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From International Socialism, No.56, March 1973, p.26.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The Socialist Register 1972
Ralph Miliband and John Saville
Merlin Press, £1.20.
Reviewing the 1971 edition, I said that it was ‘as always, something of a ragbag of assorted topics and standpoints without any central axis of political commitment.’ This is even more true of the ninth (1972) issue. Does this matter? It wouldn’t, and the Register would be a more useful publication, if there was some real debate, some argument about issues of importance to the movement. There isn’t. Reformists and revolutionaries (or semi-revolutionaries), ‘Third Worldists’ and Marxists, Stalinists and anti-Stalinists; all cosily co-exist, each in his allotted slot. There is a mutual amnesty on criticism. And, so, without either a political line or a .focus of debate, the Register meanders on. Does it now fulfill any real purpose?
Perhaps the editors have their doubts. They used to feature as contributors in each issue. Neither has had an article in the last two numbers. The editors’ preface disappeared after 1970. The contributions are tending to be longer, fewer and more academic (16 in 1970, 12 in ’71, 10 in ’72). It is possibly significant that the Register now appears at the end of each year instead of the beginning, as it once did. At any rate 1972 volume is pretty timeless. Kiernan on Gramsci, entertaining, like all Kiernan’s writing, but evasive; Meszaros on ideology, 44 pages to tell us that there is no impartial social science; and Arblaster on liberal and socialist values – all smell very much of the study and not at all of the massive class struggles of recent years. Rent Strikes – ‘Direct Action the Working Class’, apparently a concession to contemporary events, turns out to be an academic theses (‘our thanks are due to our fellow students on the MSc sociology course at LSE 1969-70 who planned and carried out the survey ...’)
Then we have a piece of ‘two nations’ claptrap from the Irish Communist Organisation stable. A reply might be suitably entitled ‘Left-Wing’ Orangeism – A Senile Disorder. Dear old Peter Worsley extols the revolutionary virtues of the lumpenproletariat, exposing in passing the ‘inaccurate and confusing’ ideas of Marx and Engels on the question. Robin Cohen offers us Analytical Problems and Perspectives – on classes in African societies – only the perspectives are academic, not political (‘we would make a plea for a minimalist definition of class’).
Finally there are two interesting, if politically misguided, pieces on South Africa and Chinese foreign policy, and a serious and substantial article by Hilary and Steven Rose on Radicalisation of Science. These last contributions apart, there has been a sorry decline.
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Last updated on 29.6.2008