Gramsci and Marxism in Britain

“Outside Italy, nowhere more than in Britain have Gramsci’s writings exercised so prolonged, deep or diversified an influence. Some of this has been channelled through the academic disciplines of history, political science and cultural studies, but much of it has worked directly upon the theory and practice of . . .” read more

The Nazi State: An Exceptional State?

“Any discussion of the character of an ‘exceptional’ state must presumably begin with a notion of what categorizes a state as ‘normal’. My own starting assumption is to accept Max Weber’s concept of the state: ‘an administrative and legal order subject to change by legislation . . . . . .” read more

Beyond 1992: The Left and Europe

“The wave of publicity in preparation for the broad internal market of 1992 has struck a powerful chord throughout Western Europe, including in a traditionally introverted country such as Britain where opinion polls suggest that large sections of the population are considerably more enthusiastic than their government about . . .” read more

Meditations on a Theme by Tom Nairn

“In China an immemorial throne crumbled in 1911; India put its Rajas and Nawabs in the wastepaper-basket as soon as it gained independence in 1947; in Ethiopia the Lion of Judah has lately ceased to roar. Monarchy survives in odd corners of Asia; and in Japan and Britain. . . .” read more

Taking Monarchism Seriously

“The institution of monarchy presents one of the most glaring paradoxes of British society and British history. It is a monarchy unique in the developed capitalist world in remaining unmodernized, undemocratized and utterly mystified. Elsewhere, in Scandinavia and the Netherlands, the institution survives as a kind of hereditary . . .” read more

Farewell to the Classic Labour Movement?

“A hundred and twenty-five years after Lassalle, and a hundred years after the founding of the Second International, the socialist and labour parties are at a loss as to where they are going. Wherever socialists meet they ask one another gloomily about the future of our movements. I . . .” read more

Introduction to Hecht Interview

“Over the past quarter-century huge areas of Amazonian forest have been reduced to ashes. The conquest of the Amazon resembles more a scorched earth policy than development. The rate of deforestation has been close to exponential, and it has all been for nothing.” read more

Trees, Cows and Cocaine: An Interview with Susanna Hecht

“O forest! They cut out your verdant heart. The grasses, the Brazil nut trees, the wild beasts already scent the smell of prison. This we say: People yearn to be free, so Who will then be the masters of our history?” read more

Roberto Unger and the Politics of Empowerment

“The largest industrial power of the Southern hemisphere has recently completed one of the most protracted and divisive processes of constitution-making in modern history. The fruits of nineteen months of labour by the Constituent Assembly of Brazil have already aroused violent reactions. ‘Clauses on employment worthy of Cuba, . . .” read more

Chico Mendes: Chronicle of a Death Foretold

“Where do good ideas come from? Do they fall from the sky? No. They come from social practice.” read more

The Affinities of Norberto Bobbio

“In early 1848, within a few weeks of each other, two antithetical texts were published in London, on the eve of European revolution. One was The Communist Manifesto, by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The other was Principles of Political Economy, by John Stuart Mill. The former famously . . .” read more

Ex-Marxism Without Substance: Being A Real Reply to Laclau and Mouffe

“There is a discursive strategy commonly adopted by politicians, particularly at election time, in the face of discomforting questions. It consists of appearing to respond to a questioner but without actually answering her question. The thing has the external form of an answer but is not one. Practically . . .” read more

Marxism or Post-Marxism?

“Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy and Norman Geras’s lengthy review article (‘Post-Marxism’, nlr 163) raise issues which are at the heart of the ongoing debate on the stature and prospects of contemporary Marxist theory. Laclau and Mouffe’s major thesis is that the core . . .” read more

Capitalism and Human Emancipation

“Let me say something, first, about Isaac Deutscher, not just in some ritual tribute for the occasion but because it seems appropriate to what I am going to say in my lecture and the spirit in which I intend to say it. I did not know Isaac Deutscher, . . .” read more

Post-Marxism Without Apologies

“Why should we rethink the socialist project today? In Hegemony and Socialist Strategy we pointed out some of the reasons. As participating actors in the history of our time, if we are actually to assume an interventionist role and not to do so blindly, we must attempt to . . .” read more

Popular Capitalism, Flexible Accumulation and Left Strategy

“Three years ago we presented an anatomy of Thatcherism, but today we are witnessing Mrs Thatcher’s vivisection of the Left. Her third successive general election victory has intensified the crisis in the labour movement and is likely to precipitate both a merger and a split in the Alliance. . . .” read more

Class Politics and Radical Democracy

“Ellen Meiksins Wood’s recent book, The Retreat From Class, is a formidable and trenchant attack upon the arguments of what she calls the New True Socialists. Marx applied the label ‘True Socialists’ to those he accused of having fallen victim to the illusion that socialism was ‘a question . . .” read more

Introduction to Borge

“The interview was conducted at the Comandante’s residence, over breakfast, with the help of an old friend, Ileana Rodriguez, and a new friend, Daniel Alegría, whose stories—instructively different from the life trajectories of North American intellectuals—I hope to tell in another place. It was not a particularly propitious . . .” read more

Tomas Borge on the Nicaraguan Revolution

“The questions I want to ask basically concern the originality of the Nicaraguan revolution, which is very different from the Cuban revolution but in ways that are not altogether clear. We know that you don’t use the word socialism but the word Sandinism, but we don’t know . . .” read more

A Reply to Ellen Meiksins Wood

“Ellen Meiksins Wood’s review of my book Rethinking Socialism, in her recently published Retreat from Class, and her synthetic remarks on my political views in the concluding chapter are sufficiently well constructed and argued to be plausible, especially to those who have not read my work. I am . . .” read more

Post-Marxism?

“Times change and people change. Their ideas change; develop, progress—and regress. There can be gradual change within a more or less stable intellectual framework. And there can also be sharper breaks, mutations of outlook in which one thing is renounced and another embraced. But each person has to . . .” read more

Marxism and Methodological Individualism

“It is often held that Marxism embodies distinctive methodological doctrines which distinguish it from ‘bourgeois’ social science. The difference has been characterized in various ways: Marxism is scientific and materialist, bourgeois theory ideological and idealist; Marxism is holistic, bourgeois theory is individualistic; Marxism is dialectical and historical, bourgeois . . .” read more

Rational Choice Marxism

“There must be some way out of here, said the joker to the thief There’s too much confusion, I can’t get no relief Businessmen they drink my wine, plowmen dig my earth None of them along the line know what any of it is worth” read more

Restructuring the State

“This article contrasts two strategic options for the Labour Party and the Left in the approach to the next election in Britain. One, the option chosen by the Labour leadership, is to seek to recapture the votes lost to the Alliance parties since 1981 by occupying their political . . .” read more

The Role of the Individual in History: The Case of World War Two

“The primacy of the relationships and conflicts between social forces in determining the course of history is one of the fundamental assumptions of historical materialism. In societies divided into different social classes, such relationships are perforce class relations. History is thus explained, in the final analysis, as a . . .” read more

Beyond the Boundary Question

“Class politics, once the unquestioned centre of the socialist project, has became the object of intense controversy. There have been many reasons for this startling development—the appearance of the so-called new social movements and the continued failure of traditional Left parties to effect fundamental social change are just . . .” read more

Thatcherism and the Politics of Hegemony: A Reply to Stuart Hall

“We are glad that Stuart Hall regards our article in nlr 147 as a significant contribution to contemporary debates on Thatcherism. In that article we examined his work on authoritarian populism (hereafter ‘AP’), sketched an alternative approach to Thatcherism in terms of its two-nations effects, and outlined . . .” read more

Crisis in British Communism: An Insider’s View

“The Communist Party of Great Britain is in the throes of a severe crisis. Political scissions and antagonisms between different tendencies, struggles for control of the Party machine and its publications, expulsions of leading militants, forced suspension of the work of major structures present a dramatic spectacle of . . .” read more

Strategic Aspects of Asia in the Global System

“Capitalism, born in Europe, utilized the continent of its birth as a launching pad to colonize the rest of the world. World economics in the shape of the global market paved the way for world politics. Expansionist capital created the conditions for wars and revolutions on an unprecedented . . .” read more

Introduction to a Speech in Tashkent

“The speech published below was delivered in Tashkent, ussr, during the last week of April 1985, at a conference on ‘Peace and Security in Asia’ jointly organized by the United Nations University in Tokyo and the Soviet Academy of Sciences. Such events are not new, but the . . .” read more

Historical Materialism, Answer to Marxism’s Crisis

“Has any period since Marx’s death been marked by weaker conviction among Marxists than our own? Doubts and doubters have been with us for as long as Marxism itself, but those of today no longer face a compelling politicaltheoretical field of force, dominated by an individual, movement, party, . . .” read more