The terrible earthquake and tsunami that hit Tohuku in northeastern Japan on 11 March took place as this issue of International Socialism was on its way to the press. The scenes in which the tsunami swept away vast swathes of… Continue Reading
In the winter of 1939-40 the German Marxist critic Walter Benjamin wrote a remarkable text known as “Theses on the Philosophy of History”. In it he attacked the widespread belief on the left that socialism would come about inevitably, as… Continue Reading
The latest issue of New Left Review (II/65, September/October 2010) starts with a superb article by Robert Wade and Silla Sigurgeirsdottir on the crisis in Iceland. In a piece that combines careful analysis with the pace and tension of a… Continue Reading
Ha–Joon Chang, 23 Things They Don’t Tell You About Capitalism, (Allen Lane, 2010), £20.00 Ha-Joon Chang is an economist based at Cambridge who has made a reputation as a critic of the free-market orthodoxy in development economics. Thus in Kicking… Continue Reading
Alison J Ayers (ed), Gramsci, Political Economy and International Relations Theory (Palgrave Macmillan, 2008), £55 It says a good deal about the nature of the academy that despite Marxism’s internationalist perspective it was until recently at best marginalised and at… Continue Reading
Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Honour Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen (Norton, 2010), £19.99 Kwame Anthony Appiah has had an idea: “appeals to reason, morality, or religion aren’t enough to ring in reform. Practices are eradicated only when they come into… Continue Reading
Colin Jones, Josephine McDonagh and Jon Mee (eds), Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities and the French Revolution (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009), £50 Charles Dickens was not a writer who liked to sit on the fence. A passionate advocate of… Continue Reading
History Commission, CPI (M) History of the Communist Movement in India: Volume 1 (Leftword, 2005), $25 The 1917 Russian Revolution inspired millions of people living under colonial rule to take up the fight against empire. That workers and peasants in… Continue Reading
In the last issue of this journal Alex Callinicos invited discussion on the kinds of demand that might provide a “complete” and “universally valid” transitional programme for revolutionaries today.1 This is somewhat of a new departure for the Socialist Workers… Continue Reading
Productive debate requires engagement with the other’s stronger positions. In her reply to us, Jess Edwards ignores this rule, relying instead upon insinuation, imputation and distortion.1 She enlists enough Aunt Sallies and straw men to pack out a small stadium,… Continue Reading