In the last issue of International we promised to report regularly to our readers on new books of interest. As this is the first issue of the new year, we will start with a brief summary of radical publishing in the second half of 1979.
While most of these books come from socialist publishing houses, several established capitalist firms still seem to find left-wing titles a lucrative area. With so many new products around you might have missed some of these:
On Trotsky: The works of Ernest Mandel, Trotsky (New Left Books, £2.95), and Duncan Hallas, Trotsky's Marxism (Pluto Press, £2.50), are discussed in depth elsewhere in the reviews section. Hutchinson published a serious biographical study by Ronald Segal, entitled The Tragedy of Leon Trotsky (£12.50, cloth), but it adds little to Isaac Deutscher's trilogy and is marred by major political weaknesses. Segal fails to discuss any of Trotsky's political contributions of the 1930s — the Fourth International warrants one page! However, our latest information is that Penguin may publish this book in paperback in 1980. New Park has begun a five volume collection of Trotsky's Military Writings. The first tome is £10, paperback.
On Gramsci: Quartet published a selection of Letters from Prison (£3.95), while Lawrence & Wishart, who have done most to make Gramsci's writings available in English, brought out a short work by the Italian Communist Party's foremost historian, Paolo Spriano; it is entitled An[illegible] Years (£6.95, cloth).
On Lukács: Just before Christmas, Merlin Press published part three of Lukács's Ontology. Its title is Work (£1.80). In November NLB published Michael Löwy's study Georg Lukács — From Romanticism to Bolshevism (£10.50, cloth). Despite its price, it is an excellent contribution to the understanding of Lukács. Meanwhile, in December Pluto brought out The Young Lukács, by Andrew Arato and Paul Breines, two of the editors of the American magazine Telos. This work examines the genesis of Lukács's History and Class Consciousness and its impact during the thirties.
On Sartre: For those interested in the work of French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, two new interpretations are available. Istvan Mészáros has written a first volume, The Work of Sartre: Search for Freedom (Harvester Press, £4.95), while Mark Poster has elaborated on Sartre's Marxism (Pluto, £2.95). The latter is part of a series that has already considered Althusser, Gramsci, and Trotsky. In this volume Poster critically examines one of Sartre's most influential [illegible].
[illegible] State, by Ian Gough (Macmillan £4.95), duly appeared, sold out, and was reprinted. Here Gough develops the positions that have been debated so hotly in the Conference of Socialist Economists (CSE) and [illegible]. In the same series Macmillan also published Norman Ginsburg's Class Capital and Social Policy (£4.95), which explains, through an analysis of the development of housing and social security, how social policies introduced in response to working-class pressure have been used to further the interests of the ruling class. Lesley Doyal's Political Economy of Health (£4.95) has received quite a favourable response. She traces in detail the expansion of capitalist medicine, its centrality to the maintenance of a health labour force and as a form of social control and capital accumulation; and the abject failure of imperialism to come to grips with world health problems. SWP member Dave Widgery has written a popular account of the present crisis in the Health Service, called Health in Danger (Macmillan Crisis Points, £3.95). The CSE is expanding its publishing venture, and the two most recent books produced are a collection on Value edited by Diane Elson, which attempts to resolve some of the differences over Marx's theory of value, and Struggle over the State, by the CSE's state apparatus and expenditure group. Both are paperback, at £2.50 each. The CSE, along with the National Deviancy Conference, held a conference in January 1979 on Capitalism and the Rule of Law. The papers have been published by Hutchinson Education, at £3.95.
Two works on Capital have recently appeared. The first is Reading Capital Politically (Harvester £3.95), by Harry Cleaver, and the second is Rereading Capital, by Ben Fine and Laurence Harris (Macmillan £3.50). Ink Links has made available in English for the first time Rubin's magnum opus, A History of Economic Thought (£5.95). Rubin, one of the foremost Soviet economists in the twenties, disappeared into the Stalinist camps in the following decade.
Finally at two extremes of the publishing spectrum there are the latest CIS report, The Wealthy (85p), and Professor Peter Townsend's massive Poverty in the United Kingdom (Penguin £7.95).
Four quite different autobiographies relating to East European themes have recently appeared. The Russian Enigma (Ink Links £5.95) is now available in English for the first time, both in its complete form and in paperback. The author, Ante Ciliga, was a member of the Politburo of the Yugoslav Communist Party and became an oppositionist in the twenties and thirties; his book vividly recounts life in the camps. Similar insights, but of a more recent period, are to be found in No Jail for Thought, by Lev Kopelev (Penguin £1.50). Also from Ink Links came Child of the Revolution (£4.95). The author, Wolfgang Leonhard, broke with Stalinism in 1949 and here recounts his experience of life in the USSR in the 1930s and 1940s. Finally, Andrew Rothstein, a former Communist Party member, has written a documentary study of Douglas Young, the British Consul at Archangel in 1919 and surely the only British diplomat to publicly oppose British participation in the attack on the Bolshevik revolution. The story is told in When Britain invaded Soviet Russia (Journeyman £2.75). Of more contemporary interest, Merlin has published Samizdat Register III (£3), and Allison and Busby, Fisera's Workers Councils in Czechoslovakia (£3.95). Zed Press's expanding list of titles pertaining to the Third World continued with Palestinians: From Peasants to Revolutionaries (£2.95), by Rosemary Sayigh, which studies the life of the Palestinians in the camps of Lebanon. Also worth noting is that Nathan Weinstock's excellent Zionism: False Messiah (Ink Links £4.95) has now appeared in paperback for the first time.
Three important works on art and culture have appeared in paperback: Dave Laing's Marxist Theory of Art (Harvester £3.95); John Willett's excellent study on popular culture in Weimar Germany, The New Sobriety (Thames and Hudson £4.95), providing a wealth of detail about working-class art, theatre, film, and writing in Europe during the twenties and thirties; and a second edition of the work on Rodchenko published by the Oxford Museum of Modern Art (£4.95). The latter, designed by David King, is a heavily illustrated collection of one of the most important influences on early Soviet culture. But beware, the second edition contains some omissions as compared to the first — among them the photomontage of Trotsky! Media, Politics and Culture, edited by Carl Gardner (Macmillan £3.95), is a collection of articles taken from a series of forums organised by IMG media workers.
Finally, Socialist Register, the annual from Merlin Press (£3), continues the discussion on the history of the SWP with a reply from Ian Birchall to last year's critique by Martin Shaw. Revolutionary Marxism Today (NLB £2.95) is a stimulating and often controversial collection of interviews with Ernest Mandel concerning the gamut of problems facing revolutionaries today. A few [illegible] (£1.95) is a must; [illegible].
Back in print
Readers will no doubt have had the trying experience of finding that a desired book is out of print. Many titles reappear without much notice and slip back on the shelves. Here are some recent ones:
Mandel, An Introduction to Marxism (previously called From Class Society to Communism) (Ink Links £2.50).
Milton, John Maclean (Pluto £3.50). Biography by his daughter.
Laurie, Beneath the City Streets (Granada £1.95). Brilliant account of civil defence in Britain.
Firestone, The Dialectic of Sex (Feminist Press £2.50). Very important early feminist work.
Farrell, The Orange State (Pluto £5.95). The history of Ireland since 1918.
Berger, Art and Revolution, Permanent Red, The Foot of Clive, A Painter of our Time, and Corkers Freedom. Writers & Readers Cooperative, of which Berger is a member, have republished virtually all his work.
Trotsky, History of the Russian Revolution (Pluto £7.95). The classic work.
PLUTO PRESS: An updated version of [illegible] The Making of Marx's Capital, in paperback at £4.95.
The following are a small selection of some of the radical titles you can expect to see in the bookshops in the next months:
Allison and Busby: Socialism, Democracy and Self Management (£3.95). A collection of essays by former Secretary of the Fourth International Michel Raptis (Pablo).
Ink Links: Divided Nation, Divided Class (£3.50). A collection on Ireland edited by Austen Morgan and Bob Purdie. Also: Theses, Resolutions and Manifestos of the First Four Congresses of the Third International (£16 cloth).
Lawrence & Wishart: Capitalism, Crisis and Inflation, by Bob Rowthorne, and Gramsci and the State, by French Communist Party dissident intellectual Christine Buci-Glucksmann. Both cloth, the latter £14.
NEW LEFT BOOKS: Aesthetics and Politics, previously in cloth, is due out in paperback, but NLB's most important title will be Perry Anderson's reply to E.P. Thompson's The Poverty of Theory. Anderson's eagerly awaited response will be put directly into paperback (£3.95).
VIRAGO: Cathy Porter has written a detailed biography of Alexandra Kollontai, which will soon be out in paperback at £4.95.
WOMENS PRESS: They celebrate their second birthday with a new novel by Marge Piercy called Vida (£4.95); among their later offerings are The Transsexual Empire (£2.95), by Janice Raymond.
WRITERS & READERS: Continue the beginners series with Trotsky. The cartoons are by Phil Evans, the text by Tariq Ali. Also promised is a new collection of essays from John Berger entitled About Looking (£5.95 cloth).