CONTENTS

1. Benedict Anderson: Petrus Dadi Ratu What lay behind the greatest counter-revolutionary massacre of the 20th century, the extermination of the Indonesian Left in 1965? How did the Suharto dictatorship come to power? The extraordinary testimony of a survivor on the bloody mystery at the source of its tyranny.
2. Robert Pollin: Anatomy of Clintonomics The performance of the American economy is widely hailed as stellar, and the policies of the US President as financially prudent and socially progressive. Robert Pollin dismantles Clinton’s record as steward and reformer. Stock bubble and poverty sump as ‘residuals’ of the New Economy?
3. Georgi Derluguian: A Tale of Two Cities Adventures in pursuit of house and home across three continents—from service with national liberation in Mozambique to the labyrinths of bureaucratic Moscow and the tribulations of DIY Chicago. An Armenian’s sly homage to upside-down internationalism.
4. David Marquand: Revisiting the Blair Paradox Responding to Peter Mair’s article in NLR 2, David Marquand suggests that Blair’s ambition to consolidate power as a ruler above partisan strife is less new than it seems. Baldwin’s regime in the thirties offers some surprising similarities.
5. Anthony Barnett: Corporate Populism and Partyless Democracy Are there more tensions in New Labour’s constitutional reforms than Peter Mair’s model of a ‘partyless democracy’ allows? Anthony Barnett argues that the style of Blair’s government is actually closer to that of a large media corporation—bound to come to grief on the variegated realities of modern Ukania.
6. Peter Wollen: Government by Appearances Louis XIV’s passion for dancing, and its metamorphoses, at the beginnings of a society of the spectacle. Peter Wollen looks at the birth of ballet as a projection of state power, and the bonding of elites that court entertainment bequeathed to modern democracies.
7. Nancy Fraser: Rethinking Recognition Has the liberating charge of struggles for recognition dissolved into pure identity politics? Do these have to sidestep inequalities of wealth and power? Not, Nancy Fraser contends, if recognition is understood as a question of social status rather than existential address.
8. Malcolm Bull: Where is the Anti-Nietzsche? If uncritically lyrical receptions of Nietzsche are receding, who has truly resisted his ultimate seduction—‘reading for victory’? Mere rejection of Nietzsche’s ideals does not escape his lure, Malcolm Bull argues. Only the standpoint of the subhuman is proof against his ecology of value.
9. John Foot: The Secret Life of Ignazio Silone John Foot on Dario Biocca and Mauro Canali, L’informatore. The sensational revelation of Ignazio Silone’s long-term service as informer for Mussolini’s regime—the Italian Orwell as a fascist spy.
10. Declan Kiberd: The View from Enniskillen Declan Kiberd on Francis Mulhern, The Present Lasts a Long Time. On the ferry across St George’s Channel, contemporary legacies of Raymond Williams, for cultural politics and national identity alike.
11. Gopal Balakrishnan: From Florence to Moscow Gopal Balakrishnan on Louis Althusser, Machiavelli and Us. The French philosopher on the Italian consigliere: a Parisian Marxism in the mirror of the Medici.