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International Socialism, March 1998

 

Editorial

 

From International Socialism 2:78, March 1998.
Copyright © International Socialism.
Copied with thanks from the International Socialism Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

 

THE TIGER economies of South and East Asia were being held up only yesterday as models for success, not least by Tony Blair. But the crash of 1997, whose effects are still unravelling across the industrialised world, put an end to such easy propaganda. In three linked articles we look at the causes and consequences of the crisis. Colin Sparks explains the rise of the Tiger economies and charts the forces that brought them to their knees. Shin Gyoung-hee writes from South Korea on the crisis of profitability which underlay that crash and on the prospects for the region’s most militant and combative workers’ movement. Rob Hoveman concludes with a restatement of the Marxist account of how financial crashes and industrial slumps are linked, taking his example from the fate of the Tiger economies.

GAY POLITICS are at a crossroads. The celebration of the ‘pink economy’ which seemed so dominant in the 1980s has increasingly turned sour for many gays and lesbians. The annual Pride march is now in danger of splitting in two, as many react against the commercialism and depoliticisation which has accompanied increasing sponsorship by gay businesses. Peter Morgan examines the class divide among gays and lesbians and traces the ways in which it expresses itself in the debate about the future of the movement.

ALEX CALLINICOS’S article The Secret of the Dialectic reviews a newly published account of Marxist philosophy, The Algebra of Revolution by John Rees. John Parrington also looks at dialectics in his review of Steven Rose’s new book Lifelines. The enduring popularity of the Robin Hood legend is uncovered by Judy Cox in her overview of the history of the myth, from its origins to the present day.

THE RETURN of our occasional In Perspective feature gives William Keach the chance to dissect the work of two radical journalists, Christopher Hitchens and Alex Cockburn.

 
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