CPGB online bibliography

With the support of the Barry Amiel and Norman Melburn trust, a bibliography of the Communist Party of Great Britain (CPGB) compiled by Dave Cope is now available online.

Cope reports that the bibliography is: “divided into material by and about the Communist Party of Great Britain. While such a bibliography could never be complete, I am confident I have unearthed at least 95% of material published nationally by the CPGB, most local material and the vast majority of key books and many of the articles written about the CPGB. I have tried to see all the items listed – only very occasionally have I failed with Party publications. I have a further list of books and articles I am in the process of researching that will eventually be listed.”

The bibliography can be browsed by index entry or searched by keyword, and can be accessed here: http://www.amielandmelburn.org.uk/cpgb_biblio/searchfrset.htm

Looking For Lukács symposium

Looking For Lukács: A symposium in the School of Social Science, Media and Cultural Studies, University of East London, June 25th 2008 1:00pm - 5:00pm, Room EB.G.11

In an era when the hegemony of capitalism within Western culture appears to be almost unchallengeable, can we afford to ignore one of the greatest critics of capitalism’s fundamental cultural processes? A range of recent and current work to be presented here has taken up the challenge of Györky Lukács, arguably the father of ‘Western Marxism’.

Speakers and Titles

Andrew Hemingway

Totality vs. Reification: The Significance of Romantic Anti-Capitalism in History and Class Consciousness

Andrew Hemingway is Professor in History of Art at University College London. His publications include Artists on the Left: American Artists and the Communist Movement, 1926-1956 (2002) and the edited volume Marxism and the History of Art: From William Morris to the New Left (2006).

Tim Hall

Materialism and Metaphysics: Lukács & Adorno

Tim Hall is senior lecturer in International Politics at the University of East London where he teaches courses on the history of political thought and contemporary political philosophy. He is the co-author of Theories of the Modern State: theories & ideologies (Edinburgh University Press, 2007) with Erika Cudworth and John McGovern and has written various articles and reviews on Critical Social Theory. He is currently working on a book on Adorno and Hegelian Marxism.

Timothy Bewes

How to Escape from Literature: Lukács, Cinema, and The Theory of the Novel

Timothy Bewes is Associate Professor at Brown University. He is the author of Cynicism and Postmodernity (1997) and Reification, or the Anxiety of Late Capitalism (2002), both published by Verso, and is currently working on a book called The Event of Shame: Literature after Colonialism.

Andy Fisher

Allan Sekula’s ‘Novelistic Fantasy’: Lukács, Aesthetic Totality and the Literary Problematisation of Photographic Form.

Andy Fisher is an artist and Lecturer in Visual Cultures at Goldsmiths College. Most recent publication, ‘Beyond Barthes: Rethinking the Phenomenology of Photography’, Radical Philosophy, No. 148, March / April, 2008. Coeditor of Photography and Literature in the Twentieth Century, eds. David Cunningham, Andrew Fisher and Sas Mays, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2005.

Stewart Martin

The art of capital in Lukács

Stewart Martin is a member of the editorial collective, and reviews editor, of Radical Philosophy, and teaches philosophy and art at Middlesex University.

Attendance is free and open to all.

To register email Jeremy Gilbert: J.Gilbert@uel.ac.uk

For transport info: http://www.uel.ac.uk/ssmcs/about/location.htm

Phillip Bonosky: new web resource

Dan Rosenberg of Adelphi University, New York writes: “Phillip Bonosky, native of Duquesne, Pennsylvania, longtime labor organizer, steelworker, Communist, and writer, has opened a new website.”

The site can be accessed here: http://www.phillipbonosky.com.

The Making of a Revolutionary, Otto Wilhelm Kuusinen, 1881-1918

Maurice Carrez, 2008. La Fabrique d’un Revolutionnaire, Otto Wilhelm Kuusinen (1881-1918): Réflexions sur l’engagement politique d’un dirigeant social-démocrate finlandais. (The Making of a Revolutionary, Otto Wilhelm Kuusinen, 1881-1918. Reflections on the Political Engagement of a Finish Social-Democrat Leader). Vol. 1: 466 pages – Vol. 2: 396 pages. ISBN: 2-912025-39-7 - Vol. 1 : 2-912025-40-0 - Vol. 2 : 2-912025-41-9. €40.

Otto Wilhelm Kuusinen is especially known as having been a Kommintern secretary and, later on, a member of the Polit-bureau of the Soviet Union Communist Party. Historians have often centred their studies on his activity as leader of the Finish Communist Party in the pre-war years and on his role as a reformer under Krustchov.

But before his career outside Finland, O. W. Kuusinen was one of the most well-known leaders of the Finish Social-Democratic Party for twelve years and outright leader between 1911 and 1913. Furthermore, his influence on political life was particularly important from March 1917 to March 1918. From this angle, he can be considered as one of the major protagonists of the road towards independence ant the revolution that followed.

The aim of this book, that arose from research from a work destined for the ‘Habilitation à diriger des recherches (HDR)’ qualification, is to come to understand how an upwardly mobile young man, at first under the influence of conservative nationalism, a man who came from humble origins, entered Socialism at the beginning of the 20th century and then went on to construct between 1905 and 1918 a relatively original political and intellectual career.

This work is no a mere biography of an individual, albeit a brilliant individual, it is a study that strives to relate the personal elements of his life with the social and cultural framework of the age, taking equally into account the political upheavals that shook Finland and the Russian Empire. Readers of this book will become familiar with the history of the Baltic region, at the extreme ends of the Scandinavian and Slav worlds before and during the First World War. They will find in these pages important representatives of the Nordic political world as well as the workers’ mouvement during the so called Belle Époque.

€40 (plus €5 post and packing) - Payable to: l’Agent Comptable de l’UTM / FRAMESPA

Université de Toulouse-Le Mirail - FRAMESPA CNRS-UMR 5136 -
5, allées Antonio Machado - 31058 Toulouse Cedex 9
Tél. : 05 61 50 44 17 - Fax : 05 61 50 49 64
Mel : meridiennes@univ-tlse2.fr
http://w3.framespa.univ-tlse2.fr/boutique

Book launch: ‘Syndicalism and the Transition to Communism’

To celebrate the launch of his new book ‘Syndicalism and the Transition to Communism’, Ralph Darlington will appear at the Salord University branch of the Blackwells bookshops on Thursday 19 June between 1.00pm-2.00pm. Wine and light refreshments will be provided. To confirm that you would like to attend please contact: r.r.darlington@salford.ac.uk

Salford Crescent railway station (with links to Oxford Road and Piccadilly) is just around the corner from the bookshop; car parking is available at Irwell Place, just off The Crescent (A6) and the main University campus/reception.

During the first two decades of the twentieth century, amidst an extraordinary international upsurge in strike action, the ideas of revolutionary syndicalism developed into a major influence within the world wide trade union movement. Committed to destroying capitalism through direct industrial action and revolutionary trade union struggle, the movement raised fundamental questions about the need for new and democratic forms of power through which workers could collectively manage industry and society.

This study provides an all-embracing comparative analysis of the dynamics and trajectory of the syndicalist movement in six specific countries: France, Spain, Italy, America, Britain and Ireland. This is achieved through an examination of the philosophy of syndicalism and the varied forms that syndicalist organisations assumed; the distinctive economic, social and political context in which they emerged; the extent to which syndicalism influenced wider politics; and the reasons for its subsequent demise.

The volume also provides the first ever systematic examination of the relationship between syndicalism and communism, focusing on the ideological and political conversion to communism undertaken by some of the syndicalist movement’s leading figures and the degree of synthesis between the two traditions within the new communist parties that emerged in the early 1920s.

The Public Intellectual and the Left in the 21st Century

The Public Intellectual and the Left in the 21st Century:
A conference to celebrate Shelia Rowbotham’s intellectual and political contribution

Helena Kennedy, Peter McMylor, Shelia Rowbotham, Lynne Segal, Hilary Wainwright

Saturday 7th June 2008

1.45pm-6.00pm

Cross Street Chapel, Cross Street, Manchester M2 1NL (opposite Ann Street)

Admission free

Sponsored by the Lipman Miliban Trust; Sociology, Cultural Theory Institue and Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change, University of Manchester

Gareth Stedman-Jones speaking on his biography of Marx

Gareth Stedman-Jones will be speaking on his biography of Marx at 2.00pm on Saturday 17 May 2008 at Marx House, 37a Clerkenwell Green, London EC1 (nearest tube: Farringdon). Admission to the public meeting: £1.50.

The meeting follows the AGM of the Socialist History Society which convenes at the same venue at 1.00pm.

1968: Turning Point - call for conference papers

Multi-disciplinary Postgraduate Conference

1968: Turning Point

10th – 11th October 2008
Queen’s University, Belfast, Institute of Irish Studies

*CALL FOR PAPERS*

1968 was a crucial year in the history and politics of Northern Ireland as the civil rights movement took to the streets, but this agitation was, if anything, defined as much by its global as local character. Across the world the year witnessed scenes of mass street protests and demonstrations, confrontation between states and their citizens, and calls for revolutionary action and social change. 1968 would prove to be an epoch-making year not just for Northern Ireland.

Forty years on, Queen’s University has organised a series of events to reflect upon and re-evaluate the events of 1968 both within and beyond the Northern Irish context. As part of this commemoration Queen’s is planning a two-day postgraduate conference entitled “1968 Turning Point.”

We invite scholars to give 20-minute papers on the political, social and cultural significance of 1968 from a wide range of disciplinary and international backgrounds, including anthropology, history, film studies, political science, sociology, social movement theory, literary studies and cultural theory.

Topics to address may include:

• The Northern Ireland civil rights movement and other civil rights movements; movements for social change; anti-Vietnam and CND demonstrations;
• The New Left and the Old Left;
• The role of women and women’s rights movements;
• Student agitation and demonstrations (both specific case studies and comparative analyses);
• The literature, culture and media representations of 1968 and ’68ers; the legacies and influences of ’68;
• State responses and the role of counter-demonstration groups (both specific case studies and comparative analyses)

* This should not be viewed as an exhaustive list. Papers will be considered on related themes. *

Please send a 300-word abstract in Microsoft Word format to the following e-mail address: conference-1968@hotmail.com. Abstracts should be submitted by no later than Friday, 4th July 2008.

We are planning to publish a volume of selected papers presented at this conference.

Eric Hobsbawm and Dai Williams In Conversation

To celebrate the Launch of the new biography Raymond Williams: A Warrior’s Tale, The Raymond Williams Society present ‘Eric Hobsbawm and Dai Williams In Conversation: Welcomed by Merryn Williams’, on Saturday 10th May At 2pm at Birkbeck University London Room 532. To be followed by book signing and buffet in the student bar on the fourth floor extension.

For further details please contact Steve Woodhams [parmod.w@ntlworld.com]. Entry is free but places are limited so please contact Steve.

This biography of Raymond Williams reveals the intensely private and conflicted man behind such hugely influential critical works as Culture and Society (1958), The Long Revolution (1961), Keywords (1976) and Marxism and Literature (1977). With unlimited access to never-before-seen papers, Dai Smith shows how the making of the work for which Williams is famous was inextricably bound up with the relentless writing and rewriting of his fiction, both published and unpublished, which includes the Border Country trilogy.

New Zealanders who fought in the Spanish Civil War - research request

Mark Derby, a historian from Wellington, New Zealand is “currently in the final stages of editing the first and only book on the New Zealanders who fought in the Spanish Civil War”, and has contacted the journal with the following request:

“Since only a handful of NZers took part in the civl war, the book takes a micro-historical approach, giving individual biographical entries ranging in length from 4000 words to a few hundred, on each of them. Below is a list of their names plus some basic details of their war service, in case any of your readers can supply more information, photos or other material on them. (Note - one asterisk means we have no photo of this person. Two asterisks means no photo and no other information.)
 
NZ COMBATANTS IN THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR

* Bert Bryan, who entered the war in early 1938 and took part in the battle of the Ebro, leaving with the other IBs in October 1938.

Phillip Cross, the only identifiable New Zealander to have fought for Franco against the Spanish Republic, who took part in the December 1936 battle of Madrid and was captured and wounded, along with a party of Moorish soldiers, at an engagement at Boadilla del Monte.

** Edward Dighton, said to have served with the ‘4th Spanish militia, Madrid, 1937’

* Bernard Grey, who served as a motorcycle courier with the British Battalion, and also knocked out a tank. He later drove an ambulance for the military hospital at Benicassim.

Eric Griffiths, the sole NZ fighter pilot for Republican Spain’s air force who, while on patrol with the South African pilot Vincent Doherty, was wounded over the Toledo front in September 1936 and landed his plant at Getafe airfield with an injured shoulder

Jack Kent, who died when his ship, the Cuidad de Barcelona, was torpedoed off the coast of Barcelona in May 1937

William McDonald, who entered Spain in early 1937, was attached to the Abraham Lincoln Battalion and fought with them at Aragon, Jarama and Brunete, later driving trucks for the Garibaldi battalion, until withdrawn with all other IBs in late 1938.

Griffin MacLaurin, who was killed in action at University City, Madrid on 9 November 1936

* Alex McLure, who fought with the MacKenzie-Papineau Battalion and died in October 1937 at Fuentes del Ebro

William Madigan, who used the surname Martinez in Spain, where he fought from early 1938 with the Abraham Lincoln Battalion, and was killed in the battle of the Ebro

Charlie Riley, enlisted with a British unit of the XV IB, who fought in the battles of Teruel, Brunete and Ebro, where he was badly wounded and treated at a succession of hospitals including Mataro, until repatriated on a Red Cross train in late 1938.

Fred Robertson, assigned to the British Battalion and killed in action after three days at the front, at the battle of Jarama

Peter Russell, Christchurch-born academic who spied for British intelligence in Spain

Pedro de Treend, the last surviving NZ veteran of the civil war, who joined the POUM, then fought with a worker’s militia unit at Puerto de Escadin in the battle of Teruel, January 1938. He was captured by Moorish troops and held at Malaga, from where he escaped on a British ship.

Tom Spiller, who entered Spain in early 1937, took part in the battles of Jarama and Brunete, was wounded and left for NZ and Australian in late 1937 to try and recruit more volunteers

Bill Trussell, who used his NZ passport to enter Franco Spain in the 1950s as a covert courier for the Republican government exiled in Paris.

** Steve Yates, who died with Griffin McLaurin at University City, Madrid, on 9 November 1936.
 
SOME OF THE NON-NEW ZEALAND COMBATANTS WHO CAME TO NZ AFTER THE CIVIL WAR

Bill Belcher, who entered Spain in August 1936 as a driver with a British hospital unit and later joined the anarchist Batallo de la Muerte, taking part in the battles of Belchite and Teruel

* Bob Ford, who served in the Tom Mooney section of the Abraham Lincoln battalion from May 1937 until October 1938, apparently based at Madrid

Don Miles, British seaman whose ship carried industrial coal from North Africa to Barcelona to break the military blockade, and was bombed in an air raid

Werner Droescher and Greville Texidor, who at the outbreak of the civil war, fought together in the anarchist militia unit in La Zaida called Aguiluchos de las Corts, later joining an Italian anarchist unit at Huesca. From later 1937 until late 1938 they worked in Madrid for the Quaker relief agency.

Ron Hurd, who marched through Madrid in December 1936 with the first IBs and became a political commissar with the XV battalion, receiving wounds in the battles of Jarama and Brunete

Doctors Franz Bielchowsky and Marianne Angermann, who joined the Spanish Republican Army’s medical corps.
 
NZ NON-COMBATANTS:

Dr Doug Jolly, a surgeon with the XI IB in Madrid 1936. He later served in the battles of Brunete, Aragon and the Ebro, until withdrawn with all other IBs in late 1938.

** Dr Gladys Montgomery, who worked with a British ambulance unit at Almeria in June 1937.

Dr Robert McIntosh, Timaru-born anaesthetist who worked for the pro-Franco Public Health Organisation in October-November 1937, at hospitals in Zaragoza, Vitoria, and San Sebastian

Nursing sisters Renee Shadbolt, Isobel Dodds and Millicent Sharples, who were recruited from throughout NZ by the Spanish Medical Aid Committee. They arrived in Spain in July 1937 and went to a hospital in Huete, in Cuence province. Sharples was later transferred elsewhere, to Toralba and other fronts, until wounded in an air raid and returned to NZ. Dodds and Shadbolt remained at Huete until April 1938 when the entire hospital was evacuated to Barcelona. They then spent some weeks at a small hospital in the foothills of the Pyrenees, mostly treating European IBs in transit. Then at Mataro hospital north of Barcelona, until withdrawn with all IBs in late 1938.

Nurse Una Wilson who entered Spain as part of four-person team headed by Sister Mary Lowson, sent by the Sydney Spanish Relief Committee. She served at Jarama, Brunete and Teruel.

* Nurse Dorothy Morris, who worked in Spain with the British Universities Ambulance Unit from February 1937, initially at Almeria on the Costa del Sol, then attached to the XIII IB in the Sierra Moreno, west of Madrid, during the battle of Brunete. Finally she ran a Quaker children’s hospital in Murcia, southern Spain.

Any information or further contacts your organisation can provide will be very gratefully received.

Mark Derby, Wellington, New Zealand [markderby@paradise.net.nz].”