On party democracy
It really needs to be said that the first things to be forgotten are just the first points, the most elementary things… The first point is that there do in fact exist rulers and ruled, leaders and led… In the… Continue Reading
Author: ISJ
Rupture and revolt in Iran
The fallout from the presidential election on 12 June 2009 precipitated the biggest political crisis in Iran since the 1979 Revolution. The official results gave the incumbent president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, 63 percent of votes, compared to 34 percent for his… Continue Reading
Pinning the blame on the system
This is the first in a series of responses to Chris Harman’s latest book, Zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx. When Chris Harman began work on Zombie Capitalism in late 2006 his goal was to criticise what… Continue Reading
End of the liberal dream: Hungary since 1989
This year marks the twentieth anniversary of the political revolutions that shook Central and Eastern Europe.1 The authoritarian one-party regimes that had dominated societies in Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland and Romania since the late 1940s disintegrated almost overnight,… Continue Reading
A short autumn of utopia: The East German revolution of 1989
Readers of this journal are unlikely to be participating in the twentieth anniversary celebrations of the “transition to capitalism” in Central and Eastern Europe and it’s easy to see why.1 The expansion of Nato shows that its supposedly defensive purpose—to… Continue Reading
Timeline
1980 August: Polish strikes give birth to Solidarność workers’ movement and paralyse regime for 16 months. 1981 December: Military rule and arrests smash Polish workers’ movement. 1985 Mikhail Gorbachev becomes leader of the Soviet Union. 1986 May: At the Soviet… Continue Reading
Die Linke and the crisis of class representation
The European radical left is characterised by its lack of synchronicity.1 We can see decline, regroupment and regeneration happening almost simultaneously, and so far no role model for a successful left has emerged.2 The fate of the left in Italy,… Continue Reading
Interview: Will the sparks flare up?
Charlie Kimber and Michael Bradley organise the Socialist Workers Party’s (SWP) industrial work. They spoke to International Socialism about recent developments in the class struggle in Britain Charlie wrote an analysis in this journal six months ago of what was… Continue Reading
Left behind?
The derisory message of a four-page piece by journalist Andy Beckett in the Guardian’s G2 supplement in mid-August was that the far left had missed “the political opportunity presented by the financial crisis”.1 And there are a good number on… Continue Reading
Wishful thinking
“The Recession Is Over”.1 That is the message with which much of the media has chosen to mark the anniversary of the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the transformation of the credit crunch into the worst economic crisis since the… Continue Reading