The events of 1905 in Russia announced the return of revolution to Europe nearly 35 years after the defeat of the Paris Commune. In the intervening period mass socialist organisations—usually calling themselves ‘social democratic’ —had emerged and developed in some… Continue Reading
Most people in the West, including those of the far left, still have an image of Iran as a theocratic state, dominated by medieval mullahs. What is the reality today? To answer this question it is essential to grasp the… Continue Reading
In early November 2004 US troops destroyed the city of Fallujah. Countless civilians and an untold number of resistance fighters perished in the assault. The city of mosques lay in ruins, but the rubble also buried US and British plans… Continue Reading
In 1952 George Allen and Unwin published Tony Cliff’s first book, Stalin’s Satellites in Europe (under his real name, Ygael Gluckstein), in which he applied the theory of state capitalism to the ‘people’s democracies’ of Eastern Europe. The work was… Continue Reading
A review of Michael Parenti, The Assassination of Julius Caesar: A People’s History of Ancient Rome (The New Press, 2003), £14.95
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The revisionist historians who dominated study of the English Revolution between 1975 and 2000 rejected any argument tracing political conflict to larger patterns of social change.2 Specifically, they rejected a mechanistic ‘rising class’ model of the English Revolution, whereby subordinate… Continue Reading
Judith Butler’s book Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity, first published in 1990, made her the star of a new feminism linked to poststructuralism and queer theory. Butler’s work also produced massive controversy. Feminist writer Martha Nussbaum damned… Continue Reading
The 60th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944, could not have arrived at a more politically charged moment. In Iraq the former D-Day Allies are ‘standing shoulder to shoulder’ again. But this time the… Continue Reading
The result of India’s election in mid-May shook observers of all sorts. Everyone, on the left and right alike, expected the Hindu chauvinist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) to romp home to another five-year term. There was little else but deep… Continue Reading
I am most grateful to the editor of this journal for allowing me to comment on Phil Marfleet’s review of my recent book in International Socialism 101 (Winter 2003). It is bad taste to comment on a review of one… Continue Reading