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Symposium: Introduction

A discussion of Robin Blackburn’s quintet on slavery in the Atlantic world: origins, rise, overthrow, legacy.

Mark Elvin

Introducing a set of texts by and about the outstanding comparative historian, who brought a new degree of conceptual sophistication to the study of the longue-durée ‘patterns’ of the Chinese world.

Condition Of Britain

Introducing the four pieces that follow, by Peter Wollen, Raymond Williams, Eric Hobsbawm and Ralph Miliband, commissioned by the Italian communist Giorgio Fanti for a special issue of Il contemporaneo on the state of Britain. Retranslated by NLR, they are published here for the first time in English.

On Sidecar

Introducing the NLR’s new blog, and a selection of its offerings—critical takes on politics and culture from Russia to Myanmar, Vietnam to Washington DC. A short-form, high-frequency extension of the journal online.

A Planetary Pandemic

“This number of nlr opens with a set of texts on the covid-19 crisis. Coursing round the world, the virus plays the role of an etching acid that reveals the lineaments—political, economic, social, cultural—of the uneven landscape beneath. Less lethal than such zoonotic forerunners as . . .” read more

Introduction to NLR 116/117

“This double issue of nlr explores the tensions of the global conjuncture across three domains: the dynamics of world capitalism, the clash of forces in the political arena, the multifarious production of meaning in the realm of culture. For this journal, none of these spheres can be . . .” read more

Introduction to the Dialogue on China’s Future

“The student movement that arose in Beijing in March 1989, and developed into a nation-wide upheaval, drawing in millions of citizens in the capital and across the country in protest against the official response to the crisis, before the occupation of Tiananmen Square was repressed by military force . . .” read more

Tamara Deutscher: 1913-1990

“It is with great sadness that we learn of the death of Tamara Deutscher, whose counsel and encouragement have meant so much to this Review over a period of a quarter of a century.” read more

Introduction to Kovac Interview

“When, in August 1988, the League of Communists of Serbia refused to accept the authority of the League of Communists of Yugoslavia (which had instructed it to halt nationalist street demonstrations), it drew a line under a whole historical period that had started in 1945. In this multinational . . .” read more

Introduction to Nikolic

“In August 1984, six Yugoslav intellectuals—Pavle Imširović, Gordan Jovanović, Vladimir Mijanović, Miodrag Milić, Milan Nikolić and Dragomir Olujić—were charged jointly with forming a ‘counter-revolutionary organization aimed at the overthrow of the constitutional order’. In reality, all the six had in common was that they had taken part in . . .” read more

Introduction to Benjamin

“Although Walter Benjamin possessed a profound knowledge of classical German literature, his preoccupation with modernism usually led him to explore more obscure or neglected traditions. Thus he ignored mainstream German drama in favour of Baroque tragedy, because of the relevance of allegory to Expressionism; and his writings on . . .” read more

Introduction to Chantou Boua

“Over the last decade the fate of Cambodia has come to symbolize some of the most extreme and controversial aspects of twentieth-century history: mass bombing, by the United States in 1973 especially; mass terror, as exercised by the Pol Pot regime from 1975 to 1979; neighbouring invasion, by . . .” read more

Presentation of Deutscher

“The essay which follows is the first that Isaac Deutscher wrote in Polish (under the pseudonym ‘Ignacy Niemczycki’) after leaving the country of his birth in 1939. It appeared in February 1942 in the Polish literary weekly WiadomoŚci Polskie (Polish News) which was published in London by a . . .” read more

Herbert Marcuse

“The sad news of the death of Herbert Marcuse has reached us as we send this issue to press. The highly original and critical intelligence he brought to Marxism, and his unstinting solidarity with those in need of it, will be sorely missed. His life spanned the epoch . . .” read more

Introduction to Habermas

“In nlr 67 Göran Therborn argued that Jürgen Habermas, ‘the most celebrated of the successors of the Frankfurt School’, had elaborated a theory which represented a ‘development away from the Marxist positions of the founders of the School’. Habermas claimed to re-state what was valid in Marx . . .” read more

Introduction to Sraffa

“Piero Sraffa was born in Turin in 1898, the son of a law professor at the university. As he himself described in a 1924 letter to Gramsci (quoted in the article by Ferrata below), he was a ‘pacifist socialist’ as an adolescent, in the years 1915–17: the Italian . . .” read more

Introduction to Lukacs

“The aesthetic debates within German Marxism are now acknowledged to constitute one of the most remarkable sequences in European cultural history this century. Few episodes either in the general history of Marxist theory or in the course of aesthetic discussion as a whole can match the depth and . . .” read more

Introduction to Medvedev

“Nikolai Bukharin, despite the extent of his published work (much of which has now become available in English), and despite a full-scale biography (something which does not exist for most leading Bolsheviks), remains a curiously elusive and paradoxical figure. A prominent Left Bolshevik until 1921, by 1923 he . . .” read more

Introduction to articles on Ethiopia and Somalia

“Few areas of the world have presented such complex problems of appraisal for socialists as the Horn of Africa in the past three years. Many factors have contributed to this: geographical and cultural inaccessibility; war-time conditions limiting the circulation of individuals and the availability of information; opaque institutional . . .” read more

Introduction to Sartre

“Jean-Paul Sartre’s Critique de la Raison Dialectique appeared in France in 1960. It was entitled Volume i—‘A Theory of Practical Ensembles’. Its object was the abstract relationships between individuals, groups, series and collectives which Sartre called the ‘formal elements of any history’, in a world dominated by . . .” read more

Introduction to 'Memories for the Future'

“It is often forgotten that the October Revolution, the Spartacist rising, or the foundation of the Chinese Communist Party are all events within living memory. The targets of Lenin’s polemic in ‘Left-wing Communism’ are not all dead. Even the editor of Pravda whose line was implicitly repudiated by . . .” read more

Introduction to Vuskovic

“The mass popular resistance to fascist occupation in Yugoslavia and Albania and the fact that capitalism was overthrown in these countries as the culmination of an authentic, indigenous revolutionary mobilization of their populations, has meant that they have always stood somewhat apart from the rest of East Europe, . . .” read more

Introduction to 'British Troops in Oman'

“The war in the southern, Dhofar, province of the Sultanate of Oman has now been in progress for over ten years. Following the Portuguese retreat from Africa and the defeat of us imperialism in Indochina it is the only revolutionary war of any significant military dimensions taking . . .” read more

Victory in Indochina

“The ultimate victory of the Indochinese revolution has profound significance for the global order that emerged from the Second World War. After so much heroism and sacrifice the Vietnamese revolutionary movement has at last achieved the goal of which it was deprived by the way that war . . .” read more

Introduction to Haraszti

“On 15 October 1973, the young poet Miklós Haraszti stood arraigned before a People’s Court in Budapest for ‘grave incitement’. He had ‘written a book liable to provoke hatred of the State’. The charge carried a possible eight-year jail sentence. The basis of the charge: Piece Rates, a . . .” read more

Introduction to Brecht on Lukacs

“The general literary canons of Georg Lukács are by now relatively wellknown in the English-speaking world. Translations of his most important theoretical essays of the thirties have still, however, to be published. It was during this decade that Lukács, having abandoned political responsibilities in the Hungarian Communist Party, . . .” read more

Introduction to Roy Medvedev

“The document printed below is without question one of the most important political statements to emerge from within the Soviet Union in recent years. Its author, Roy Medvedev, commands a personal authority in his field as an historian comparable to that of Alexander Solzhenitsyn in the domain of . . .” read more

Introduction to 'The White Working Class in South Africa'

“There are few concepts in Marxist vocabulary which have been so inadequately studied and so frequently abused as that of ‘labour aristocracy’. Popularized by Lenin, the term was never rigorously defined by him. Different passages from his writings can be used for widely contrasting versions of it—from the . . .” read more

Introduction to Adorno

“The largely posthumous publication of his later writings has made Walter Benjamin perhaps the most influential Marxist critic in the German-speaking world, after the Second World War. The major works of his mature period have recently become available in English for the first time, with the translation of . . .” read more

Presentation of Vilar

“The theoretical work of Louis Althusser has by now attracted a wide range of comment and criticism in Western Europe. Most of this discussion has centred on the philosophical significance of Althusser’s oeuvre, with some reference to the political implications of his characteristic philosophical themes. In England, Marxism . . .” read more

Introduction to Motor Stewards Interview

“The following interview explores the perspective of four trade-union militants on the development of the British class struggle in the factory and in society as a whole. In nlr 77 Anthony Barnett surveyed and analysed the upsurge of industrial militancy which culminated in the miners’ strike . . .” read more

Introduction to Article on South Korea

“Korea is to-day a country of 50 million people, strategically located, and a focus of interest for all the major powers. Up to 1945 the country was a plundered colony of imperial Japan, and the Japanese have rebuilt a powerful position in the southern part of Korea. 40,000 . . .” read more

Introduction to Korsch

“Interest in the theoretical work of Karl Korsch has grown as part of the wider expansion of interest in Marxist theory that has occurred in the past decade. Often assimilated to Lukács, with whom he has definite theoretical affinities, Korsch in many important ways differs from the Hungarian . . .” read more

Introduction to Mannoni

“The observation of wild children, re-captured after years in the forest or jungle, provides the most elementary disproof of the myth of ‘human nature’. These mirrors, in which man strives to recognize his own essence, exhibit none of those ‘human’ characteristics which he flatters himself are his by . . .” read more

Introduction to Zavaleta

“The following article is an analysis of the political forces and strategies at work in Bolivia in the period prior to the overthrow of the nationalist General Torres by the rightist General Banzer in August of last year. A remarkable feature of the Torres period was the emergence . . .” read more

Introduction to Moran

“Ludwig Wittgenstein’s person and life have on the whole been sedulously shrouded in obscurity by his admirers and devotees. Much less is known about his biography and character than that of most of the philosophers who were his predecessors or contemporaries. In part, this has doubtless been due . . .” read more

Introduction to Glucksmann

“The publication of the major philosophical works by Louis Althusser in the mid sixties provoked a wide variation of responses in Europe. In the last issue of nlr, Norman Geras provided a careful account of the general design of Althusser’s system, from For Marx to Reading Capital. . . .” read more

Polish Document--Presentation

“The document printed below is a shortened and condensed transcript of a meeting in the Adolf Warski shipyard of the Polish port of Szczecin, held on 25 January 1971 between the leadership of the Polish Communist Party (puwp) and the mass of workers in the yards, then . . .” read more

Presentation of Mariategui

“The admiration expressed for Mariátegui in Latin America and beyond is not matched by a real study of his writings. Since his death in 1930, many have invoked his authority though in most cases illegitimately. He has been claimed as the source of various brands of sui generis . . .” read more

Introduction to Kannafani

“World attention was riveted on the Palestinian liberation movement in September 1970 when the hijacking of four jet-planes and the holding of their passengers as hostages was shortly followed by the outbreak of civil war in Jordan, These developments gave the Palestinian struggle greater publicity than it had . . .” read more

Introduction to Magri

“Lucio Magri’s article on Italian Communism in the sixties, published in Il Manifesto in late 1970, is for a number of reasons of considerable international significance. The Manifesto group was excluded from the pci in June 1969 for their systematic criticisms of its policies from the left: . . .” read more

Introduction to Interview on Oman and Dhofar

“In February 1971 the Conservative Government announced its plans to withdraw British forces from the Persian Gulf by the end of 1971, in accordance with a plan originally drawn up by the Wilson government in January 1968 and accepted by the Conservatives only after they had come into . . .” read more

Presentation of Blanqui

“The lifetime of Auguste Blanqui (1805–81) coincides with the rise and fall of the secret society as an effective harbinger of socialism. Auguste Blanqui was the son of a low rank imperial official; his first recorded political involvement was in 1827 when he was wounded on the barricades; . . .” read more

Introduction to Cathal Goulding

“For much of its existence the Irish Republican Army has lacked the sympathy or indeed the attention of socialists. In the period of the national liberation struggle in Ireland in the early ’twenties those who had managed to weld the military lessons of guerrilla struggle against the British . . .” read more

Introduction to Magri

“The central paradox of Italian Marxism since the war has been the intellectual dominance of a school whose philosophical inspiration was directly opposed to that of Gramsci. Galvano Della Volpe and his pupils, in particular Lucio Colletti, were to develop an original and radical anti-Hegelian oeuvre, characterized by . . .” read more

Introduction to Della Volpe

“In the 19th century, the father of Italian Marxism was Labriola, who corresponded with Engels and Plekhanov. After the formation of the Third International, its historical centre became Gramsci. Both were in different ways profoundly influenced by the Hegelian tradition which had become naturalized in Italy after the . . .” read more

Presentation of Kautsky 1914

“The article by Karl Kautsky printed below is a singular text. It is well-known that Kautsky evolved a theory of ‘ultra-imperialism’, a supreme phase of capitalist development which would banish all inter-imperialist wars forever, because Lenin denounced this conception in his own work Imperialism, the Highest Stage of . . .” read more

Introduction to Colletti

“Lucio Colletti, the Italian philosopher and political theorist, is a pupil of the late Galvano Della Volpe, whose interpretation of Marxism he has developed and extended in a number of important essays, including introductions to the Italian translations of Il’ienkov’s Dialectic of the Abstract and Concrete in Marx’s . . .” read more

Introduction to Tukhachevsky

“Mikhail Tukhachevsky, whose meteoric career illuminates certain episodes of the Soviet past that still have significance today, was born in Penza province of Czarist Russia in 1893. According to a colleague who knew him in the twenties, he came from an impoverished family of aristocrats, originally of Flemish . . .” read more

Editorial Note on 'Freud and Lacan'

“At our request, Louis Althusser has agreed to let us reproduce the following article, which was written in 1964 and published in the French Communist Party journal, La Nouvelle Critique.” read more