New Left Review

The contemporary Marxist writer provides analyses of socialist theory, modern political struggle, and socialist societies in Eastern Europe.

A century after the publication of Max Weber's The Protestant Ethic and the "Spirit" of Capitalism , a major new work examines network-based organization, employee autonomy and post-Fordist horizontal work structures.

Yugoslavia was well positioned at the end of the cold war to make a successful transition to a market economy and westernization. Yet two years later, the country had ceased to exist, and devastating local wars were being waged to create new states. Between the fall of the Berlin Wall in November 1989 and the start of the war in Bosnia-Herzegovina in March 1992, the country moved toward disintegration at astonishing speed. The collapse of Yugoslavia into nationalist regimes led not only to horrendous cruelty and destruction, but also to a crisis of Western security regimes. Coming at the height of euphoria over the end of the cold war and the promise of a "new world order," the conflict presented Western governments and the international community with an unwelcome and unexpected set of tasks. Their initial assessment that the conflict was of little strategic significance or national interest could not be sustained in light of its consequences. By 1994 the conflict had emerged as the most challenging threat to existing norms and institutions that Western leaders faced. And by the end of 1994, more than three years after the international community explicitly intervened to mediate the conflict, there had been no progress on any of the issues raised by the country's dissolution. In this book, Susan Woodward explains what happened to Yugoslavia and what can be learned from the response of outsiders to its crisis. She argues that focusing on ancient ethnic hatreds and military aggression was a way to avoid the problem and misunderstood nationalism in post-communist states. The real origin of the Yugoslav conflict, Woodward explains, is the disintegration of governmental authority and the breakdown of a political and civil order, a process that occurred over a prolonged period. The Yugoslav conflict is inseparable from international change and interdependence, and it is not confined to the Balkans but is part of a more widespread phenomenon of political disintegration. Woodward's analysis is based on her first-hand experience before the country's collapse and then during the later stages of the Bosnian war as a member of the UN operation sent to monitor cease-fires and provide humanitarian assistance. She argues that Western action not only failed to prevent the spread of violence or to negotiate peace, but actually exacerbated the conflict. Woodward attempts to explain why these challenges will not cease or the Yugoslav conflicts end until the actual causes of the conflict, the goals of combatants, and the fundamental issues they pose for international order are better understood and addressed.

For over forty years Perry Anderson, has been one of the most influential figures on the intellectual Left. Through his writings, his publishing, his editing of New Left Review, and teaching at UCLA, he has introduced and disseminated a range of European Marxist opinion to the English speaking world: Deutscher, Gramsci, Sartre, Lukacs, Althusser, Poulantzas, to name a few. His own books are seminal contributions to political theory. This survey of Anderson's works explores a myriad of political writings, considers the evolution of an influential current of New Left thinking from the 1960's onwards, and reviews its engagement with critical theorists such as Brenner, Fukuyama and Jameson.

This synoptic essay considers the nature and evolution of the Marxist theory that developed in Western Europe, after the defeat of the proletarian rebellions in the West and the isolation of the Russian Revolution in the East in the early 1920s. It focuses particularly on the work of Lukcs, Korsch and Gramsci; Adorno, Marcuse and Benjamin; Sartre and Althusser; and Della Volpe and Colletti, together with other figures within Western Marxism from 1920 to 1975. The theoretical production of each of these thinkers is related simultaneously to the practical fate of working-class struggles and to the cultural mutations of bourgeois thought in their time. The philosophical antecedents of the various school within this tradition - Lukcsian, Gramscian, Frankfurt, Sartrean, Althusserian and Della Volpean - are compared, and the specific innovations of their respective systems surveyed. The structural unity of 'Western Marxism', beyond the diversity of its individual thinkers, is then assessed, in a balance-sheet that contrasts its heritage with the tradition of 'classical' Marxism that preceded it, and with the commanding problems which will confront any historical materialism to succeed it.

Written during the winter of 1857-8, the Grundrisse was considered by Marx to be the first scientific elaboration of communist theory. A collection of seven notebooks on capital and money, it both develops the arguments outlined in the Communist Manifesto (1848) and explores the themes and theses that were to dominate his great later work Capital. Here, for the first time, Marx set out his own version of Hegel's dialectics and developed his mature views on labour, surplus value and profit, offering many fresh insights into alienation, automation and the dangers of capitalist society. Yet while the theories in Grundrisse make it a vital precursor to Capital, it also provides invaluable descriptions of Marx's wider-ranging philosophy, making it a unique insight into his beliefs and hopes for the foundation of a communist state.

Raymond Williams made a central contribution to the intellectual culture of the Left in the English-speaking world. He was also one of the key figures in the foundation of cultural studies in Britain, which turned critical skills honed on textual analysis to the examination of structures and forms of resistance apparent in everyday life. Politics and Letters is a volume of interviews with Williams, conducted by New Left Review, designed to bring into clear focus the major theoretical and political issues posed by his work. Introduced by writer Geoff Dyer, Politics and Letters ranges across Williams’s biographical development, the evolution of his cultural theory and literary criticism, his work on dramatic forms and his fiction, and an exploration of British and international politics.

What does a successful socialist Green New Deal look like? With the cascading effects of multiple ongoing health and economic crises, conditions are ripe for the emergence of a global progressive social project capable of moving us beyond business-as-usual and eradicating the fundamental causes of misery: namely, a global Green New Deal. But simply creating new "green jobs" within the current capitalist system is not nearly enough. If we are to take on climate change, it is imperative that we first of all engage in “system change,” a process rooted in socialism. Shifting beyond the American notion of the Green New Deal and adding vital internationalist dimension, A Left Green New Deal provides just such a blueprint for this worldwide undertaking. Written by Bernd Riexinger and his team in the German DIE LINKE [the left] Party, A Left Green New Deal unveils the powerful opponents of a genuine, left-wing Green New Deal—corporations, the wealthy, the ultra-rich and their political allies. But it also discloses the creation of a potent new counterforce, embodied in a left-wing mobilization strategy developed by DIE LINKE. This organizing model is based in "connective party politics"— transformative organizing practices that reach across class lines within and beyond the party. This essential book provides both a Left Green New Deal platform and the inspiration necessary to lay a path towards an alternate future.