An interesting critique of the ‘new Communists’ here that in part misses the point. Some observations drawn from the history of real Communism and real anti-Communism.
From World War II to the ‘war on terror’
Comparisons between the ‘war on terror and the Cold war as common but Kenan Malik makes the argument well: in the absence of the ideological struggle against communism, the war on terror increasingly became the anchor of Western foreign policy.
Past electoral lessons
Delight of second-hand bookshopping is finding curiosities that shed unexpected light on present. Two old examples of British electoral studies read recently have some lessons for present.
From Communists in 1951 to refugees in 2011: Labor & the High Court
The federal Labor government of Julia Gillard struggles with the issue of asylum-seekers, the government’s rigid position is widely unpopular among Labor activists and party sympathizers and many were pleased with the High Court’s decision on the Malaysian solution. Caucus leaks to an extent akin to that of the Scullin government. We can see how […]
The end of British Labour?
Not going well for British Labour as it desperately evokes the memory of past achievements. There are other examples recently of once major political parties collapsing to third (or less) party status: Israeli Labour or the Polish social democrats are examples. Is the problem with British Labour that its institutions and practices reflect a past […]
Fred Halliday
Fred Halliday died on Monday. I purchased his Arabia Without Sultans a very long time ago. It recalls a time when the forces of radicalism in the Middle East came from the Marxist-Leninist left, although Halliday was blind to their political flaws, any political force that regarded Brezhnev’s USSR as a model had little long […]
Studying Communism
Students at Deakin in interested in wars, Australia and the Two World Wars is a popular subject, they are fascinated by Nazis as well so The Holocaust is a popular subject. Would students would be interested in the history of communism? There are the recent books by Archie Brown and Robert Service and also the […]
End of a Communist era: Jyoti Basu
The death on Sunday of Jyoti Basu, Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) leader and Chief Minister of West Bengal 1977-2000 marks the end of an era in the history of the left within the old British Empire and its former colonies. Basu as a student in London in the 1930s was inspired by the […]
Communism and history
Thinking of of writing a book on the modest topic of the past and future of socialist politics. Much Australian left commentary sees the history of socialism as irrelevant, in particular the Communist movement is either an embarrassment or else the product of malign individuals.
Rembering Jerry Cohen
Reviewing my lecture on Marxism for Modern Political Ideologies I looked over Andrew Heywood’s valuable Political Ideologies. To Heywood any future for Marxism rests on ‘post-Marxism’ in the Laclau-Mouffe sense. There was a time when an alternative road was proposed: that of analytical Marxism. Jerry Cohen’s Karl Marx’s Theory of History was one of its […]