Seeing Through the Eyes of the Polish Revolution

Critical Education

SEEING THROUGH THE EYES OF THE POLISH REVOLUTION

New in Paperback from Haymarket

Seeing Through the Eyes of the Polish Revolution: Solidarity and the Struggle Against Communism in Poland

HM series Marxism & Socialism World History

BY JACK M. BLOOM

In 1980 Polish workers astonished the world by demanding and winning an independent union with the right to strike, called Solidarity–the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire. Jack M. Bloom’s Seeing Through the Eyes of the Polish Revolution explains how it happened based on 150 interviews of Solidarity leaders, activists, supporters and opponents. Bloom’s invaluable and insightful study shows how an opposition was built, documents the battle between Solidarity and the ruling party, outlines the conflicts that emerged within each side during this tense period, explains how Solidarity survived the imposition of martial law, and how the opposition forced the Stalinist government to negotiate itself out of power.

About the author

Jack Bloom is Associate Professor of Sociology and Adjunct Associate Professor of Minority Studies and of History at Indiana University Northwest. He has published the award-winning Class, Race and the Civil Rights Movement (Indiana University Press, 1987).

See: http://www.haymarketbooks.org/pb/Seeing-Through-the-Eyes-of-the-Polish-Revolution

First published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/new-in-paperback-from-haymarket-seeing-through-the-eyes-of-the-polish-revolution-solidarity-and-the-struggle-against-communism-in-poland-by-jack-m.-bloom

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‘Human Herbs’ – a song by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

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The Daniel Singer Prize

Daniel Singer

THE DANIEL SINGER PRIZE

Daniel Singer believed in people taking control of their own lives and forging truly democratic institutions to introduce social and economic justice. He experienced the May–June 1968 explosion in France and the uprisings against oppressive regimes in Eastern Europe, writing “Prelude to Revolution” and the “Road to Gdansk” to chronicle the possibility of genuine popular revolution. A critic of Western capitalism and Eastern Stalinism, his analyses were based on deep knowledge, a biting sarcasm, and a thorough dislike of banal rhetoric. His final work “Whose Millennium: Theirs or Ours” combined his inspiring hopes with an astonishing ability to dissect the workings of power.

The Daniel Singer Foundation is seeking an original essay of no more than 5000 words to address some aspect of the current scene in the spirit that Singer exemplified. The winning essay will receive a prize of $2,500, and may be submitted in English, Spanish or French.

The essays will be judged by an international panel of distinguished scholars and activists, and the winner will be announced in December 2013.

Essays can be sent either by post or e-mail (preferred) to: The Daniel Singer Millennium Prize Foundation, PO Box 2371, El Cerrito, CA 94530 USA; danielsingerfdn@gmail.com. Submissions must be received by August 31, 2013.

First published in http://www.historicalmaterialism.org/news/distributed/daniel-singer-essay-prize-2013

 

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Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Stagnant’ at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GLjxeHvvhJQ (live, at the Belle View pub, Bangor, north Wales); and at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YkP_Mi5ideo (new remix, and new video, 2012)  

‘Cheerful Sin’ – a song by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tIbX5aKUjO8

 

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Yehoshua Yakhot – ‘The Suppression of Philosophy in the USSR (The 1920s & 1930s)’

Yehoshua Yakhot

YEHOSHUA YAKHOT – ‘THE SUPPRESSION OF PHILOSOPHY IN THE USSR (THE 1920s & 1930s)’

New from Mehring Books
Yakhot’s history of early Soviet philosophy
19 June 2012
See: http://wsws.org/tools/index.php?page=print&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwsws.org%2Farticles%2F2012%2Fjun2012%2Fmehr-j19.shtml

Mehring Books is proud to announce the publication of Yehoshua Yakhot’s The Suppression of Philosophy in the USSR (The 1920s & 1930s). Originally published in Russian in 1981, this unique history of early Soviet philosophy is now available for the first time in English, translated by Frederick Choate.

Yehoshua Yakhot (1919-2003) was a professor of philosophy in the Soviet Union until forced to emigrate to Israel in 1975. While in emigration, he finished writing the book begun in Moscow years before.

Yakhot’s book is essential reading for an understanding of the counter-revolutionary role of Stalinism and its devastating impact on every aspect of Soviet thought. Rare among works dealing with this period, Yakhot presents an objective account of the theoretical role of the major figures in the early Soviet Union – including, most significantly, that of Leon Trotsky, co-leader with Lenin of the Russian Revolution of October 1917.

The book describes the flourishing of philosophical discussion after the revolution and ensuing Civil War. By 1922, the major theoretical journal Under the Banner of Marxism had been founded at Trotsky’s urging. The first two issues contained letters from Trotsky and Lenin that constituted the program of the journal.

By the mid-1920s, two contending camps had formed in philosophy: the mechanists and dialecticians. The relatively free debate between them on many complex issues was followed by Stalin’s intervention in December 1930. In a ferocious reaction against the theoretical foundations of the October Revolution, Stalin sent countless genuine Marxists to their deaths during the Great Terror of 1936-1938.

Prior to the opening of the archives in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Yakhot presents the largely unknown history of many of the Marxist philosophers victimized by Stalinism.

The subjects covered in the book include: the subject matter of Marxist philosophy; the problem of contingency; the principle of partisanship in philosophy; Hegel and Marxist dialectics; Spinoza’s place in the discussions of the 1920s and 1930s; the rejection of ideology by Marx and Engels; the influence of Bogdanov’s ideas; the inevitable crisis of Soviet ideology; and continued attempts to conceal the crimes of Stalinism in the USSR.

This new English edition contains photographs, biographical information, an index and two letters by Trotsky and Lenin.

To order your advance copy, click here: http://mehring.com/index.php/the-suppression-of-philosophy-in-the-ussr-1920s-and-1930s.html

 

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‘Human Herbs’ – a new remix and new video by Cold Hands & Quarter Moon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Au-vyMtfDAs

‘The Lamb’ by William Blake – set to music by Victor Rikowski: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vw3VloKBvZc

 

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Revolution and Counter-Revolution in Europe – by Pierre Frank

Revolution

REVOLUTION AND COUNTER-REVOLUTION IN EUROPE – BY PIERRE FRANK

 IIRE publishes Pierre Frank’s “Revolution & Counter-revolution in Europe”

Between 1918 and 1968, the forces of revolution and counter-revolution fought a ceaseless battle over Europe’s history. This new issue of the Notebooks for Study and Research, “Revolution & Counter-revolution in Europe” shows how the Moscow-led communist parties led the revolutionary movements to disaster In Germany, Spain, France and elsewhere. The 282 page book is available for 10 euros from the International Institute for Research and Education at: http://bit.ly/PFrank

In the decades after the Second World War, democracy was regularly threatened by right-wing movements which aimed to dramatically constrict democratic rights. This ‘Bonapartism’ continually threatened democracy in France until the 1968 worker- and student-revolt destroyed the foundations of Gaullism. In this book a participant and political leader within the revolutionary movement gives his perspectives on those struggles.

A biographical note by Ernest Mandel, which introduces this volume, explains how over six decades in the workers movement Pierre Frank became perhaps the best-known anti-Stalinist revolutionary in France. He was one of the first to be arrested during the crisis of 1968, when the French section of the Fourth International was banned.

Frank was secretary to Leon Trotsky in the 1930s, a central leader of the Fourth International from the 1940s and, until his death in 1984, editor of its French-language theoretical journal, Quatrième Internationale. His best-known books are “The Long March of the Trotskyists”, also published by the IIRE, and “Histoire de l’Internationale Communiste”, a chapter of which has been specially translated for this volume.

Frank played a special role in the establishment of the IIRE. His substantial collection of books was bequeathed to the IIRE and it remains the largest single collection in the Institute’s library.

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Revolutionary Voices: Marxism, Communication, and Social Change

Revolution

REVOLUTIONARY VOICES: MARXISM, COMMUNICATION, AND SOCIAL CHANGE

National Communication Association (NCA) Preconvention Seminar
“Revolutionary Voices: Marxism, Communication, and Social Change”
10:30 am-5:00 PM, Wednesday, November 16th.
New Orleans, LA

In the wake of the Soviet Union’s collapse, and the subsequent worldwide retreat of the communist and socialist Left, the very concept of “revolution” was deemed by many theorists to be outdated and passé. Liberal, poststructuralist and conservative intellectuals jointly proclaimed Marxist project -with its emphasis on class struggle, anti-imperialism and a totalizing critique of capitalism– no longer relevant to an understanding of our “postmodern” world. Today, with the popular uprisings associated with the “Arab Spring” roiling dictatorships in countries like Egypt, Tunisia, Syria and Yemen and with the global capitalist economy just barely emerging from the throes of its worst crisis since the Great Depression, Marxism is not so easily dismissed. The recent popularity of thinkers like Giovanni Arrighi, Alain Badiou, Antonio Negri, David Harvey and Slavoj Zizek suggests a renewal of scholarly interest in Marxist and post-Marxist theory. The fact that Karl Marx himself was featured on the cover of the February 2, 2009 TIME Magazine suggests that this revival of interest is not confined to the academy.

This pre-convention conference aims to explore the continued relevance of Marxism and Marxist theoretical concepts (i.e. ideology, hegemony, class, dialectics, reification, commodification ) to the study of communication, focusing on communication’s instrumental role in maintaining, perpetuating and contesting capitalism’s structures of domination. Unlike other theoretical orientations within the social sciences and the humanities, Marxism has long insisted that theory be informed by and inform social and political praxis. Thus, one special emphasis of our discussions will be on the way that Marxist work in field of communication can help to advance and clarify current struggles for progressive social change in the US and around the world. Moreover, at a time when even the mainstream corporate press speaks openly of the revolutionary currents spreading across North Africa and the Middle East, we will devote special attention to the concept of “revolution” and the way that it can refine and enhance our understanding of communication, political conflict and social change.

We hope that by bringing together a critical mass of scholars whose work is informed by Marxist theory, our seminar will “make a difference” both in our discipline and in the larger fight for social justice. Ultimately, we plan to publish an edited volume or a special issue of an academic journal as a way of bringing the scholarship produced by seminar participants to an even larger audience.

This mini-conference builds on a series of NCA panels, pre-conference seminars and publications about Marxism and communication that began with a well-attended panel at the 2003 NCA convention in Miami. Last year’s mini-conference “Bridging Theory and Practice” drew dozens of participants to a series of three inter-related panels at the national conference in San Francisco. The year before that, in Chicago, our panel “The 2009 Crisis of Neoliberalism: Marxist Scholars on Rhetorics of Stability and Change,” drew a standing-room-only crowd. And in 2006, three of the co-organizers of this seminar (Artz, Cloud and Macek) published an anthology — Marxism and Communication Studies: The Point is to Change It (Peter Lang)-composed almost entirely of conference papers delivered at our NCA panels and seminars. This seems to us an opportune moment for yet another pre-convention seminar and yet another publication devoted to this topic.

The organizers invite potential participants to submit complete papers or extended abstracts (350-500 words) relevant to the subject of Marxism, communication and social change for inclusion in this pre-convention seminar. Work in political economy of the media, cultural studies, rhetoric, critical theory, social movement studies and political communication is especially welcome. Send your submissions along with complete contact information (mailing address, e-mail and phone #) to both Steve Macek (at shmacek@noctrl.edu) and Dana Cloud (at dcloud@mail.utexas.edu) no later than August 8th, 2011.

Steve Macek
Associate Professor
Speech Communication
Program Coordinator, Urban and Suburban Studies
North Central College
30 N. Brainard
Naperville, IL 60540-4690
Phone: 630-637-5369
Fax: 630-637-5140
Webpage: http://shmacek.faculty.noctrl.edu/

Out now from U of MN Press:
Urban Nightmares: The Media, the Right, and the Moral Panic over the City. Winner of the 2006 Urban Communication Foundation Publication Award.
ISBN: ISBN 0-8166-4361-X
http://www.upress.umn.edu/Books/M/macek_urban.html

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In the Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary

 

Imperialism

IN THE CROSSFIRE: ADVENTURES OF A VIETNAMESE REVOLUTIONARY

This is to invite you to a
BOOK LAUNCH/TALK

In The Crossfire: Adventures of a Vietnamese Revolutionary

By Ngo Van

Wednesday 8 June, 7.0pm

Housmans Bookshop, 5 Caledonian Road, London, N1 9DX (2 mins walk from Kings Cross station)

Cost: £3, redeemable against any purchase

Ngo Van joined the struggle against the French colonial regime in Vietnam as a teenager in the 1920s, suffering imprisonment and hardship. But when revolution swept Vietnam at the end of the Second World War, the Stalinists of the Vietnamese Communist Party took control and tried physically to eliminate other socialists and anti-colonialists. Van escaped this massacre, in which many of his comrades were murdered. From 1948 he lived in exile in Paris, where he took a factory job and participated in workers’ movements before, during and after the 1968 general strike.

Van, who died in 2005, wrote extensively about Vietnamese worker and peasant resistance, both to French colonialism and to Ho Chi Minh’s brand of Stalinism, helping to hand that history on to later generations.

In The Crossfire, published by AK Press, is the English edition of Ngo Van’s autobiography. Hilary Horrocks, one of the book’s translators, will talk about this unique eye-witness account of a little-known aspect of the anti-colonial struggle, and read from Van’s vivid story of secret meetings, arrests, torture, battles and insurrection. Simon Pirani, who researched the history of Vietnamese Trotskyism and edited some of Van’s earlier English-language publications, will also speak. There will be plenty of time for questions and discussion from all.

Enquiries 07947 031268, Housmans 020 7837 4473, shop@housmans.com

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Debating ‘Black Flame’

The Man in Black

DEBATING ‘BLACK FLAME’

NEW: Lucien van der Walt, “Counterpower, participatory democracy, revolutionary defence: debating ‘Black Flame,’ revolutionary anarchism and historical Marxism”

Lucien van der Walt, 2011, “Counterpower, Participatory Democracy, Revolutionary Defence: debating ‘Black Flame,’ revolutionary anarchism and historical Marxism,” ‘International Socialism: a quarterly journal of socialist theory’, no. 130 (2011), pp. 193-207, online at: http://www.isj.org.uk/index.php4?id=729&issue=130

This article is, in part, a response to criticisms of the broad anarchist tradition in ‘International Socialism’ (ISJ), an International Socialist Tendency (IST) journal. However, it is also an examination of issues like the use of sources in Marxist/ anarchist debates, the historical/ current impact of anarchism/ syndicalism, anarchism and the question of defending revolutions, revolutions and pluralism, anarchism and political struggles and bodies, the Spanish anarchists’ debates on taking power, anarchism’s relationship to democracy, the historical role of Marxism, the role of Bolshevism in the fate of the Russian Revolution, Lenin and Stalin, and the tasks of the 21st century left.

EXTENDED version:
Lucien van der Walt, 7 April 2011, “Detailed reply to ‘International Socialism’: debating power and revolution in anarchism, ‘Black Flame’ and historical Marxism,” 62 pp., online at
http://lucienvanderwalt.blogspot.com/2011/02/anarchism-black-flame-marxism-and-ist.html

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SOTS-SPEAK: Regimes of Language Under Socialism

Socialism and Hope

SOTS-SPEAK: REGIMES OF LANGUAGE UNDER SOCIALISM

From: Serguei A. Oushakine

[mailto:oushakin@princeton.edu] 

Conference Program

Sots-Speak: Regimes of Language under Socialism
May 20-22, 2011
219 Aaron Burr Hall
Princeton University
Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures

Friday, May 20

12.30     Welcome Address

12.45 – 2.45         Panel 1:   Linguistic Anatomies

Konstantin Bogdanov [Russian Academy of  Sciences, St. Petersburg] — “Soviet Language Culture in the Light of Ethnolinguistics”
Anastasia Smirnova [Ohio State U] — “Aligning Language to Ideology: A Socio-Semantic Analysis of Communist and Democratic Discourse in Bulgaria”
Calin Morar Vulcu [Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj] — “From Subject to Object of Description: Classes in Romanian State-Socialist Discourse”

Chair: Olga Hasty [Princeton U]
Discussant: Mirjam Fried [Czech Academy of Sciences]

3.00 – 5.15           Panel 2: Making Things with Words 

Choi Chatterjee [California State U, Los Angeles] — “Lady in Red: Bolshevik Feminism in the American Imagination, 1917-1939”
Samantha Sherry [U of Edinburgh] — “‘Bird Watchers of the World, Unite!’ The Language of Ideology in Soviet Translation”
Jessie Labov [Ohio State U] — “The Puzzle of the Yugoslav Nationalist/ Dissident from Helsinki to Dayton”
Alyssa DeBlasio [Dickinson College] — “Philosophical Rhetoric and Istoriia russkoi filosofii”
Chair: David Bellos [Princeton U]
Discussant: Irena Grudzinska Gross [Princeton U]

5.30 – 6.45    Keynote address: Jochen Hellbeck (Rutgers U), “The Language of Soviet Experience and Its Meanings” 

7.00        Reception    

Saturday, May 21

9.00 – 11.00   Panel 3:   Speaking Stalinese

Carol AnyTrinity College] — “Public and Private Speech Genres in the Soviet Writers’ Union under Stalin”
Ilya Venyavkin [Russian State University for the Humanities] — “Mystical Insight under Socialism: The Language of Political Confessions in the late 1930-s”
Anastasia Ryabchuk [National U of Kyiv Mohyla Academy] — “Parasites, Asocials, and Work-Shy: Discursive Construction of Homelessness and Vagrancy in the USSR”
Chair: Petre Petrov [Princeton U]
Discussant: Jochen Hellbeck [Rutgers U]

11.15 – 1.15  Panel 4:   Figures of Rhetoric

Elena Gapova [Western Michigan U / European Humanities U] — “The Party Solemnly Proclaims: the Present Generation of Soviet People Shall Live in Communism”: The Rhetoric of Utopia in Krushchev Era”
Karen Petrone [U of Kentucky] — “Afghanistan and the New Discourse of War in the Late Soviet Era”
Yulia Minkova [Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State] — “Our Man in Chile, or Victor Jara’s Posthumous Life in Soviet Media and Popular Culture”
Chair: Ellen Chances [Princeton U]
Discussant: Eliot Borenstein [New York U]

Lunch

2.30 – 4.45    Panel 5:   On the Literary Front

Maria Kisel [Lawrence U] — “Satirical and Philosophical Dimensions of Sots-speak in Andrei Platonov’s Fiction”
Natalia Skradol [Hebrew U / Ben Gurion University of the Negev] — “The Evolution of the Soviet Bestiary: Satirical Fables from Bednyi to Mikhalkov”
Eva Cermanova [U of Aberdeen] — “The Diktat of Language: Bureaucratic Paranoia in Havel’s Memorandum”
Baktyul Aliev [McGill U] — “Visuality in V. Narbikova’s Okolo ekolo”
Chair: Emily Van Buskirk [Rutgers U]
Discussant: Helena Goscilo (Ohio State U)

5.00 – 6.15    Media Presentation: Vitaly Komar, “Word and Image: The Duality of Sots-Art”

6.30     Dinner [Prospect House]

Sunday, May 22

9.00 – 11.15   Panel 6: Practices of Language

Jonathan Larson [U of Iowa] — “Sentimental Kritika: Hazardous Dialectics and Deictics in Socialist Criticism”
James RobertsonNew York U] — “Speaking Titoism: Non-Alignment and the Language Regime of Yugoslav Socialism”
Suzanne Cohen [Temple U] — “In and Out of Frame: The Soviet Training as Sots-Speak”
Julia Lerner and Claudia Zbenovich [Ben Gurion University of the Negev / Hadassah College of Jerusalem] —  “Talk and Dress: Adapting the Therapeutic Paradigm to Post-Soviet Speak”
Chair: Margaret Beissinger [Princeton U]
Discussant: Anna Katsnelson [Princeton U]

11.30 – 1.30    Panel 7: Discursive Remnants

Maria Rives [Yale U] — “Authoritative Discourse in Post-Authoritarian Russia”
Lara Ryazanova-Clarke [U of Edinburgh] — “Stalinism as an Auteur Project: Meta Sots-Speak in Contemporary Russian Public Discourse”
Gasan Gusejnov [Moscow State U] — “On the Vitality of Artificial, or Stalin’s Rhetoric Revisited”
Chair: Rossen Djagalov [Yale U]
Discussant: Caryl Emerson [Princeton U]

The Kremlinaires, the best in Soviet swing: http://www.kremlinaires.com/

—END—

‘I believe in the afterlife.

It starts tomorrow,

When I go to work’

Cold Hands & Quarter Moon, ‘Human Herbs’ at: http://www.myspace.com/coldhandsmusic (recording) and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h7tUq0HjIk (live)

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Reform Communism

Karl Marx

REFORM COMMUNISM

Call for Papers:

One-day seminar/workshop on: “Reform communism” since 1945 in comparative historical perspective.

Saturday 22 October 2011.

Organised by UEA School of History in conjunction with the journal Socialist History
Venue: School of History, University of East Anglia, Norwich, NR4 7TJ.

The collapse of the USSR and the Eastern bloc in the wake of Gorbachev’s perestroika seemed to show that communism was essentially unreformable. It could be preserved, dismantled, or overthrown, but it could not be reconstructed as a viable alternative to capitalism, free from the defects of its Leninist-Stalinist prototype.

Prior to 1989-91, however, reform communism was a live political issue in many countries. At different times in countries as diverse as Yugoslavia, the USSR, Czechoslovakia, Western Europe, Japan, and China, the leaderships of communist parties themselves sought to change direction, re-evaluate their own past, correct mistakes and so on with the aim of cleansing, strengthening and improving communism, rather than undermining or dismantling it. In countries ruled by communist parties this process usually involved political relaxation and an easing of repression, and was often accompanied by an upsurge of intellectual and cultural ferment.

The aim of this seminar is to consider reform communism as a distinct phenomenon, which can usefully be distinguished from, on the one hand, mere changes of line or leader without any engagement with a party’s own past and the assumptions which underpinned it, and on the other, dissenting and oppositional activity within and outside parties which failed to change the party’s direction.

This seminar will explore different experiences of reform communism around the world after 1945 in a comparative context. 

Examples might include:
·        Tito and Titoism
·        Khrushchev and “de-Stalinisation”
·        Kadarism and the “Hungarian model”
·        Eurocommunism and ideas of socialist democracy
·        The Prague Spring
·        The Deng Xiaoping reforms in China
·        Gorbachev’s perestroika

We are seeking papers of 5000 to 10000 words on various experiences or aspects of reform communism in history, to be presented at the seminar. Selected papers will be published in 2012 in a special issue of Socialist History (http://www.socialist-history-journal.org.uk) devoted to the subject.

Proposals for papers should be submitted by 1 July 2011 to Francis King (f.king@uea.ac.uk) and Matthias Neumann (m.neumann@uea.ac.uk) at School of History, UEA, Norwich NR4 7TJ.

Attendance at the seminar is free of charge, but space is limited. Please e-mail us if you are interested in attending.

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Chinese Revolution

The Future Present

Utopia

THE FUTURE PRESENT

 

Critical Marxist Review of Class and Society

145-157 St John Street, London EC1V 4PY, United Kingdom

Email: editortfp@aol.com

Dear Friends and Comrades,

I am writing to you with regard to a new project I have undertaken to appeal for help.

The Future Present is a critical Marxist journal will be launched shortly.  Though published in London, England The Future Present is being published in close cooperation with comrades from as far apart as Ukraine, Russia, Bosnia and Scotland.  We are pleased to have the extensive participation of Marxists from Ukraine, and also other countries of the former USSR and Yugoslavia and future issues we will  give voice to the discussions and debates of these comrades who are struggling to overcome the legacy of Stalinism.

In the pilot issue of The Future Present we publish for the first time in English a range of articles both contemporary and historical. These address a number of questions of fundamental importance.  The includes reclaiming communism for today, the national question and possibility of a global revolutionary strategy in the 21st century.

In the pilot issue is published an exclusive translation of the essay by the Russian Marxist theorist Aleksandr Tarasov World Revolution 2.  This is accompanied by a range of articles on the question of communism and the national question with publication for the first time in English of articles by Lev Yurkevych and his polemics with Lenin from 1914 and 1917.  

In forthcoming issues we shall continue this work with including an examination of the problem of counter revolution arising from within the revolution itself.  Work has already begun on new translations of rare texts by Volodymyr Vynnychenko, The Revolution in Danger (1920) and Bolshevist Bonapartism by Ivan Maistrenko (1948).  It is hoped also to include English translations of the documents of the opposition Democratic Centralist faction in the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks). 

HELP!

The Future Present is an initiative which depends entirely on its readers and supporters.  It is in serious need of funds to ensure the new initiative gets going and can sustain itself.  Please show your solidarity with The Future Present by making a donation, no matter how small it can help a great deal with this new journal of critical Marxism and contributing towards a new emancipatory communism for the 21st century. 

A cheque can be made to The Future Present at the above address or for transfers account details can be supplied on request.  Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

Yours in solidarity

Chris Ford

Editor

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New Interventions – Volume 13 Number 3

Socialism and Hope

NEW INTERVENTIONS – VOLUME 13 NUMBER 3

New Interventions

New Interventions is a socialist magazine, independent of any party and of any left group. Our aim is to provide an open forum for all shades of radical left opinion. We believe that dialogue and discussion are particularly important at this time because of the collapse of the Soviet Union and official communist parties throughout the world, the increasing moves to the right of social democratic parties, and the sectarianism and bureaucratic centralism of left groups.

The latest issue of New Interventions (Volume 13, no 3) is now available.

Contents:

* Mike Belbin, Gone For a Soldier: The Saville Inquiry into Bloody Sunday

* Mike Jones, The British People Decide: But What?: The Con-Lib coalition and the Labour leadership competition

* Pat Byrne, A New Approach to Europe: How the left should deal with Europe

* Tikva Honig-Parnass, The Limitations of Post-Zionism: Disregarding the Palestinian national question

* Carré Rouge, Thinking About Communism: The relevance of communism in the twenty-first century

* Harry Ratner, Comments on ‘Thinking About Communism’: How might the left approach today’s problems?

* JJ Plant, Francisco Ferrer (1859-1909): Remembering the revolutionary educator

* Paul Flewers, Hitched On His Own Petard: Christopher Hitchens gets it wrong about Animal Farm

* Tawney’s Wit and Wisdom: Some political quips from Richard Henry Tawney

* Chris Gray, Second Glance: Looking at Robert Paxton’s analysis of fascism

* Graham Milner, Rudyard Kipling and British Imperialism: Assessing one of Britain’s major poets

* Reviews — The Invention of the Jewish People

* Letters — Stalinism and Revolution; Yugoslavia

Copies £2.00 plus p+p from Dave Spencer at: drdavidspencer@talktalk.net

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Critique Conference: Stalinism and Its Destructive Legacy

CRITIQUE CONFERENCE: STALINISM AND ITS DESTRUCTIVE LEGACY

Critique: Journal of Socialist History

SATURDAY, 26 FEBRUARY 2011

9am-5pm, rm. H216, Connaught Housese, London School of Economics, Houghton St., Holborn tube

What is Stalinism?

Was capitalism stabilised by the end of Stalinism and the Cold War?

Why is it so difficult to defeat Stalinism?

 

Critique Conference: http://www.critiquejournal.net/conf2007.html

Posted here by Glenn Rikowski

The Flow of Ideas: http://www.flowideas.co.uk

MySpace Profile: http://www.myspace.com/glennrikowski

The Ockress: http://www.theockress.com

Wavering on Ether: http://blog.myspace.com/glennrikowski

Rikowski Point: http://rikowskipoint.blogspot.com