Conkers or Bonkers: Humanitarian War in Kosovo
The Retreat of Social Democracy...
Explanations in terms of both imperialist gains and a descent into irrationality grasp only part of the reason why Europe and the USA recently went to war in Kosovo. This article argues that the timing of events is explicable in terms of both the end of the Cold War and the recent world financial crisis.
Re-imposition of Work in Britain and the 'Social Europe'
In this, the latest exciting instalment of our analysis of social democracy in retreat, we show how the left-of-centre governments now dominating the European political arena are attempting to re-impose work through common neo-reformist policies. We argue that reports of social democracy's rebirth have been greatly exaggerated: and we never lamented its passing anyway.
In the previous articles we examined various Trotskyist and neo-Trotskyist positions on the nature of the USSR. We now turn to the theories of the less well known but more interesting Communist Left, who were among the first revolutionary Marxists to distance themselves from the Russian model by deeming it state capitalist or simply capitalist. The Russian Left Communists' critique remained at the level of an immediate response to how capitalist measures were affecting the class, whereas in both the German/Dutch and Italian Lefts, we see real attempts to ground revolutionary theory in Marx's categories in a way distinct from Second International orthodoxy.