OK Russell, let’s get this done. I’m in Europe and the crisis is everywhere. I landed in Greece and it hit me in the face: people trying to generate an income in any way they can; road works half complete and not touched for months (if not years); teachers on strike against austerity; people sleeping […]
01 Aug
Historical analogies can often be misleading, especially when a notable anniversary places them readily to hand. Mohamad Morsi is not Salvador Allende, overthrown in the seminal Chilean coup 40 years ago. But General Abdel Fatah al-Sisi is Egypt’s Augusto Pinochet — complete with military regalia and sunglasses. The response of Western governments betrays all the […]
23 Jun
I’m excited to be able to say that I have a chapter contribution in the just released ‘Marxism and Social Movements’ book, which is part of the Historical Materialism book series. I’ve read a number of the contributions, and it a really exciting engagement between social movement theory and Marxist approaches to collective action. On […]
30 Dec
Just before 2012 closes out, I’m reposting my last Overland blog of the year, which originally appeared here. In some ways it is a summing up of themes we have developed at Left Flank since we started in mid-2010; chiefly in our attempts to present not just a general ideological or theoretical approach to the […]
22 Nov
Left Flank is very pleased to be able to post this extended analysis of Israel’s war on Gaza by British-based socialist Kevin Ovenden, set in its regional and international context. Kevin has been a leading activist in Viva Palestina and narrowly escaped death at the hands of the IDF as part of the first Gaza […]
10 Jan
Comments Off on New revolutionary rehearsals. Part two: From democratic to social revolution
Bolivia’s water wars SPECIAL GUEST POST BY COLIN BARKER In the last post we published the first half of Colin Barker’s new introduction to the South Korean edition of Revolutionary Rehearsals, looking at the trend towards ‘velvet revolutions’ or ‘negotiated transitions’ in the neoliberal era. In the second half he looks at how the contradictions of the neoliberal […]
07 Jan
Comments Off on New revolutionary rehearsals. Part one: The limits of neoliberal ‘democratisation’
SPECIAL GUEST POST BY COLIN BARKER For those of us drawn to Marxist politics in the aftermath of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collection of essays edited by Colin Barker called Revolutionary Rehearsals was a brilliant riposte to ideas that history had ended with the victory of liberal capitalism and that “there is […]
22 Jul
Comments Off on Beyond the age of austerity, a new pattern of resistance and revolution emerges
In apparently “normal” times we Marxists are given a hard time, derided for our economic determinism about the crisis-prone nature of capitalism, scoffed at for suggesting that revolutionary movements could possibly occur in modern times, and accused of totalitarian impulses if we suggest that conscious revolutionaries should try to cohere their forces. Often the most […]
06 Jul
Comments Off on John Quiggin, ‘Marxism without revolution’ and Left strategy: A response. (Part 2)
John Quiggin recently ran a series on “Marxism without revolution”, with posts covering Marx’s ideas on class, crisis and capital. I began a response here. In this post I look at his claims about Marx’s theory of crisis and his approach to Left strategy. John’s attack on Marx’s crisis theory, specifically the “law of the tendency of the rate […]
30 Apr
Comments Off on The moral incoherence of non-violent philosophy and strategy
One of the most stunning results of the Arab revolutions has been the exposure of the mechanisms of coercive control endured by the ordinary people of the region for decades. Far from the West’s backing of authoritarian regimes leading to a benign order, it was always predicated on the most horrific apparatuses of repressive violence. […]
27 Oct
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