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The Socialist Register 1997

The Socialist Register 1997

Ruthless Criticism of All that Exists

“Constructing the future and settling everything for all times are not our affair, it is all the more clear what we have to accomplish at present: I am referring to ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just a little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.” -Marx, 1843

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About the book

Last year’s volume posed the sober question of ‘Are There Alternatives?’, rather than blithely asserting that there are alternatives, precisely because we are aware that genuine alternatives cannot be constructed out of thin air. A large part of our purpose in that volume was to show that what is presented by way of alternatives to neoliberalism in the present conjuncture are nothing of the sort precisely because they are captured within the very contradictions and dynamics that gave rise to neoliberalism. We extend that orientation in this volume. The essays in this volume undertake sober analysis and ruthless criticism of the dynamics, depredations and contradictions of today’s global capitalism; of the abject accommodation to it by erstwhile Communists, Social Democrats and Liberals; of the failed socialist and ‘new left’ movements over the past century; and, not least, of the defeatist and confused ‘post-’ intellectuals of our time, who would leave us with no analytic capacity, let alone with no commitment, with which to contribute today to the eventual relaunching of socialist politics.

Capitalism & Alternatives

Author

Leo Panitch

Leo Panitch was a Distinguished Research Professor, renowned political economist, Marxist theorist and editor of the Socialist Register. He received a B.A. (Hons.) from the University of Manitoba in 1967 and a M.Sc.(Hons.) and PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1968 and 1974, respectively. He was a Lecturer, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Professor at Carleton University between 1972 and 1984. He was a Professor of Political Science at York University since 1984. He was the Chair of the Department of Political Science at York from 1988-1994. He was the General Co-editor of State and Economic Life series, U. of T. Press, from 1979 to 1995 and is the Co-founder and a Board Member of Studies in Political Economy. He was also the author of numerous articles and books dealing with political science including The End of Parliamentary Socialism (1997). He was a member of the Movement for an Independent and Socialist Canada, 1973-1975, the Ottawa Committee for Labour Action, 1975-1984, the Canadian Political Science Association, the Committee of Socialist Studies, the Marxist Institute and the Royal Society of Canada. He was an ardent supporter of the Socialist Project.

Preface
A World Market of Opportunities? Capitalist Obstacles and Left Economic Policy (Gregory Albo)
Financial Crises on the Threshold of the Twenty-first Century (Elmar Altvater)
Green Imperialism: Pollution, Penitence, Profits (Larry Pratt & Wendy Montgomery)
China’s Communist Capitalism: The Real World of Market Socialism (Gerard Greenfield & Apo Leong)
Taking Stock of a Century of Socialism (George Ross)
The Marginality of the American Left: The Legacy of the 1960 (Barbara Epstein)
Clinton’s Liberalism: No Model for the Left (Doug Henwood)
The Ideology of ‘Family and Community’: New Labor Abandons the Welfare State (Joan Smith)
The Decline of Spanish Social Democracy 1982-1996 (Vicente Navarro)
Cardoso’s Political Project in Brazil: The Limits of Social Democracy (Paul Cammack)
The State as Charade: Political Mobilisation in Today’s India (Ananya Mukherjee-Reed)
Marxism, Film and Theory: From the Barricades to Postmodernism (Scott Forsyth)
Cyborg Fictions: The Cultural Logic of Posthumanism (Scott McCracken)
Restoring the Real: Rethinking Social Constructivist Theories of Science (Meera Nanda)
Post Colonial Theory and the ‘Post-’ Condition (Aijaz Ahmed)