NOW AVAILABLE: Head to Head in Halle

Ben Lewis & Lars T. Lih, Zinoviev and Martov: Head to Head in Halle (2011)

“We are on the field of battle. The audience in the hall is divided in two sections: it is as if a knife has cut them sharply in two. Two parties are present.”

Zinoviev’s four hour speech to the Halle congress of the USPD is both one of the great forgotten orations of the 20th century and a turning point in the history of the German workers’ movement. Now it is (finally!) available in English – along with Julius Martov’s rejoinder – with a wealth of supplementary material. Essential reading.

Homer and the European Epic

Chris Gray, Homer and the European Epic

This pamphlet aims to situate Homer’s ‘The Iliad’ and ‘The Odyssey’ in the context of the development of ancient Greek society from Mycenaean times down to the early classical period (around 600 BCE) and in the context of the common European epic and tradition.

Zinoviev and Martov: Head to Head in Halle

Ben Lewis & Lars T. Lih, Zinoviev and Martov: Head to Head in Halle (2011)

“We are on the field of battle. The audience in the hall is divided in two sections: it is as if a knife has cut them sharply in two. Two parties are present.”

Grigory Zinoviev’s description of the Halle congress of the Independent Social Democrats (USPD) in 1920 highlights the knife-edge on which the German workers’ movement was balanced. Would the USPD embrace the young Soviet government and the Communist International as part of the Moscow-led drive to strategically re-orientate the workers’ movement?

Revolutionary Strategy

Mike Macnair, Revolutionary Strategy: Marxism and the problem of left unity

The free market triumphalism of the 1990s is over. Early 21st century capitalism looks like Karl Marx’s description: growing extremes of wealth and poverty, and irrepressible boom-bust cycles. But for the moment, rightwing religious and nationalist nostalgia politics is the main beneficiary of the opposition this has spawned. The political left remains in the shadow of its disastrous failures in the 20th century.

Fantastic Reality

Jack Conrad, Fantastic Reality: Marxism and the Politics of Religion (2007)

Religion, as defined by Marxism, is fantastic reality. Fantastic, not in the trite sense that the claims religion makes about existence are verifiably untrue, unreal or baseless, but in the sense that nature and society are reflected in exaggerated form, as leaping shadows, as symbols or inversions.

Remaking Europe

Jack Conrad, Remaking Europe (2004)

European unity is one of the biggest, most complex and bitterly contested political issues of the day – there are no easy ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers.

Europe is an enigma. We are told it is a nascent military threat and a guarantor against war; a wide field of struggle and a remote bureaucratic machine; a black hole of patronage, subsidy and corruption and a global haven of stability, enlightenment and rationality.

Towards a Socialist Alliance Party

Jack Conrad, Towards a Socialist Alliance Party (2001)

Some comrades in the Socialist Alliance say we should settle for a loose conglomeration of leftwing groups and local campaigns. Others wand a ‘relatively durable’ united front. For these comrades the word ‘party’, when it comes to the Socialist Alliance, is anathema. It is as if they were anarchists.

In the Enemy Camp

Jack Conrad, In the Enemy Camp (1993)

Why do communists stand in elections? As Jack conrad’s book comprehensively shows, Marxists have always viewed parliamentary democracy as a sham. So why does the Communist Party of Great Britain – in the traditions of Lenin’s Communist International – think that standing in elections is ‘obligatory’? Does it stand for votes, for publicity or propaganda impact?

Problems of Communist Organisation

Jack Conrad, Problems of Communist Organisation (1993)

“Party struggles lend a Party strength and vitality; the greatest proof of a Party’s weakness is its diffuseness and the blurring of clear demarcations; the Party becomes stronger by purging itself” (Lassalle to Marx, June 24 1952).

During the months July to September 1993 members of the Communist Party of Great Britain were involved in a fierce battle over the question of democratic centralism. A minority claimed the Party was dominated by a ‘bureaucratic clique’ that strangled initiative and was causing a creeping sclerosis of the entire organisation.

From October To August

Jack Conrad From October to August (1992) pp279

“The August 1991 counterrevolution unleashed an unprecedented barrage of bourgeois triumphalism. The bourgeoisie think they will now last forever. They want, they need to believe that they have beaten not simply this or that Communust Party, this or that revolution. No, they want to believe that the collapse of ‘official communism’ is the organisational expression of capitalism’s final victory over its own mortality.