Why did Syriza fail?
How has Syriza ended up this way? This is a question that is tormenting a big part of the left and that all the forces that situate themselves on the left must answer.1 The discussion had flared up even before… Continue Reading
Author: Camilla
Two faces of reformism
In our last issue we advised the radical left in Britain to be “open to the sudden fissures that the crisis of the British state can…unexpectedly open up, perhaps making possible a qualitative advance”.1 And the unexpected came very quickly,… Continue Reading
Anti-Bukharin
A reply to Alex Callinicos: “Fighting the Last War” Both Andreas Bieler and me want to thank Alex Callinicos for his engagement and reply “Fighting the Last War” to our article, “Axis of Evil or Access to Diesel?: Spaces of… Continue Reading
This quarter’s selection
The latest issue of New Left Review (II/93) is dominated by two pieces by Pablo Iglesias, the leader of Podemos, whose sudden and explosive electoral emergence turned the Spanish state upside down last year. The first is an article that… Continue Reading
Luxemburg, Müller and the Berlin workers’ and soldiers’ councils
Two very important new books about the German Revolution were published last year: Working-Class Politics in the German Revolution: Richard Müller, the Revolutionary Shop Stewards and the Origins of the Council Movement by Ralf Hoffrogge and The German Left and… Continue Reading
The “Islamic State” and the counter-revolution
According to the world’s media outlets and major heads of state, a new threat has been looming over “world peace” since June 2014—the threat of ISIS. ISIS was presented as an imminent danger and, far from being constrained to the… Continue Reading
Revolutionaries in the unions: The reality of the strike
The debate around orientations for revolutionaries in the unions today is the result of an uncomfortable but inescapable fact: the level of trade union struggle has remained historically low for 20 years.1 This is true whether we are considering working… Continue Reading
In from the cold
A review of Tamás Krausz, Reconstructing Lenin: An Intellectual Biography (Monthly Review Press, 2015), £25 Reconstructing Lenin is a thoughtful and compelling study of Lenin. Tamás Krausz reveals Lenin as an activist revolutionary whose thoughts were shaped by immediate political… Continue Reading
Religion and revolution in the Middle Ages
In International Socialism 141 Roland Boer gives a fascinating account of how Luther Blissett’s novel Q is “a stunning reclamation of the revolutionary Christian tradition for a whole generation of anti-capitalist activists”.1 The novel concerns the period of the radical… Continue Reading
Trotsky and the POUM
A review of Alan Sennett, Revolutionary Marxism in Spain, 1930-1937 (Brill, 2014/Haymarket, 2015), £98/£18 Historical debate about the outcome of the Spanish Revolution (1936-37) has often centred on the dissident communist Partido Obrero de Unificación Marxista (POUM). For the… Continue Reading