PaulHampton's blog

A common charge heard against Marxism in recent decades is that it is a Eurocentric theory, one with arguably colonial assumptions and underpinned by Western values.

Mark Lynas has written a provocative book that deserves to be read and discussed by socialists, trade unionists and ecologists.

Unprepared to acknowledge his catastrophic mis-assessment of the situation in Libya, unreconstructed Stalinist Seamus Milne prefers to serve up more wholesale historical revisionism.

Review of Michael Löwy, The Politics of Combined and Uneven Development: The Theory of Permanent Revolution (Haymarket 2010)

Review of Richard Day and Daniel Gaido, Witnesses to Permanent Revolution, (Haymarket 2011)

“The dreamer himself sees in his dream a great and sacred truth; and he works, works conscientiously and with full strength, for his dream to stop being just a dream.

Hardt and Negri’s musings on the recent uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East (Guardian, 25 February 2011) are a studied exercise in rapacity. Having mapped the road to nowhere for the anti-capitalist movement a decade ago, these confusionists now seem intent on misdirecting the great revolutionaries who’ve topped dictators.

The Ecological Rift, the latest book by John Bellamy Foster and his co-thinkers Brett Clark and Richard York, epitomises the strengths and weaknesses of the Monthly Review school: “half lamentation,

It is a measure of the state of climate politics when apparently radical thinkers accommodate themselves to the mainstream.

Paul Hampton reviews Derek Wall, The Rise of the Green Left: Inside the Worldwide Ecosocialist Movement (2010)

Review of Antonio Gramsci by Antonio Santucci, Monthly Review Press (2010)

“In mass politics, to say the truth is precisely a political necessity.” (2010 p.158)

The bonapartist regime of Hugo Chávez suffered a setback in the Venezuelan elections on 26 September, winning a majority of parliamentary seats but not the two-thirds majority it desired.

Review of Noel Castree and others, The point is to change it: geographies of hope and survival in an age of crisis (Chichester: Wiley-Blackwell).

Fidel Castro is right. Hard to spit out, but absolutely right. Speaking to an American journalist and a policy analyst (as reported in the Guardian):

For many years our paper Socialist Organiser, a forerunner of Solidarity published between 1978 and 1995, carried a science column written by Les Hearn.

During the 1970s, a large number of workplace unions and rank and file organisations in Britain produced workers’ plans, to tackle unemployment, restructuring and other employers’ attacks.

In the early 1970s one of the most inspiring labour movement-based environmental campaigns was led by building workers in Australia.

The Russian revolution of October 1917 was the first time in history that the working class took power and held it for a significant period.

Classical German Marxism had a decent record of socialist ecology in the years after its founding in 1870s until it was smashed by Stalin and Hitler in the 1930s.

Marx and Engels’ conception of communism from the beginning was consistent with the sustainability.

“Thus has been the story of mankind; to struggle to overcome the laws of nature; to struggle to dominate nature and have it serve mankind.” (1966)

“For the purpose of attaining freedom in the world of nature, man must use natural science to understand, conquer and change nature and thus attain freedom from nature.”

The AWL argues that Stalinism was responsible for an epochal defeat of the global working class.

Classical Marxists took a keen interest in energy technology and the exhaustion of energy sources. They were early advocates of renewable technologies.

Marxism is criticised by some ecologists as inconsistent with the laws of thermodynamics, and in particular the second law of entropy — that energy is only transformed from more ordered to less orde

Marx and Engels encountered early climate science while developing historical materialist theory.

Marxists argue that production mediates the relationship between climate and society. Therefore an adequate political economy of climate change is vital for grounding action on the issue.

§1. Dualist conceptions of nature

For the AWL, Marxism is a coherent theory of social change. It offers a worked out alternative world view, irreplaceable insights and effective strategies that can help avert climate catastrophe.

Sometimes contrition is the better part of valour. A decade or so ago there was an exchange in the pages of Workers’ Liberty magazine on the decline of capitalism.