On 4 August 1914 social democratic deputies in both the German Reichstag and the French Chamber of Deputies voted unanimously for war credits.1 Among those who voted on that day were deputies who had, less than a week earlier, met together under the auspices of the Socialist (Second) International to champion peace. The initial anti-war posturing of these representatives reflected the International’s declared policy as articulated at its Stuttgart conference in 1907 and reiterated at its Basel conference of 1912. This policy included not only the demand that socialists should “exert every effort to prevent” war, but also the requirement that they should “utilise the economic and political crisis created by the war to rouse the masses and thereby to hasten the downfall of capitalist class rule”.2 Despite these unanimously agreed guidelines the French and German deputies were not alone in voting to support their governments’ war efforts in the first week of August. Two days earlier Belgian socialists voted to align themselves with their state in an act that was repeated shortly afterwards by the Labour Party representatives in the British parliament, albeit after the removal of Ramsay MacDonald, the party’s anti-war leader. Meanwhile Austrian and Hungarian socialists who had been denied the opportunity of a vote made up for this by publishing an outpouring of bellicose literature in their press.3 It is not that there was no opposition to this rush to patriotism. In fact, 14 of the 92 German socialist deputies who met in a closed session on 3 August opposed the vote for war credits. However, norms of party discipline meant that these opinions were not expressed on the floor of the Reichstag—and ironically it was one of the 14 anti-war deputies, Hugo Haase, who read out the party’s pro-war statement to the Reichstag. Unfortunately, this suppression of anti-war voices was typical within the International. Discounting the tiny Bulgarian and Serbian organisations, among socialists in the belligerent states the only group with a mass base to stand out against the war was the Russian party.

ISBN-13: None

ISBN-10: None

Language: English

Publisher: International Socialism

Year: 2014

Pages: None

Cataloged: Feb. 19, 2025, 4:35 p.m.

The French events of May 1968 were a profound shock to General de Gaulle’s ten-year presidency and the French state. A student rebellion at the prestigious University of Paris sparked a general strike of roughly ten million workers. Twenty years after the event former Paris police chief Maurice Grimaud was asked in an interview, “Could the state have collapsed?” He replied in a very revealing manner: The real danger was when the workers took part. First of all, on 13 May, a great united demonstration of solidarity after the night of the barricades, then the following days when, spontaneously, the youngest workers, without consulting the unions, decided to follow the students. At last from 16 and 17 May, when the large forces of the CGT and CFDT [union federations], understanding that their credibility was at stake, call for the generalization of the strike. It is then that the fragility of the state appeared clearly. The police could disperse a demonstration, overturn ten or 20 barricades, it could not clear out 100 or 500 factories, workshops, department stores, banks and train stations. And less still get them back to work.

ISBN-13: 9781905192366

ISBN-10: 1905192363

Language: English

Publisher: International Socialism

Year: 2008

Pages: 130

Cataloged: Feb. 19, 2025, 4:33 p.m.

ISBN-13: 9781909026407

ISBN-10: 1909026409

Language: English

Publisher: International Socialism

Year: 2013

Pages: 224

Cataloged: Feb. 19, 2025, 4:32 p.m.

What, if anything, do modern day socialists have to learn from Lenin? Capitalism is mired in its deepest and longest crisis since the 1930s, producing bitter discontent that in places overflows into mass resistance and even revolutions. With Stalinism all but dead and traditional reformist parties offering little beyond doing austerity in a fairer manner, revolution from below would seem to be an idea whose time has at long last returned. Yet the working class seems “slow” to fulfil the role allotted it by classical Marxism. It has, perhaps, even “accepted” neoliberalism. Many activists do not believe that class or political parties define anti-systemic movements. The idea of working class revolution led by a revolutionary party to smash the state seems the quaint property of irrelevant groups unable to break out of the far-left ghetto. This mood has affected the revolutionary left. For some the problem is the kind of party they used to believe in. Perhaps it is wrong to insist on a rigid distinction between “revolutionary” and “reformist”. Perhaps “mixing” the two can reconstruct a radical left able to fill the gap between a declining parliamentary reformism and a “Leninist” left that cannot grow. This seems to be what lies behind moves to create broad left parties that have the kind of appeal that, for example, Syriza (the Coalition of the Radical Left) in Greece and the Front de Gauche in France enjoy. A rapprochement with and re-evaluation of what the revolutionary left termed “left reformism” is therefore required.

ISBN-13: 9781909026780

ISBN-10: 1909026786

Language: English

Publisher: International Socialism

Year: 2014

Pages: 224

Cataloged: Feb. 19, 2025, 4:31 p.m.

Afghanistan is one of the poorest countries on earth. More than a million Afghans have died in 30 years of war, and almost everyone has lost someone close to them. Now George Bush, John McCain, Gordon Brown and Nicolas Sarkozy, and even Barack Obama, call for more troops to be sent, more planes and more death. In every country in Europe majorities in opinion polls are against participation in the Afghan war. Yet the media still present it as a good war. Iraq, they now admit, was a crime or wrong or maybe just a mistake. But Afghanistan is a war on terrorists, we are told; on fanatics, jihadis, sexists, savages; on people who are not “modern” and therefore deserve to die.

ISBN-13: None

ISBN-10: None

Language: English

Publisher: International Socialism

Year: 2008

Pages: None

Cataloged: Feb. 19, 2025, 4:30 p.m.

Fran Cetti’s article was written at the time of the European response to the Mediterranean tragedies during the summer and early autumn of 2015. These continue but have been overshadowed by many thousands of refugees, many from Syria, arriving in Europe via the western Balkans. Apart from Hungary, whose right-wing government has been struggling to keep to the (brutal) letter of the common European immigration and asylum rules, these appear to have for the moment been challenged by the determination and desperation of these forced migrants and by the extraordinary upswell in support among ordinary people across Europe. This pushed Angela Merkel initially to respond by overturning the Dublin Regulation. The German government said it expected to receive 800,000 (Syrian) asylum seekers this year. But then, ahead of the EU summit on 14 September to discuss binding quotas for refugees across Europe, Germany effectively suspended the Schengen agreement by closing its borders to more refugees. This underlines that, despite the extraordinary events of the late summer, the racist migration management agenda hasn’t gone away. The idea of “regional resettlement” of refugees close to where they have fled, and the epithet “economic migrant”, will no doubt be deployed more rigorously in an effort at future exclusion.

ISBN-13: 9781910885055

ISBN-10: 1910885053

Language: English

Publisher: International Socialism

Year: 2015

Pages: 224

Cataloged: Feb. 19, 2025, 4:28 p.m.

Agricultural history has enjoyed a rebirth in recent years, in part because the agricultural enterprise promotes economic and cultural connections in an era that has become ever more globally focused, but also because of agriculture's potential to lead to conflicts over precious resources. History is replete with stories of armies standing or falling as a result of their supply of agriculturally produced commodities. Civilizations have likewise succumbed because of famine or crop-related pestilence, highlighting the critical nature of agriculture to both regional and global society. The importance and fragility of agricultural systems will come into much greater focus because of climate change in the twenty-first century, something farmers the world over have begun to reckon with. As its implications are manifested in droughts and floods that hamper crop production, urban people will become ever more conscious of their own reliance upon agriculture. The contemporary critical evaluation of agriculture reflects a transition from a framework that celebrated the positive aspects of the evolution of agriculture to one that also explores its negative implications, such as the emergence of intensive and extractive agriculture that has worked to the detriment of indigenous peoples and disrupted traditional political economies. The Oxford Handbook of Agricultural History reflects this rebirth and examines the wide-reaching implications of agricultural issues, bringing together the many historiographical traditions within geographic regions across the world that intersect either directly or indirectly in terms of agricultural history. Contributors to this volume include historians from around the world and specialists in European, American, African, Middle East, Russian, and Asian history. Essays touch on the green revolution, the development of the Atlantic slave plantation, the agricultural impact of the American Civil War, the rise of scientific and corporate agriculture, and modern exploitation of agricultural labor. The Oxford Handbook of Agricultural History is an essential volume for those interested in the myriad ways that agricultural systems affect our world. Source: Publisher

ISBN-13: 9780190924164

ISBN-10: 0190924160

Language: English

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Year: 2024

Pages: 672

Cataloged: Feb. 19, 2025, 4:27 p.m.

ISBN-13: 9781905192304

ISBN-10: 1905192304

Language: English

Publisher: International Socialism

Year: 2007

Pages: 130

Cataloged: Feb. 19, 2025, 4:25 p.m.

ISBN-13: 9781909026025

ISBN-10: 1909026026

Language: English

Publisher: International Socialism

Year: 2012

Pages: 224

Cataloged: Feb. 19, 2025, 4:24 p.m.