Histomat: Adventures in Historical Materialism

'Historical materialism is the theory of the proletarian revolution.' Georg Lukács

Friday, August 24, 2012

Fascist terror and the Politics of Islamophobia

Some weekend reading - Tad Tietze and
Richard Seymour on the neo-Nazi terrorist Anders Breivik,   also Priyamvada Gopal on  whiteness  and  Deepa Kumar and John Molyneux on the Politics of Islamophobia. 

Edited to add: see here - Breivik's 'English friends' humilitated
in Walthamstowe - great stuff!   

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Wednesday, August 22, 2012

Sheila Fitzpatrick on Victor Serge

Great review of the new full version of Serge's classic Memoirs of a Revolutionary

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Marxism and Revolution Today

A weekend school hosted by International Socialism journal

Saturday 22 and Sunday 23 September 2012
[[PLEASE NOTE: The University of Westminster has had to cancel our booking for due to construction work overrunning. We are therefore moving the event to the London Welsh Centre, 157-163 Gray's Inn Road, Holborn, London WC1X 8UE (near Kings Cross St Pancras station) http://goo.gl/maps/VQY9h. The event is filling up, so email barcol@gmail.com to reserve your space ASAP.]]
 In 1987, Bookmarks published Revolutionary Rehearsals, a collection of essays on France 1968, Chile 1972-3, Portugal 1974-5, Iran 1978-9 and Poland 1980-1. Were a “second edition” to appear a quarter century later, what new experiences would need to be taken into account? This weekend school will explore some aspects of the revolutionary experience of the past 25 years.

Outline programme
Saturday 22 September
Registration: 10.00-10.30am
Session 1: 10.30am-12.30pm
 Introductory themes: Neil Davidson and Alex Callinicos
Session 2: 1.30-3.30pm
The Arab Spring 2011-12: Anne Alexander and Dalia Mostafa
Session 3: 4.00-6.00pm
Eastern Europe 1989 and the “colour revolutions”: Gareth Dale and Megan Trudell
Sunday 23 September
Session 4: 10.30am-12.30pm
The overthrow of Apartheid in South Africa: Claire Ceruti
Session 5: 1.30-3.30pm
Latin America, 2000-2012: Jeffery Webber and Mike Gonzales
Session 6: 4.00-6.00pm
Contemporary problems of revolutionary politics: John Rose, Jonny Jones and Colin Barker
Admission: Waged £20, Unwaged £10
For further details of the weekend school, please contact Colin Barker barcolin@gmail.com

Wednesday, August 08, 2012

New Book: How Revolutionary were the Bourgeois Revolutions?


HOW REVOLUTIONARY WERE THE BOURGEOIS REVOLUTIONS?
NEIL DAVIDSON
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“I was frankly pole-axed by this magnificent book. Davidson resets the entire debate on the character of revolutions: bourgeois, democratic and socialist. He's sending me, at least, back to the library."
—Mike Davis, author, Planet of Slums
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Once of central importance to left historians and activists alike, recently the concept of the “bourgeois revolution” has come in for sustained criticism from both marxists and conservatives. In this comprehensive rejoinder, Neil Davidson seeks to answer the question “how revolutionary were the bourgeois revolutions” by systematically examining the approach taken by a wide range of thinkers to explaining the causes, outcomes, and content of the French, English, Dutch, and other revolutions. Through far reaching research and comprehensive analysis, Davidson demonstrates that what's at stake is far from a stale issue for the history books – understanding these struggles of the past offer far reaching lessons for today's radicals.-----------------------------------

PRAISE FOR HOW REVOLUTIONARY WERE THE BOURGEOIS REVOLUTIONS?

“Neil Davidson wends his way through the jagged terrain of a wide range of Marxist writings and debates to distil their lessons in what is unquestionably the most thorough discussion of the subject to date. If the paradox at the heart of the bourgeois revolutions was that the emergence of the modern bourgeois state had little to do with the agency of the bourgeoisie, then Davidson’s study is by far the most nuanced and illuminating discussion of this complex fact. A brilliant and fascinating book, wide-ranging and lucidly written.”
—Jairus Banaji, author, Theory as History

“[This] is a monumental work. Neil Davidson has given us what is easily the most comprehensive account yet of the ‘life and times’ of the concept of ‘bourgeois revolution’ … This would have been enough. However, Davidson has also provided us with a refined set of theoretical tools for understanding the often complex interactions between political revolutions which overturn state institutions and social revolutions which involve a more thorough-going transformation of social relations.”
—Colin Mooers, author, The Making of Bourgeois Europe
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NEIL DAVIDSON teaches at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow where he is the Vice-President of the local University and College Union branch. He is the author of The Origins of Scottish Nationhood (2000), Discovering the Scottish Revolution (2003), for which he was awarded the Deutscher Memorial Prize, and also co-edited Alasdair MacIntyre's Engagement With Marxism (2008) and Neoliberal Scotland (2010). Davidson is on the Editorial Board of International Socialism.
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ISBN: 978-1-60846-067-0 / $32 / Paperback / 813 pages
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