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When the Royal Court Theatre decided at the last minute not to go ahead with its scheduled production of Jim Allen's play about the massacre of the Jews of Hungary in 1944, 'Perdition', a flood of discussion, polemic and recrimination was unleashed in the press. It had already been the subject of protests by various prominent Jews and of publicity in the press.
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A review of "The Retreat From Class: A New 'True Socialism'", by Ellen Meiksins Wood.
"No-one can seriously maintain that any other social movement has ever challenged the power of capital as has the working class... And for all its limitations and institutional conservatism, the labour movement has more consistently than any other social collectivity stood on the side of the various causes which the left regards as valuable and progressive".
But "the new reformists are now disillusioned with what they see as revolutionary socialism in China, Cambodia, and Vietnam. They opt instead for reformed capitalism".
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Jim Denham reviews "The Jaguar Smile", by Salman Rushdie.
Martin Thomas reviews "Rendez-nous nos usines", by Zbigniew Kowalewski.
Stan Crooke reviews "Labour's Future: socialism or SDP mark II", by Eric Heffer.
Bruce Robinson reviews "War and the International", by Sam Bornstein and Al Richardson.
Jane Ashworth reviews "Johnny Come Lately: a short history of the condom", by Jeanette Parisot.
Jack Cleary reviews "Bolsheviks in the Tsarist Duma", by A Y Badayev with an introduction by Tony Cliff.
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A reply to Workers' Liberty 5.
"Sinn Fein is the only mass revolutionary body in Ireland, perhaps in the British Isles... It can seek, even despite itself, to operate a strategy of Permanent Revolution, to complete the tasks of the bourgeois revolution over and above that of Irish unity by combining them with Transitional Demands...
"Where does this leave Federalism? The answer is in tactics rather than principle... Nobody really knows how Ulster Protestant consciousness will respond to an Irish Socialist Revolution. It may be necessary to allow the community some form of autonomy for their territory... A secular state is probably a better guarantee of equal rights..."
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Leftists are protesting against plans to celebrate the 300th anniversary of the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688. In fact the left should celebrate the 300th anniversary, and we can do it without in any way adopting the viewpoint or the politics of the Orange Order.
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"The colour of the revolution in one area after another of India" - and of other ex-colonies - "is steel-grey... An industrial revolution". The problem in most Third World capitalisms is not external domination but capitalism itself...
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Reviews of "Paisley", by Ed Molony and Andy Pollak; and "The Politics of Irish Freedom", by Gerry Adams.
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Socialists have to dispel myths about AIDS... counter the reactionary backlash accompanying the AIDS hysteria, and defend gay rights... oppose health cuts, demand free and easily available condoms... non-water soluble lubricants and spermicides (some of which can help in resisting HIV) should be available on the NHS...
How has the left measured up? Militant has kept a low profile... The SWP has been more upfront, but predictably collapses its conclusion into "the Labour Party can't be relied on... The answer lies in the struggle of the working class"... The grotesquely misnamed Revolutionary Communist Party says that the principal threat is 'not from AIDS, but from the safe sex campaign'... Their claim is mad...
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Seven and a half years after the Sandinistas overthrew the hated Somoza dictatorship, clearly there have been significant gains; but the working class in Nicaragua neither holds power through its mass organisations, nor through a political party which has been built on the basis of working-class struggle...
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An account of the history of the Marxist movement in Russia, first published at the beginning of 1960 in the journal Labour Review. This first part takes the story up to 1906.
