Bülent Gökay and Darrell Whitman

At the conclusion of his widely popular 1987 study of the global political economy, titled The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, England-born and Oxford-trained Yale historian Paul Kennedy observed, "The task facing American statesmen over the next decades . . . is to recognize that broad trends are under way, and that there is a need to 'manage' affairs so that the relative erosion of the United States' position takes place slowly and smoothly" (Kennedy, 1989: 534). In chronicling the decline of the US as a global power, Kennedy compared measures of US economic health, such as its levels of industrialisation and growth of real gross national product (GDP), against those of Europe, Russia, and Japan. What he found was a shift in the global political economy over the last 50 years generated by underlying structural changes in the organisation of its financial and trading systems.

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 Pratyush Chandra

If we have to name a single industry prototypical of post-second world war capitalism, which to a large extent defined the nature and range of economic activities in this period, the choice would undoubtedly be the automobile industry. With the financial crisis finally taking its toll over this industry (especially the Detroit Three – GM, Chrysler and Ford), the crisis has almost acquired a general character. The most interesting aspect of this long impending collapse in the automobile industry is its bearing for the industrial regime that will evolve out of the present crisis – this will largely depend on the balance between the forces (classes and their agencies) which will see through this process of restructuring. The bailout package has already been declared and it aims to completely disarm the workers, that too with the assent of their own unions.

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 Pothik Ghosh

Jason Lutes, Berlin (Book 1): City of Stones, Drawn & Quarterly, Montreal (2001, Reprinted 2009) & Berlin (Book 2): City of Smoke, Drawn & Quarterly, Montreal (2008) 

Jason Lutes begins at the beginning. The encounter between a man and a woman in a railway carriage with which the first book of his graphic-novel trilogy opens is an archetype. And yet the manner in which it unfolds into the larger narrative of Berlin - the third part of which is yet to appear and which is currently made up of City of Stones and City of Smoke respectively - serves to brush it against its own banal grain. One does not, however, need to get to the middle of Lutes’ yarn about Berlin in the twilight years of the Weimar Republic to figure that such a stock opening has not been forced upon the artist by an imagination overwhelmed and exhausted by the stereotypes of mass culture.

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 S Sivasegaram

By early 2006, the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) had decided to embark on a military course to deal with the Tamil Tigers (LTTE) and was pushed hard in that direction by its extreme chauvinist partners. The build-up for war was nevertheless on between 2002 and 2005 when the ceasefire was effective and even as peace talks continued into 2003. The then prime minister, Ranil Wickramasinghe, claimed credit a year ago for weakening the LTTE by engineering a split (with help from the US) in 2004, and some months ago for purchasing most of the military hardware, with which the GoSL successfully fought the war, between 2002 and 2004. The LTTE too armed itself during the time but did not anticipate the brutal force with which the GoSL would pursue the war and the line-up of international forces against it.

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 Saurobijay Sarkar 

The Spanish Revolution, which spanned the years between 1935 and 1939, will remain a historic event, glorious for the heroic sacrifice of the Communists and other left-wing parties, the struggle of the International Brigade against Fascism. There is, of course, another side to it. And that is the story of some contradictions that dogged the anti-fascist movement. A story that has, for most parts, been left untold. For a more truthful and unbiased assessment of the role of the Communist International (Comintern) and the international Communist movement all available information needs to be thrown open.

The Popular Front policy, scripted by the Comintern secretary-general George Dimitrov and endorsed by Josef Stalin, was preceded by the “third period”, or the ultra-left period of the Comintern.  The Popular Front thesis was in sharp contrast to the new colonial, or shall we say deionization, thesis at the Sixth Congress (1928) of the Comintern –“Revolutionary Movement in the Colonies and Semi-colonies”. Introduced by Otto Kuusinen, under Stalin’s diktat, the thesis said the colonial bourgeoisie in India had gone over to imperialism and had no progressive role left to play. This was a drift from Lenin’s Theses on the National and Colonial Questions at the Second Congress of Comintern (1920). But we need to remember that Lenin correctly insisted on the temporary alliance with sections of the national bourgeoisie in colonies, while at the same time emphasizing on the independence of the proletariat. The Popular Front (PF) policy in Spain crossed the border of this temporary alliance, when Spanish Communists under the directive of the Comintern, which had by then became an instrumentality for Soviet Foreign policy, advocated the formation of a government with a section of the bourgeoisie, and thus subordinated proletarian independence to “democracy”. Moreover, the thesis of stagiest revolution, which states that in a backward country proletarian revolution cannot succeed, played a key role here.

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 Lars T. Lih

Hugo Chávez, President of Venezuela, has just announced on Venezuelan television that the next time he meets with President Barack Obama, he will give the American head of state a short book written in 1902 by one Lenin, entitled What Is to Be Done? (Chto delat’?).

A surprising announcement. The last time Chávez showed his willingness to fill out Obama’s reading list, he gave him a topical book on the situation in Latin America. But what topical interest can be found in a book over a century old, written under the drastically alien circumstances of tsarist Russia? Besides, many of us will remember being taught about this book in a poli sci or history class. Isn’t What Is to Be Done? a ‘blueprint for Soviet tyranny’? Isn’t this the book in which Lenin expressed his contempt for workers - or, in any event, his worry that the workers would never be sufficiently revolutionary? These worries, so we are told, led Lenin to advocate a party of ‘professional revolutionaries’ from the intelligentsia that would replace a genuine democratic mass movement. All in all, isn’t What Is to Be Done? something of an embarrassment for the Left - a book much better forgotten than thrust into the hands of world leaders?

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 Neshat Quaiser

Following is the text of a conversation contained in a total of twelve letters exchanged electronically in January- February 2005 between Neshat Quaiser, Ahmad and Satish Saberwal. Out of twelve letters – seven by Quaiser, two by Ahmad and three are by Saberwal. The text ultimately turns out to be Quaiser’s response in major part to some of the issues raised by Ahmad and Saberwal. Ahmad’s e-mail spellings have been changed to normal and his full name is not given for his unwillingness. Certain explanations have been added in Quaiser’s responses.

Neshat Quaiser (to Ahmad)

I am glad you got the book. Bi Amma’s incident I just shared with you, something that I recently encountered, was a horrible experience telling what kind of scholarship is this that somebody is pursuing a PhD on Indian Muslim nationalism after completing an M. Phil on the related area from JNU, and has not even heard of Bi Amma’s name. 

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 Pothik Ghosh  

This is not a practical joke. Something really outrageous has happened. The overwhelming victory of the Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) in the 15th Lok Sabha elections has meant an unqualified triumph for the sangh parivar’s ideological agenda. Of course, if one were to look for the emergence of an electoral centre consonant with such an ideological triumph – as the one symbolised by the Congress in the first two-and-a-half decades of Independence – one would find nothing to substantiate this. The BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA) is, with regard to the UPA, the second-largest coalition by far. One cannot, therefore, be faulted for dismissing the above claim as a product of an exaggeratedly apocalyptic imagination that loves to poop a glorious party.

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 Anjan Chakrabarti

The scale of defeat of the Left Front in West Bengal can hardly be underestimated. We are not merely talking about quantity here; this after all is its first election defeat in 32 years. Left Front’s aura of invincibility and the authority that flows from it has collapsed. For me this election is historic for producing this momentous break in the psychic relation between the people and the Left Front. The Law of the Father is gone and so are the respect, fear and anxiety that went with it; the mass, including even the opposition, is taking time to come to terms with this realisation. Whether the Left Front can recover or not from this debacle is a long-term question, but no matter what happens, from now on, its existence and electoral fortunes will be vulnerable in the same way as those of the other parties.

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 Debkumar Mitra

Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins, Biology Under the Influence: Dialectical Essays on Ecology, Agriculture, and Health, Monthly Review Press, New York/Aakar Books, New Delhi, 2009, Price: Rs 395

At the beginning of the last century, despite the advent of Darwin, practice of science became a tool of exploitation in the capitalist world. The very idea of science as an enterprise in search of the ‘ultimate, unadulterated truth’ gave it an Ur human status and capitalism recognised its power in the early days of Industrial Revolution in England. Science through its mirror technology attained the status of the saviour of human race and powered its way through the entire gamut of liberal education and got institutionalised as an academy of truth. This was too juicy an offer for capitalism in its nascent stage to ignore. And without effective resistance or little intervention it became one of the most powerful sources of exploitation. Everyone was still doing science but its fruits were enjoyed by Manchester cotton barons.

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