Notebooks voor Studie en Research

De Notebooks voor Studie en Research behandelen eigentijdse thema's van historisch of theoretisch belang voor de arbeidersbeweging en het maatschappelijk verzet tegen onrecht en discriminatie in het algemeen. Zij besteden in het bijzonder aandacht aan de conferenties, lezingen en de vormingsactiviteiten van het Internal Institute for Research and Education (IIRE) georganiseerd in Amsterdam, Manilla en Islamabad. Het IIRE werd in 1982 opgericht door de marxistische economist en politieke activist Ernest Mandel. Meer dan 50 Notebooks verschenen in het Engels. Vanaf 1998 wordt er samengewerkt met uitgevers in Londen. Diverse notebooks verschenen in andere talen. Boeken kunnen worden besteld via deze site, per e-mail () of door te schrijven naar IIRE, Lombokstraat 40, 1094 AL, Amsterdam.  

World Bank/IMF/WTO: The Free-Market Fiasco

Susan George, Michel Chossudovsky et al.

IIRE Notebook for Study and Research no. 24/25 (116 pp.) [OUT OF PRINT]

 The International Monetary Fund, World Bank and World Trade Organization have managed to impose neo-liberal policies on virtually the entire world. The 16 authors of the anthology IMF/World Bank/WTO: The Free-Market Fiasco explain how the IMF and World Bank prevail on governments to sacrifice their inhabitants' health, education and nutrition in order to funnel money to Western banks. Despite rhetoric about 'ecologically sustainable development' and 'social safety nets', pressure to respect 'intellectual property rights' and devote 'everything to export' is pushing the Third World deeper into dependency. Nowhere have these policies slowed global impoverishment: neither in the disaster area that is Africa; nor in Latin America, where the 'lost decade' of the 1980s still drags on; nor in the ruins of Russia's half-dismantled economy.


IMF/World Bank/WTO: The Free-Market Fiasco raises disturbing questions about how unelected institutions are pre-empting democratic decision-making. Its aims are to inform, analyze, provoke thought and discussion, and increase awareness of international initiatives that advance democratic alternatives.

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Lean Production - A Capitalist Utopia?

Tony Smith

IIRE Notebook for Study and Research no. 23 (68 pp. €2.75, £2, $3.25)

Sample ImageAre innovative ways of organizing production and marketing eliminating antagonisms between capital and labour, between producers and consumers, and between different companies? Does 'lean production' unite companies, workers and consumers in the harmonious pursuit of common interests? In Lean Production: A Capitalist Utopia?, Tony Smith explains how lean production is transforming many of the earlier, 'Fordist' ways of organizing the economy. He examines changing relationships between employers and employees, between producers and consumers, and between different firms. In the end he concludes that the real changes brought about by lean production do not alter the exploitative, alienating and anarchic character of capitalism. A socialist economy based on grassroots participation and democratic coordination, he suggests, could match the dynamism of lean production while keeping lean production's broken promises of cooperation and harmony.


Tony Smith is professor of philosophy at Iowa State University and advisory editor of the magazine Against the Current. His books include The Logic of Marx's 'Capital'.

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Do the Workers Have a Country?

José Iriarte 'Bikila'

IIRE Notebook for Study and Research no. 16 (48pp. €2.75, £2, $3.25)

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 Marxism has contributed much to the understanding of the national question: its class dynamics, its relationship to internationalism, its political importance and the importance of the slogan of self-determination. Lenin's role in this was particularly significant. But José Iriarte 'Bikila' thinks we should also take other theorists into account, like the Austro-Marxist Otto Bauer and the Irish socialist and patriot James Connolly. Above all, it is important to re-examine a number of issues in the light of contemporary experience. In what circumstances can there be a fusion of Marxist and nationalist traditions? What is the particularity of an oppressed nation in advanced capitalist Europe? Should the borders of a radical left party necessarily be the same as those of the existing states? What is the present significance of independence?

José lriarte 'Bikila' was born in 1945. His thinking on the national question has drawn on his personal involvement and intimate knowledge of the struggle of the Basque people. In 1964 he joined the ranks of the pro-independence organization ETA, leaving in 1973 as part of a current that took part in a regroupment of the radical left. In 1991 he helped found the independent Basque revolutionary organization Zutik.

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From the PCI to the PDS

Livio Maitan

IIRE Notebook for Study and Research no. 15 (48pp. €2.75, £2, $3.25)

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 In 1991 the Italian Communist Party completed its long process of social-democratization. For many years the PCI was proud of its 'communist identity' and even of its 'diversity' in the context of the national political system and the European left. For several decades it was not only the main force of the Italian workers' movement but also the biggest Communist party in the capitalist West. But at its last congress in Rimini it abandoned its historic name and took that of the Democratic Party of the Left (PDS). At the end of such an itinerary a balance sheet is necessary. In From the PCI to the PDS, Livio Maitan looks at some key moments in PCI history and underlines the problems and contradictions that prepared the conditions for its final turn.

Livio Maitan, born in Venice in 1923, has been active in the ltalian workers' movement since the beginning of the Second World War. A national organizer of the Socialist Youth at the Liberation, he broke with social democracy in 1947. Since 1991 he has been in the leadership of the Party of Communist Refoundation. He has taught sociology at the University of Rome and translated and introduced almost all the ltalian editions of Trotsky's writings. His works in English include Party, Army and Masses in China (1976).

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The Gulf War and the New World Order

André Gunder Frank and Salah Jaber

IIRE Notebook for Study and Research no. 14 (72pp. €2.75, £2, $3.25) 

 The Gulf War and the New World Order provides thorough analyses of the Gulf War from the invasion of Kuwait (August 1990) to the aftermath of operation 'Desert Storm' ( January/February 1991). It examines the war's meaning for the Third World and gives detailed assessments of Western policies and the changing scene in the Middle East.

André Gunder Frank has taught anthropology, economics, history, political science and sociology at universities in Europe, North America and Latin America. He became known especially through his book Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America (1967), which sold over 120,000 copies in nine languages. His recent work has been in the fields of world system history, contemporary international political economy and social movements. His books include World Accumulation 1492-1789 and Resistance in the World System: Capitalist Accumulation, State Policy, Social Movements (with Marta Fuentes Frank). Salah Jaber was active on the left in Lebanon until 1983. He has written often on the Middle East for publications such as International Viewpoint (in English), Inprecor (in French) and Al-Mitraqa (in Arabic).

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The Spanish Civil War in Euzkadi and Catalonia 1936-39

Miguel Romero

IIRE Notebook for Study and Research no. 13 (48pp. €2.75, £2, $3.25)

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 In The Spanish Civil War in Euzkadi and Catalonia, Miguel Romero questions conventional history and tries to look at it from the point of view of the defeated and oppressed. This starting point makes it possible for him to show that the defeat of the revolutionaries in the republican camp (particularly in Catalonia in spring 1937) paved the way for Franco's victory. The originality of his study is the way in which it integrates the national question into its analysis of the civil war. In the Basque country and in Catalonia, defence of the republic, working-class mobilization and the anti-fascist struggle took place in different and specific national contexts. Romero develops a comparative analysis of the civil war in the two countries. He notes that the shared tragic conclusion to the conflicts should not hide the very different dynamic of the social and political forces in the two situations.

Miguel Romero was born in 1945 in Melilla, Spanish Morocco, and began his political activity during the Franco dictatorship between 1966 and 1971 as a member of the Popular Liberation Front. He was later editor of the radical fortnightly Combate.

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The Bourgeois Revolutions

Robert Lochhead

IIRE Notebook for Study and Research no. 11/12 (72pp. €6, £3.75, $6)

 The current political relevance of the history of past revolutions is revealed in the ongoing polemics over the meaning of the French revolution of 1789 and the English revolution of 1640-60. The comparative study of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century revolutions is also indispensable to analyzing the particularities of the various Western European states to which these revolutions gave birth. It is a necessary reference point, finally, for the study of revolutions in the Third World. The idea that they were 'bourgeois revolutions' is central to the Marxist analysis of contemporary society. Robert Lochhead's study presents their general features and examines two case studies (the Low Countries and England) in depth to illustrate the complexity of the classes, parties and leaders who made these revolutions. It concludes with an overview of various interpretations of the nature of these revolutions, showing the diversity of the Marxist tradition in this regard.

Robert Lochhead was born in 1950 in Bern, Switzerland. He teaches biology and has been an activist in the public services union and a city councillor elected on the Socialist Alternative/Green slate in Nyon, Switzerland. He is the author of many articles published in the newspaper La Brèche, notably on ecology.

 

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Marxism and Liberation Theology

Michael Löwy

IIRE Notebook for Study and Research no. 10 (40pp €3.25, £2, $3.25)

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 The emergence of revolutionary Christianity and liberation theology in Latin America opened a new chapter and posed exciting new questions. In Marxism and Liberation Theology, Michael Löwy argues that these developments demand a renewal of the Marxist analysis of religion. One of the best illustrations of this observation is the following dialogue, reported by Frei Betto, between himself and the police officer in charge of his interrogation under the Brazilian dictatorship: 'How can a Christian collaborate with a communist?' 'For me, men are not divided into believers and atheists, but between oppressors and oppressed, between those who want to keep this unjust society and those who want to struggle for justice.' 'Have you forgotten that Marx considered religion to be the opium of the people?' 'It is the bourgeoisie which has turned religion into an opium of the people by preaching a God, lord of the heavens only, while taking possession of the earth for itself.'

Born in 1938 in São Paulo, Brazil, Michael Löwy has lived in Paris since 1969, where he is now director of research in sociology at the National Centre for Scientific Research. One of the most versatile Marxist intellectuals of our time, he has been widely published in English and French (as well as Spanish, French, Portuguese, Italian, Turkish, Japanese, etc.). His books in English include: The Marxism of Che Guevara (1971), Georg Lukács: From Romanticism to Bolshevism (1978), The Politics of Uneven and Combined Development: The Theory of Permanent Revolution (1981), On Changing the World: Essays in Political Philosophy from Karl Marx to Walter Benjamin (1993), The War of Gods: Religion and Politics in Latin America (1996), and the IIRE Notebook Fatherland or Mother Earth? (1998).

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The Formative Years of the Fourth International (1933-38)

Daniel Bensaïd

IIRE Notebook for Study and Research no. 9 (48 pp. €2.75, £2, $3.25)

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 A new problem was posed to the movement for socialist democracy in the 1930s. To its fight against capitalism, it now had to add a fight against Stalinist bureaucracy in the USSR. In The Formative Years of the Fourth International, Daniel Bensaïd outlines the arguments that led part of this movement to found an independent international organization. He unravels the historical reasons, conjunctural prognoses and organizational choices behind the decision, showing in particular that the foundation of the Fourth International in 1938 concluded a prolonged attempt to regroup many anti-Stalinist, anti-fascist and anti-imperialist currents, beginning in 1933. Due to the concrete conditions of the 1930s, however, the regroupment failed to broaden the Fourth Internationalist current significantly.

Daniel Bensaïd was born in 1946. He was active in the French student and anti-imperialist movements that led up to May 1968. Drawing the lessons of the failure of the general strike, he emerged as one of the main advocates of building an independent radical left. He is an IIRE Fellow and teaches sociology at the University of Paris. His many published works include: Portugal: la révolution en marche (1975), Mai si! rebelles et repentis (with Alain Krivine, 1988), Le pari mélancolique (1997) and Les irréductibles: théorèmes de la résistance à l'air du temps (2001).

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Populism in Latin America

Adolfo Gilly, Helena Hirata, Michael Löwy , Carlos Vilas and the PRT (Argentina)

IIRE Notebook for Study and Research no. 6 (40 pp. €3.25, £2, $3.25)

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 In most Latin American countries, workers have not formed independent political parties and trade unions. During much of the twentieth century large sections of the worker and peasant masses remained attached to populist parties, which at one point governed half the countries of the continent. But populist regimes' vulnerability to military coups, their inability to stop the drain of the foreign debt and the collapse of the 'economic miracles' they had presided over shook their power in one country after another. Many populist parties have subsequently sought closer links with the Socialist International. What kind of future is open to these parties in or after the triumph of democracy and neoliberalism in Latin America? The essays in Populism in Latin America analyze what made populism attractive and made its rule possible in three main countries of Latin America, and provide a basis for considering its future.

Adolfo Gilly is author of The Mexican Revolution, widely acclaimed as a major Marxist historical work. Helena Hirata is a Marxist sociologist and member of the Brazilian Workers Party. Michael Löwy is director of research in sociology at France's National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) and an IIRE Fellow. Carlos M. Vilas is an independent Argentinian Marxist and former economic adviser to the Nicaraguan Sandinista government. The Argentinian PRT (Revolutionary Workers Party) pamphlet was written in 1972-73, at a time when the party was led by people like Roberto Santucho and Daniel Pereyra and embodied their generation's identification with the Cuban revolution.

 

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Class Struggle and Technological Innovation in Japan since 1945

Muto Ichiyo

IIRE Notebook for Study and Research no. 5 (48 pp. €2.75, £2, $3.25)

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In the 1980s, free enterprise ideologues often presented Japan as a model of social harmony and economic dynamism. The essays included in this Notebook describe the real situation of postwar Japanese workers and unravel the mechanisms of the apparent Japanese consensus, in many cases akin to authoritarian suppression of independent thinking. Moto Ichiyo explains how the strategic choices made by the labour movement in the 1950s and '60s laid the basis for the later rightward shift. In the framework of a Marxist analysis, he deals in original and dialectical fashion with the changing relations between the US and Japan, the links between the Liberal Democratic Party and the masses, and the effects of Japanese-style rationalization (gorika) on workers' power on the shop floor.

Moto Ichiyo is a collaborator of the English-language periodical AMPO: Japan-Asia Quarterly. As both participant in and witness of the rise, decline and crisis of the Japanese New Left, he has written many articles about the situation in Japan: the politics of the regime, various popular struggles and the labour movement.

 

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Revolutionary Strategy Today

Daniel Bensaïd

IIRE Notebook for Study and Research no. 4 (36 pp. €3.25, £2, $3.25)

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 Since the rise of capitalism, socialists have faced certain deep-seated obstacles: the hostility of the bourgeois state, the fitful curve of proletarian class-consciousness, and the inertia or active opposition of apparatuses originally built by the workers for struggle. Daniel Bensaïd reviews the answers to these problems given in the 'classical' period of the Marxist movement. He then examines them in light of events in Southern Europe and Latin America in the 1960s and 1970s, including the growth and diversification of the state, growing aspirations to self-management, multiple forms of dual power and the experience of left reformist governments.

Daniel Bensaïd was born in 1946. He was active in the French student and anti-imperialist movements that led up to May 1968. Drawing the lessons of the failure of the general strike, he emerged as one of the main advocates of building an independent radical left. He taught sociology at the University of Paris and was an IIRE Fellow until his death in 2010. His many published works include: Portugal: la révolution en marche (1975), Mai si! rebelles et repentis (with Alain Krivine, 1988), Le pari mélancolique (1997) and Les irréductibles: théorèmes de la résistance à l'air du temps (2001) and Strategies of Resistance (2009).

 

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