What Marxism Today Has Meant To Me

Marxism Today anticipated the post- The end of Marxism Today is a moment socialist world and made a telling con- of sadness. Throughout the 80s its de- tribution to the debate about alterna- bates on politics and culture spoke di- tives to Thatcherism at a time when the rectly to me as a product of 60s liberta- Labour Party was intellectually mori- rianism and 70s leftism. Optimistically, bund. I'm sorry to see it go, but keenly I would hope that those debates are now anticipate the day when its successor part of the mainstream. Pessimistically, journal appears. I'm concerned that, as leninism is quite Hugo Young is a columnist on The Guar- rightly consigned to the ash-can of his- dian. tory, the project to link an understanding of economic activity to a politics of social transformation may be abandoned at It's always a matter of regret to see one the moment it is most urgently needed. expression of opinion shutting - it nar- Colin MacCabe is head of research at the rows the range of views available, and BFI. also the range of places I can send letters to - terrible! But I haven't agreed with much of what you've said in the 80s. From the beginning until the last Keith Flett is one of the most prolific number I was sometimes a contributor, letter-writers in Britain today. and all the time a very faithful reader. I don't think for a moment that the end of I shall miss Marxism Today more than the magazine somehow cancels its I'll miss the philosophy in whose name it Marxism Today has been open-minded achievement. No journal lasts forever, was founded. You covered political is- and curious, and respectful of ideas, all journals are mortal - what is impor- sues with an agreeable mixture of wherever they have been encountered. tant is that they remain full of vitality. seriousness and geniality. Several of It had a good eye for salient and enter- John Berger is a writer. the most interesting and perceptive pol- taining thought; and it has always lab- itical articles and interviews that I have oured to be clear and accessible. It leaves read in the last two or three years have a significant vacuum. Marxism Today had many detractors in appeared within your covers. John Birt is director-general designate the trade union movement. Its revision- Politics is above all about ideas and of the BBC ist line was not always welcomed. It was putting them in to practice. Too much at its best in the early 80s in analysing political coverage concentrates on the implications of Thatcherism. To- gossip - 'Who's up and who's down?' I felt that, over the last few years, what wards the end of its time it became less And too much slants the debate accord- I've enjoyed most about it has been its compulsory reading. ing to a set of obvious preconceptions. eclecticism and I think it's been a very I thought that Eric Hobsbawm, Stuart Marxism Today treated politics as an valuable forum for all kinds of liberta- Hall and Bea Campbell always had adventure for serious grown-ups. I shall rian dissent. I'm sad to see it go. something interesting to say, but it was miss you. Ian McEwen is a writer. the lack of attention paid to the major What an epitaph from the chairman of changes taking place in the Labour Par- the Conservative Party! Or do I mean ty that disappointed me. But for all its for the chairman of the Conservative Marxism Today was a pioneer, ready to shortcomings, its passing will be Party? take risks that others avoided. It never mourned by all who enjoy a good politi- Chris Patten MP is chairman of the Con- forgot the value of matching imagin- cal read. servative Party. ation and ideas with rigorous analysis, Tom Sawyer is assistant general secre- and that will be its lasting contribution. tary of NUPE. Gordon Brown MP is the Labour trade Nobody in politics has been able to ignore and industry spokesperson. Marxism Today. Sometimes it was irri- tating, but always challenging, innovat- ive, and full of ideas. Exactly what we The main value of Marxism Today was need. to explain to the British Left what hap- Paddy Ashdown is leader of the Liberal pened to it during the 1980s, and to give Democrats. a notoriously introspective movement a sense of perspective. Such magazines in other times will always be as important, Marxism Today recognised that the be they of the Right or Left. composition of the working class had Bob Geldof is a singer, writer and cam- changed. Issues relating to women and paigner for famine relief. ethnic minorities, sexual orientation and age were dragged on to the agenda. In doing that it was a major contributor I think it has been one of the few forums to changing British politics. It paral- of intellectual debate at a time at which I suppose you've meant an alternative - leled and was supportive of the work of there is a great silence in many other the press in this country is so the GLC. places. overwhelmingly right-wing that it was Ken Livingstone is Labour MP for Brent Half Dahrendorf is the warden of St An- good to have dissident voices. East. thony's College, Oxford. Margaret Drabble is a writer.

4 MARXISM TODAY DECEMBER 1991 Marxism Today had its heyday in that I watched the evolution of Marxism period when cultural revolution was Today over the years with great interest sweeping through the Labour Party and and occasionally contributed to it - the destroying its electoral credibility. It evolution, I hope, as well as the ma- reached the same conclusions about the gazine. The title never bothered me; nor Labour Party as people like myself, who did not being paid. It is better to pay had been on the party's social demo- nothing than to offer a token fee. I took cratic wing. And Marxism Today took the title simply to mean that all subjects Thatcher seriously before she came to have an economic base: the rest is open power when a great many people, to discussion. The best feature of the including myself, failed to see the force magazine in the last two or three years of her conviction politics. has been its liberal internationalism. No I shall not mourn its passing, though. other magazine has been quite like it. Now that communism is dead and Malcolm Rutherford is assistant editor of buried it is a good moment for Marxism the Financial Times. Today to fold. You have no future now except to dance on the graves of Lenin and Eric Hobsbawm. Its achievement was its style and confi- Peter Jenkins is associate editor of The dence, but there was a dishonest ingre- Independent. dient which has left a bad aftertaste. I have always read Marxism Today and Dishonest, because implicitly it pro- found it stimulating. It was another jected debates within the Communist point of view to argue with, though Marxism Today has made a vital and Party, as it saw them (new thinking there is a point at which a high Tory lively contribution to all the major left versus dogmatic class economism), opinion and a Marxism Today opinion debates since Mrs Thatcher came to onto the wider Left. In doing so, it wiped intersect. I sometimes feel that I have power. Its most important message has out new left thinking from EP Thomp- more in common with Marxism Today been that the Left always needs to keep son to Sheila Rowbotham and beyond, than with The Guardian or The Indepen- an open mind and be prepared to and it dichotomised social movements dent, or even the current Tory Party. grapple with changed circumstances. I from working-class politics in a very The Chris Patten interview, for example, have not always agreed with Marxism ahistorical and innaccurate manner. got my blood boiling - not with Marx- Today's conclusions, but it has always Grrr! ism Today but with Chris Patten. been there, confronting the difficult Hilary Wainwright is a writer and mem- Peregrine Worsthorne is the former questions that won't go away. ber of the editorial board of Socialist. editor of the Sunday Telegraph. Bryan Gould MP is the Labour environ- ment spokesperson. I think you've kept an enormously im- Can I quote Victor Hugo in Les Miser- portant record, particularly of this per- ables, who's got a line about the June Since Martin Jacques took over the edi- iod of political change since perestroika days when he's talking about what you torship from James Klugman, there has and glasnost and through the great should do with the people who rioted in been a steady deterioration in the con- change of 1989. A lot of the variety of 1848 - he said you've got to shoot them tents of Marxism Today. It has gradually political argument and the clarification down while respecting them: 'Ilfaut les turned into an eclectic, yuppified maga- of recent issues has been in your corner. abbattre, tout en les respectant'. zine of little interest to most marxists. Malcolm Bradbury is the author of The Norman Stone is professor of modern Tony Chater is editor of the Morning History Man. history at Oxford University. Star.

I was always surprised to find people Marxism Today was the last repository The demise of Marxism Today is, I sup- like Heseltine in Marxism Today. But of thought. I feel guilty now, because I pose, inevitable following the demise of when I read the interviews they were always relied on it being there even marxism itself. But its passing dimi- always well worth while. It is going to when I didn't buy it. It was at its best nishes the range of intelligent cover- leave a serious hole in the market, when the Left had its back to the wall. age and comment in Britain. It main- though I am glad it didn't change its Marxism Today was so good at fighting tained a very high standard of interest name to Marketing Today. itself out of a corner, which it always and writing. Jon Snow is presenter of Channel Four succeeded in doing. David Steel MP is the Liberal Democrat News. Fay Weldon is a writer and broadcaster. foreign affairs spokesperson. Marxism Today always had its own I am not at all surprised to hear of Not as much as the Daily Telegraph, voice which carried remarkable weight. Marxism Today's demise, since its speaking entirely personally. But it's I enjoyed the way in which it refused to single most outstanding characteristic always sad to see a contribution to debate be a ghetto publication by allowing all during its whole period of existence has disappear. It's been a very good maga- sorts of people to speak through its been the absence of the slightest trace zine in recent years, very good indeed. pages. And I am glad that it is closing in of marxism. Therefore, since it has All it needed was to change its policies a way that lets it go out with a bang and been wrongly named from start to fin- and it would be a roaring success. not a whimper. ish, it is appropriate that it should go Edwina Currie is Conservative MP for Andreas Whittam-Smith is editor of The into desuetude. Derbyshire South. Independent. Paul Foot writes for the Daily Mirror.

5 MARXISM TODAY DECEMBER 1991