Questions to the ideological leaders of Marxmail

Some serious questions to the ideological leaders of the Marxmail club in the light of the sweeping defeat of the conservative government in Australia and the election of a Labor government

Bob Gould

By now you may be aware of, although you have not commented at any length on, the defeat of Bush’s surviving Iraq war ally, John Howard, the conservative prime minister of Australia, and his xenophobic, racist, anti-trade-union Liberal Party. Surely this development is worthy of comment.

The weather gods were kind and no DSP split is immediately indicated

Bob Gould  at 11:07 pm on Sunday, January 21, 2007

Rehosted from Leftwrites

In the first week in January the DSP held a four-day summer school in a college at Sydney University. The venue was not widely advertised and I turned up with a certain amount of trepidation in light of the recent unpleasant incident on the Green Left discussion list when an unreconstructed Stalinist accused me of being an agent provocateur, and there was no adequate response from the people running the Green Left list.

Labor Tribune and left discussion

Reply to Bob Gould

Marcus Strom
Editor, Labor Tribune

Dear Bob,

Thanks for the warm welcome you extend to Labor Tribune. In these bleak times for Marxists, revolutionary socialists, communists and radicals of various stripe, voices of camaraderie are welcome.

Labor Tribune and left discussion

An open letter to Marcus Strom

Bob Gould

Dear Marcus,

Congratulations on the efforts of you and your associaties in developing a website. As you’ll see from the link we’ve put up on Ozleft, in the view of Ed Lewis and myself your site will be a useful addition to socialist discussion in Australia.

Free trade and Marxism

Bob Gould

It’s nice to know that Phil Ferguson withdraws the accusation of racism against Michele O’Neill and myself, as a result of Tom O’Lincoln gently chiding him for being a bit over the top. It’s a bit ironic, considering that Ferguson associated my opposition to further reductions in tariffs in the clothing and textile industry with my rejection of, as he puts it (more or less correctly), some parts of Lenin’s theory of imperialism.

A crisis of theory in Marxism

Between right and left: Grigorii Yakovlevich Sokolnikov and the development of the Soviet state, 1921-1929. Samuel A. Oppenheim

Life and works of Evgenii Alekseevich Preobrazhenskii. M.M. Gorinov and S.V. Tsakunov

An introduction to two articles on the 1920s discussion on the economy of the USSR

Bob Gould

The overthrow of the Stalinist regimes in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union brought to a head a crisis in Marxist theory that had been developing for a long time.

Rebuilding Western Marxism

Questions to Jose P

Bob Gould

Jose’s post Abandoning Western Marxism seems like an attempt at a summary political statement by the broad ideological grouping on Marxmail that includes Jose and Louis, and to some extent, Nestor and Lou Paulsen.

United fronts, labour parties and Marxists

A response to Shane Hopkinson

Bob Gould

Shane Hopkinson always adopts a calmer, more comradely tone, in his contributions, than most of his fellow members of the DSP, so I’ll respond similarly.

Herbert Marcuse and Marxism

Robert Langston

The 70 year-old philosopher Herbert Marcuse has passed through three more or less distinct stages in his intellectual development. His earliest works, such as his 1932 essay on the then recently discovered Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of the young Marx show the overpowering influence of his teacher, the German existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger. During the years of exile from Nazi Germany — the 1930s — Marcuse gradually liberated himself from Heidegger’s sway and moved closer to orthodox Marxism, albeit a Marxism with a strong Hegelian bent. This phase culminated in Reason and Revolution (1941), Marcuse’s finest work and possibly the best book on Hegel yet written in English. Here Marcuse sees in the industrial working class the world-transforming “force of negativity”.