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The Socialist Register 1998

The Socialist Register 1998

The Communist Manifesto Now

The 150th anniversary of the Communist Manifesto provides the occasion for a powerful set of essays that draw on the Manifesto’s legacy to analyse working class responses today to the growing exhaustion of neo-liberalism and that contribute to setting a left agenda for the new millenium. The volume also features brilliant essays on the making of the Manifesto, plus a reprint of the Manifesto and a reproachful letter to Marx from a socialist-feminist.

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About the book

For the thirty-fourth volume of The Socialist Register, published in February 1998, not to have focussed on the Communist Manifesto, published in February 1848, would have been hard to justify. The fact that this 150th anniversary falls within less than a decade of the collapse of Communism with a capital ‘C’, and of the parties associated with it, in no way diminishes the appeal and necessity of a cooperative, democratic and egalitarian social order. This is what might be called communism with a small ‘c’, and it poses and will always pose a threat to capitalism. For this reason it is a privilege as well as a pleasure to be able to celebrate ‘the single most influential text written in the nineteenth century’. Our theme, in other words, is anything but antiquarian. We are interested in the Manifesto now, to see both why it was such a uniquely influential text, and what light it can still throw on our situation today.

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Authors

Colin Leys

Before coming to Queen’s in 1975 Colin Leys taught at Balliol College, Oxford; Kivukoni College in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania; Makerere University in Kampala, Uganda; and the Universities of Sussex, Nairobi, and Sheffield. His work has primarily been on the theory and politics of development, with particular reference to Africa and the UK. His publications include European Politics in Southern Rhodesia; Underdevelopment in Kenya;The Political Economy of Neocolonialism; Politics in Britain; Namibia’s Liberation Struggle: The Two-Edged Sword (with John S. Saul and others); The Rise and Fall of Development Theory; The End of Parliamentary Socialism (with Leo Panitch); and Market Driven-Politics: Neoliberal Democracy and the Public Interest.

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.

Dear Dr. Marx: A Letter from a Socialist Feminist (Sheila Rowbotham)
The Political Legacy of the Manifesto (Colin Leys & Leo Panitch)
The Geography of Class Power (David Harvey)
Socialism with Sober Senses: Developing Worker’s Capacities (Sam Gindin)
Unions, Strikes and Class Consciousness Today (Sheila Cohen & Kim Moody)
Passages of the Russian and Eastern Europe Left (Peter Gowan)
Marx and the Permanent Revolution in France: Backgound to the Communist Manifesto (Bernard Moss)
The Communist Manifesto and the Environment (John Bellamy Foster)
Remember the Future? The Communist Manifesto as Historical and Cultural Form (Peter Osborne)
Seeing is Believing: Marx’s Manifesto, Derrida’s Apparition (Paul Thomas)
The Making of the Manifesto (Rob Beamish)
The Communist Manifesto (Marx & Engels)