ISJ Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
From International Socialism (1st series), No.58, May 1973, pp.5-6.
Transcribed & marked up by by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
We have had to postpone the publication of Mike Kidron’s Unequal Exchange and John Ure’s The International Monetary System – both promised for June. The problem is one of space and the length of articles like these. This is clearly going to be a continuing difficulty in a 26 page journal which aims to cover a fairly wide range of topics in each issue. John Ure’s piece will appear, all being well, in July and Mike Kidron’s in a later issue.
The June issue will now contain The Decline of a Union – the Electricians by George; Russell, which surveys the development of the EEPTU from the overthrow of the CP controlled leadership at the end of the fifties through the consolidation of the Cannon leadership to the era of Chapple. Chris Harman contributes a timely analysis of Councils of Action, and ISIS provides a statistical feature, Pay Increases and Price Increases. On the international scene we have Basker Vashee’s Crisis in Southern Africa and Brian Trench’s Perspectives for the Irish Left. Reg Groves’ Recollections have been very well received but there have been complaints that the episodes are too short. That is the fault of the editor, not the author, and to meet this criticism the sixth (and final) instalment – which takes the story up to the expulsion of the Balham group from the CP and the formation of the first Trotskyist organisation in Britain – will be twice the normal length.
A number of requests have been received for the publication of the second part of Duncan Hallas’ The Fourth International. Again, space is a problem here but, pressure from more immediate considerations permitting, this will appear in July.
The contents of the August special issue have now been finalised. As announced last month this will be a double-sized number consisting entirely of unaltered reproduction of major theoretical articles which have appeared in the journal over the years, and are now unobtainable, together with introductions. The first article, Tony Cliff’s Permanent Revolution (IS 12, Spring 1963) is a critical examination of Trotsky’s major contribution to marxism in the light of events after the second world war. Trotsky had argued that the bourgeois (’democratic’) revolution and the proletarian revolution were inseparable under modern imperialist conditions. In other words the destruction of pre-capitalist economic and political conditions (including the achievement of national independence for the colonial countries) could only be achieved by successful working class revolutions. Cliff discusses the validity and the limitations of this central aspect of Trotsky’s political outlook with reference to India, Indonesia, China, Algeria and Cuba.
Crisis in China (IS 29, Summer 1967), also by Cliff, is a marxist analysis of the Maoist regime up to the ‘Cultural Revolution’. The Chinese revolution is, on any showing, one of the major events of the twentieth century and one which, on the face of it, appears to cast doubt on Marx’s view of the modern working class as the revolutionary class in the modern world. Cliffs analysis dissipates the cloud of myth surrounding Mao’s China and will be seen to have stood the test of time.
Mike Kidron’s Imperialism: Highest Stage but One (IS 9, Summer 1962) and its sequel International Capitalism (IS 20, Spring 1965) are concerned with the major structural changes in post-world war two capitalism. At the time the first article was published much of the revolutionary left, what there was of it, still looked at the world through the spectacles of Lenin’s Imperialism which was written in 1916. Indeed a few of them still do. Kidron points out the immense changes of the ensuing half century and their consequences for the movement. These articles are essential for an understanding of capitalism today.
Colin Barker’s The British Labour Movement (IS 28, Spring 1967) studies the changes in the working-class movement produced by the long boom of the fifties and early sixties and the way these changes affected the work of revolutionaries. This article summarises the political core of the later pamphlet Incomes Policy, Legislation and Shop Stewards. Finally, an authors index for all articles from IS 1 to IS 53 is also included.
ISJ Index | Main Newspaper Index
Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive
Last updated on 10.3.2008