Editorial

From International Socialism 2:68, Autumn 1995.
Copyright © International Socialism.
Copied with thanks from the International Socialism Archive.
Marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.

RACISM AND IMMIGRATION controls are two stock responses for any unpopular Tory government. Britain’s current Conservative administration is no exception-the latest in a long line of racist legislation aimed at immigrants is due on the statute books this autumn. Ruth Brown looks at the history of immigration controls, charts their intimate connection with the capitalist system’s need for labour power and details the role of the Labour Party in allowing the political agenda to be determined by the racist right.

JOHN MOLYNEUX takes issue with one of the most common accusations levelled at Marxism-that it is a deterministic theory which leaves little room for conscious human action. He shows the extent to which Marx and his inheritors have tried to explain the working of society by analysing its economic and social structure, but he also demonstrates how much the Marxist tradition has given to the age old desire to shape the world according to human needs and wants.

STUART HOOD is both a veteran of the BBC and author of the widely read On Television. Here he reviews part of a new History of Broadcasting. Lee Sustar reviews a history of the US Communist Party while fellow American socialist, Peter Linebaugh, author of The London Hanged, reviews V.A.C. Gatrell’s The Hanging Tree. Our reviews are concluded with George Paizis’s look at Alex Callinicos’s new book, Theories and Narratives.

CHRIS HARMAN’S The Prophet and the Proletariat in International Socialism 64 has drawn a comment on Islam from Phil Marshall.

THE CENTENARY of cinema provides Paul D’Amato with the chance to recommend some of the best books on the movies in this quarter’s Bookwatch.

Top of page

ISJ 2 Index | Main Newspaper Index

Encyclopedia of Trotskyism | Marxists’ Internet Archive

Last updated on 29.3.2012