How Can We Move On?
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Telling the Truth About Class
TELLING THE TRUTH ABOUT CLASS G. M. TAMÁS ne of the central questions of social theory has been the relationship Obetween class and knowledge, and this has also been a crucial question in the history of socialism. Differences between people – acting and knowing subjects – may influence our view of the chances of valid cognition. If there are irreconcilable discrepancies between people’s positions, going perhaps as far as incommensurability, then unified and rational knowledge resulting from a reasoned dialogue among persons is patently impossible. The Humean notion of ‘passions’, the Nietzschean notions of ‘resentment’ and ‘genealogy’, allude to the possible influence of such an incommensurability upon our ability to discover truth. Class may be regarded as a problem either in epistemology or in the philosophy of history, but I think that this separation is unwarranted, since if we separate epistemology and the philosophy of history (which is parallel to other such separations characteristic of bourgeois society itself) we cannot possibly avoid the rigidly-posed conundrum known as relativism. In speak- ing about class (and truth, and class and truth) we are the heirs of two socialist intellectual traditions, profoundly at variance with one another, although often intertwined politically and emotionally. I hope to show that, up to a point, such fusion and confusion is inevitable. All versions of socialist endeavour can and should be classified into two principal kinds, one inaugurated by Rousseau, the other by Marx. The two have opposite visions of the social subject in need of liberation, and these visions have determined everything from rarefied epistemological posi- tions concerning language and consciousness to social and political attitudes concerning wealth, culture, equality, sexuality and much else. -
Why Not Capitalism
WHY NOT CAPITALISM SOCIALIST REGISTER 1 9 9 5 Edited by LEO PANITCH Special Coeditorx ELLEN MELKSINS WOOD JOHN SAVILLE TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Preface vii Ralph Miliband, Socialist Intellectual, 1924-1994 1 Leo Panitch A Chronology of the New Left and Its Successors, Or: Who's Old-Fashioned Now? Ellen Meiksins Wood Saying No to Capitalism at the Millenium George Ross Once More Moving On: Social Movements, Political Representation and the Left Hilary Wainwright Globalizing Capitalism and the Rise of Identity Politics Frances Fox Piven Europe In Search of a Future Daniel Singer The Yeltsin Regime K. S. Karol The State in the Third World William Graf Page The 'Underclass' and the US Welfare State 163 Linda Gordon 'Class War conservatism': Housing Policy, Homelessness and the 'Underclass' Joan Smith Capitalist Democracy Revisited John Schwartzmantel Parliamentary Socialism Revisited John Saville Harold Laski's Socialism Ralph Miliband How it All Began: A Footnote to History Marion Kozak Ralph Miliband, A Select Bibliography in English PREFACE Ralph Miliband, the founder of the The Socialist Register with John Saville in 1964, and its co-editor for the subsequent three decades, died on May 21, 1994. His death, after falling ill upon his return to London from the New York Socialist Scholars Conference in April, was unexpected. Despite a close brush with death after a heart by-pass operation three years before, he had resumed his activities with characteristic strength of will and stamina, and celebrated the completion of a new book, Socialism for a Sceptical Age, at a festive 70th birthday party in January, 1994. -
What Is Violence?
WHAT IS VIOLENCE? by Anthony Arblaster In The Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels expressed the view that "the epoch of the bourgeoisie", by contrast with earlier stages in human history, had "simplified class antagonisms", with the result that "Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie and Proletariat." One reason for this, they suggested, was that capitalism had had the effect of stripping away the various ideological veils, religious and secular, by which exploitation and oppression had normally been both concealed and justified, and had "left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous 'cash payment'." They summed up this process of de-mystification as follows: In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, bmtal exploitation. We do not need to assume that this represents the most central, or the most considered view on the subject expressed by Marx and/or Engels to recognise that this particular expectation as to the character of class conflict within capitalist society has not been fulfilled. Capitalist exploitation is not uniquely naked and unveiled. Ideology, bourgeois ideology, continues to play a quite decisive role in disguising and blurring class conflicts, and sustaining the claims to legitimacy made by the state and its agencies in capitalist society. A similar tendency to underestimate the role of ideology is reflected in the stress that Marxists frequently place on the purely coercive and even violent character of the state, of which some of Lenin's remarks in The State and Revolution provide an important (because influential) example: The state is a special organisation of force: it is an organisation of violence for the suppression of some class. -
How It All Began: a Footnote to History
HOW IT ALL BEGAN: A FOOTNOTE TO HISTORY Marion Kozak The Socialist Register was conceived on an exceptionally sunlit Sunday, April 7 1963, over lunch. Sitting round the table were John Saville, Lawrence Daly, Edward Thompson, Ralph and I. To an outsider it was evident that Lawrence Daly in some ways dominated the group. Daly, who had once been a working miner in Fife and later became a trade union leader, had been part of John and Edward’s circle in the course of their break with the Communist Party in 1956-57 and after, and they considered him a most remarkable working class intellectual. He had attracted consid erable attention in the 1959 general election campaign when he had beaten the official Communist candidate into third place in Willie Gallagher’s old constituency - a traditional stronghold of Communism. But what sticks out in my memory is not the politics but that Edward wanted to talk to him about poetry and that the afternoon concluded with a discussion about Shakespeare’s sonnets which Lawrence had been reading. In their different ways, all the individuals at our little meeting were among the first wave members of the British New Left, and represented various aspects of a revived Marxist culture whose immediate antecedents were the revelations of the 20th Party Congress. On the one hand, Khrushchev’s speech to the Congress of the CPSU had exposed the crimes of Stalinism as well as the fallibility of the Communist project as exemplified in the Soviet suppression of the Hungarian revolution. On the other hand, the broad Left and even the centre of the political spectrum in Britain had demonstrated widespread disillusion with Cold War politics, in the protest against the colonialism of the Suez invasions and in the growing movement against nuclear weapons. -
WHY ARE WE STILL SOCIALISTS and MARXISTS AFTER ALL THIS?L
WHY ARE WE STILL SOCIALISTS AND MARXISTS AFTER ALL THIS?l ARTHUR MACEWAN At the beginning of the 19905, Marxist socialists in the United States are on the defensive. The turmoil in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe and the massacre in China have been widely accepted as demonstrating a final failure of socialism. In the United States, the very long period of economic expansion, ignoring our repeated predictions of recession, seems to undermine Marxist analyses of the self-contradictory nature of capitalism; the expansion is all the more significant because it has come along with conservative policies, the rejuvenation of the market, and all that. It is easy for one to react, as much of the public has, to these recent developments with the conclusion that socialism and Marxism are dead and that capitalism will be increasingly triumphant. These objective factors have a counterpart in intellectual life. Among left academics during the 1980s, there has been increasingly important opposition to Marxism. While at times this opposition keeps the name of Marxism, the rejection of basic propositions of Marxism (even most liberally defined) is so thorough as to make the rubric meaningless. Sometimes this inteilectual development goes under the title of 'post-Marxist analysis' and at other times its adherents call themselves 'analytic Marxists.' What is important, I think, is to recognize that the people who make up this movement are leftists; this is not just a new variant of rightist attacks or a renewal of 'the god that failed' movement. Yet there are those of us who continue to identify ourselves as socialists and as Marxists. -
A Feasible Socialism? *
A FEASIBLE SOCIALISM? * Roland Lew Is socialism a contemporary issue? Judging by what one reads in the news- papers, by the general climate of opinion and by the heavy spread by the media, the answer would appear to be 'no'. People certainly talk about socialism, but only in order to denounce or discredit it. 'Authentic social- ism' is a dangerous utopia or at best an illusion. 'Actually existing socialism' is a nightmare. The recent experience of socialist governments in Western Europe, proves that socialism is a sham, since they cannot or will not avoid adopting a harsh economic liberalism. Yet here we have one of the leading figures in Soviet studies proposing a 'feasible socialism'. A writer who specialises in the economics of the USSR and the Eastern bloc and who has never been noted for his support for socialism now puts forward his own version of socialism. One's first impression-though, given the present anti-socialist climate, perhaps it is merely a hope-is that the author is coming to the aid of at least a certain socialism. The favourable comments made by Perry Anderson in his latest book tend to strengthen that impression: 'In a work of luminous freshness and clarity, common sense and good humour, analytic logic and empirical detail, Nove has put to rest a century of unexamined preconceptions and illusions about what might be on the other side of capital, and awoken us to our first real vision of what a socialist economy, under democratic control, might look like." On a second reading, one begins to have doubts. -
Real Socialism" in Historical Perspective
"REAL SOCIALISM" IN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE Robert W. Cox "It is not the business of the historian to award prizes for virtue, to propose the erection of statues, or to establish any catechism whatever: his business is to under- stand what is least individual in the course of events. ." Georges Sorel, Reflections on Violence (1906) The death of socialism is affirmed everywhere today as a matter of common knowledge, from yesterday's newspaper to the neo- Hegelian "end of history" proclaimed by Francis Fukuyama, ' and the neo-Burkian reflections on revolution in Eastern Europe by Ralf Dahrendorf.' The events of Eastern Europe are read as the definitive seal of closure upon something much broader than the regimes of "real socialism". They signal the end of an historical project that had its origins in the response of nineteenth-century industrial society to the disintegrating impact of capitalism. Or so it would seem. Those who retain socialist convictions must treat the proclamation seriously, even in offering Mark Twain's rejoinder that it is greatly exaggerated. Two lines of argument are weak responses. One is that Soviet (or by extension, Chinese, or Cuban or. .) socialism was never true socialism. It was from the beginning, or from some later stage, a deformation, a perversion, of the true thing. Like Christianity, socialism has never been tried. The other weak rejoinder is that the failure of socialism was the fault of evil men - Stalin in the first place and secondarily of a corrupted nomenklatura. A corollary of these arguments is the fragmentation of socialism into a multitude of quarrelling groups, each convinced of its possession of the "truth" of socialism. -
King's Research Portal
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by King's Research Portal King’s Research Portal Document Version Peer reviewed version Link to publication record in King's Research Portal Citation for published version (APA): Hutton, A. N. (2016). Literature, Criticism, and Politics in the Early New Left, 1956–62. Twentieth Century British History, 27(1), 51-75. Citing this paper Please note that where the full-text provided on King's Research Portal is the Author Accepted Manuscript or Post-Print version this may differ from the final Published version. If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections. General rights Copyright and moral rights for the publications made accessible in the Research Portal are retained by the authors and/or other copyright owners and it is a condition of accessing publications that users recognize and abide by the legal requirements associated with these rights. •Users may download and print one copy of any publication from the Research Portal for the purpose of private study or research. •You may not further distribute the material or use it for any profit-making activity or commercial gain •You may freely distribute the URL identifying the publication in the Research Portal Take down policy If you believe that this document breaches copyright please contact [email protected] providing details, and we will remove access to the work immediately and investigate your claim. -
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'THE LEFT IN BRITAIN': A REPLY by David Widgery The quote which prefaces The Left in Britain 1956-68, so scathingly reviewed by Ken Coates in last year's Socialist ~e~z'ster,'was the key to my intention. It is William Morris's prophetic remark, 'Men fight and lose that battle, and then the thing they fought for comes about in spite of their defeat, and when it comes, turns out not what they meant and other men have to fight for what they meant under another name.' It was an attempt to trace backward some of those battles, some of those defeats and some inadvertent victories, undertaken in the hope it might illuminate the present dilemmas of the Left. But if I have learnt any lesson from history, it is Don't Write It, especially about the recent past of the Left. First of all socialists in the full flush of the present just aren't interested; 1968 is old hat and '56 the Dark Ages. The new generations of the converted are, justifiably, more interested in the Commune than Grosvenor Square. And those who have first hand experience are, again justifiably, infuriated by newcomers tampering with their memories. Those socialist stayers of the generation of '56, who stood up against Stalinism when it was still intact, a world- wide, marble-faced orthodoxy, no doubt feel ill-tempered at us little squirts, parrotting our post-Trotskyist cliches to the manner born, but with our knowledge safely out of books, spared the doubts and dangers, presuming to draw the lessons. -
In Spite of History? New Leftism in Britain 1956 - 1979
In Spite of History? New Leftism in Britain 1956 - 1979 Thomas Marriott Dowling Thesis Presented for the Degree of PhD Department of History University of Sheffield August 2015 ii iii Contents Title page p. i Contents p. iii Abstract p. vi Introduction p. 1 On the Trail of the New Left p. 5 Rethinking New Leftism p. 12 Methodology and Structure p. 18 Chapter One Left Over? The Lost World of British New Leftism p. 24 ‘A Mood rather than a Movement’ p. 30 A Permanent Aspiration p. 33 The Antinomies of British New Leftism p. 36 Between Aspiration and Actuality p. 39 The Aetiology of British New Leftism p. 41 Being Communist p. 44 Reasoning Rebellion p. 51 Universities and Left Review p. 55 Forging a Movement p. 58 CND p. 63 Conclusion p. 67 iv Chapter Two Sound and Fury? New Leftism and the British ‘Cultural Revolt’ of the 1950s p. 69 British New Leftism’s ‘Moment of Culture’? p. 76 Principles behind New Leftism’s Cultural Turn p. 78 A British Cultural Revolt? p. 87 A New Left Culture? p. 91 Signifying Nothing? p. 96 Conclusion p. 99 Chapter Three Laureate of New Leftism? Dennis Potter’s ‘Sense of Vocation’ p. 102 A New Left ‘Mood’ p. 108 The Glittering Coffin p. 113 A New Left Politician p. 116 The Uses of Television p. 119 History and Sovereignty p. 127 Common Culture and ‘Occupying Powers’ p. 129 Conclusion p. 133 Chapter Four Imagined Revolutionaries? The Politics and Postures of 1968 p. 135 A Break in the New Left? p. -
The Nature of Environment: the Dialectics of Social and Environmental Change*
THE NATURE OF ENVIRONMENT: THE DIALECTICS OF SOCIAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL CHANGE* David Harvey I Prologue Around 'Earthday' 1970, I recall reading a special issue of the business journal Fortune on the environment. It celebrated the rise of the environ- mental issue as a 'non-class issue' and President Nixon, in an invited editorial, opined that future generations would judge us entirely by the quality of environment they inherited. On 'Earthday' itself, I attended a campus rally in Baltimore and heard several rousing speeches, mostly by middle class white radicals, attacking the lack of concern for the qualities of the air we breathed, the water we drank, the food we consumed and lamenting the materialist and consumerist approach to the world which was producing all manner of resource depletion and environmental degra- dation. The following day I went to the Left Bank Jazz club, a popular spot frequented by African-American families in Baltimore. The musicians interspersed their music with interactive commentary over the deteriorat- ing state of the environment. They talked about lack of jobs, poor housing, racial discrimination, crumbling cities, culminating in the claim, which sent the whole place into paroxysms of cheering, that their main environ- mental problem was President Richard Nixon. What struck me at the time, and what continues to strike me, is that the 'environmental issue' necessarily means such different things to different people, that in aggregate it encompasses quite literally everything there is. Business leaders worry about the political and legal environment, politi- cians worry about the economic environment, city dwellers worry about "This text was first presented in embryo at the Havens Center in the University of Wisconsin and as Ida Beam Visiting Fellow in the University of Iowa in March, 1991. -
One Has to Put up with the Crude English Method of Development, of Course."—Marx on Darwin
THE PECULIARITIES OF THE ENGLISH E. P. Thompson "One has to put up with the crude English method of development, of course."—Marx on Darwin. I IN the last year or two, an ambitious work of analysis of British history and social structure has been set in train by Perry Anderson and Tom Nairn in New Left Review.1 This work also bears, though mainly by implication, on some major aspects of Marxist theory and analysis. The present essay is concerned to discuss some of the issues and themes which the two authors raise. These articles, taken together, represent a sustained attempt to develop a coherent historical account of British society. Undoubtedly the seminal article is Anderson's Origins of the Present Crisis. But, if Nairn's work is less inspired, nevertheless both writers clearly inhabit the same mental universe. Both feel themselves to be exiles from an "English ideology" which "in its drooling old age . gives rise to a kind of twilight, where 'empiricism' has become myopia and 'liberalism' a sort of blinking uncertainty."2 Nairn extends the indictment: "English separateness and provincialism; English backwardness and traditionalism; English religiosity and moralistic vapouring; paltry English 'empiricism,' or instinctive distrust of reason... ."3 There is "the nullity of native intellectual traditions," the "secular, insular stultification" of British culture, "the impenetrable blanket of complacency" of British social life, "the stony recesses of British trade union conservatism," and "the centuries of stale constipation and sedimentary