The purpose of scientific theory is to correctly interprete the major tendencies in the evolution of social reality, and the revolutionary explosions that every evolution sooner or later comes to. It therefore makes it possible to understand them and to predict the later stages, at least in their general outline. At the same time, such a theory carefully analyses reality, correcting previous statements in the light of facts, while avoiding premature extrapolations and abusive generalisations. To understand reality as a changing whole is the purpose of a theory.
The supreme test of the vitality of revolutionary Marxism is its ability to carry out this theoretical work in the main fields of the changing social reality of our century. This is an unavoidable condition for revolutionary practice to remain unsullied by gross empiricism and short sighted pragmatism, which would condemn it to a succession of at least partial if not catastrophic effects.
After 50 years of the big freeze of Noske, Hitler and Stalin, the creativity of revolutionary Marxism started to take off again at the start of the 1960s. Contrary to its previous flowering, this new rise was no longer focused in central Europe, and Germany and Russia above all.
It became universal. The British, North Americans, French, Italian, Latin American, Asian, Eastern Europe contributions multiplied. Those from Arab countries and Africa started. The plant took root everywhere.
Those who, for a fourth time in a century, had proclaimed the 'death agony' if not the 'death' of Marxism were wrong again. Never have there been so many serious studies of social subjects under the influence of Marxist ideas as there are today. And never have Marxist analyses of such a great scientific and theoretical value, particularly because of their innovative character, appeared in such rapid succession.
This is what has led us to introduce a book reviews section. It expresses an undoubtedly legitimate pride because many of the works to which we refer are the product of our historical current, even if their authors are not always members of the Fourth International. But it is also a necessity. Activists, cadres, revolutionary leaders, with the help of the books we mention, are better placed to understand the reality in which they are active, are better prepared to intervene, are more able to effectively help the fight of the workers, are more capable of building a real revolutionary organisation.
The car revolution
Eisenbahn und Autobahn. Winfried Wolf (Rash & Röhring Verlag; 1987)
This study gives an overall analysis of the revolution provoked first in the United States and then in more and more other regions of the world by the rise of the car industry.
This revolution not only shook up technology, the structure of industry, modes of transport, the psychology of cardrivers (and that of pedestrians!) it has also profoundly changed urbanism, habitat and ecology.
The number of its victims is incalculable. In Japan alone, and just for the period 1966-67, there were 50,000 deaths in road accidents.
For the whole world since the Second World War the figure rises to millions and is hardly less than the total number of deaths in the First World War.
This book by our comrade Winfried, remarkable for its rigour, is based on a mass of empirical facts. He explains what is undoubtedly, alongside the appearance of weapons of mass destruction, the most important shake up of the 20th century, from the transport needs of a regime based on private property and motivated by the search for private profit.
If one takes all the social costs, including those provoked by the poisoning of the atmosphere and its effects on health, the substitution of cars for railways was a disastrous 'mistake' from the point of view of the interests of humanity as a whole. But from the point of view of capitalism it is the best buy of the century.
(Ernest Mandel)
Origins of oppression
Women's work, men's property. Eds Stephanie Coontz and Peta Henderson (Verso, London, 1986)
Six anthropologists, historians and economists from France and North America have studied the question of the origins of women's oppression in prehistory.
How could the sexual division of labour develop within the primitive communist society of the clan. Does the oppression of women have economic roots before the emergence of class society, private property and the family? Is it a function of more general changes, that is, does it reflect a real transition of classless society towards class society? Or are women the first exploited class in the strict sense of the term, that is, is the society characterised by the oppression of women the first form of class society before slave society?
These passionate questions, products of the development of the feminist movement in the last few decades approach frontally a problematic posed by Engels in the classical tradition of Marxism.
The antropologists do not all give the same answers. The discussion continues but this book is an essential contribution which will not be ignored by serious students of the subject.
(EM)
The Jewish question
Judenfrage und Zionismus. Jacob Taut (ISP Verlag, Frankfurt; 1986). Le pain de misère: histoire du mouvement ouvrier juif en Europe. Nathan Weinstock (La Découverte, Paris; 1986)
This work continues the Marxist analysis of the Jewish question from the point at which the now classic work of our comrade Abraham Leon (The Materialist Interpretation of the Jewish Question) stopped, that is the outbreak of the Second World War and the foundation of the state of Israel. Taut is a citizen of this state but, as a coherent internationalist, he rejects this foundation as contrary to the interests of the toiling masses both Jewish (in Palestine and the diaspora) and Arab.
This position, which is that of our current since 1948, has been confirmed. The state of Israel represents a tragic historical dead end for those who escaped the Holocaust and for those born there. Without a freely accepted common life with the Arab masess, there is no future for the Jewish workers of Israel. And this common life could only be won by taking on the defence of the Arab masses of Palestine, who are today oppressed, deprived of national rights, economically super-exploited. This is shown convincingly by Jacob Taut, without falling into the excess of denying the national reality of the Jewish population in Israel and its rights to autonomy and self-administration. Here as well the discussion continues on the precise relationship with the rights and desires of the Palestinians. But most of Jacob Taut's formulations are acceptable for any internationalist Marxist.
While Taut's book takes Abraham Leon's analysis forward into the future, Weinstock delves into the past. He sketches an impressive fresco of the rise of the Jewish workers' movement, which played a role in creating the workers' movement in Russia and Poland (Lenin learnt more from the Jewish Bund than any other workers' grouping).
Its contribution to the creation of the European workers' movement (particularly in Germany) is not forgotten. After this rise was a slow decline which finished in the tragedy of the Holocaust with the physical destruction of 90% of the Jewish proletariat of Europe by the Nazis. This is a classic work which will be point of reference for future historians.
(EM)
Pakistan's future
Can Pakistan survive? Tariq Ali (Penguin, London; 1983)
Of the half-dozen books that Tariq Ali has produced in the last few years, this is by far the most important. It is a durable contribution to understanding the destiny of the Indian sub-continent, a real enriching of Marxism applied to a key country of the 'third world'.
This is also the work of a real revolutionary of remarkable political courage. Tariq's central thesis is not only the intransigent defence of the strategy of the permanent revolution (and not in the sectarian caricature propagated by some) but also, above all, that the creation of Pakistan in 1947 was a mistake from the point of view of the toiling masses, that the partition of India imposed by British imperialism with the help of the Muslim League started a process of Balkanisation which continues. This statement from a Pakistani revolutionary does not make him very popular among the Pakistani petty-bourgeoisie, without mentioning the ruling class. It is easier to defend this thesis in India. But it had already been intuitively felt by the Indian Trotskyists in 1948. History has proved them right.
(EM)