The Socialist Register 1997

Ruthless Criticism of All that Exists

Edited by Leo Panitch

“Constructing the future and settling everything for all times are not our affair, it is all the more clear what we have to accomplish at present: I am referring to ruthless criticism of all that exists, ruthless both in the sense of not being afraid of the results it arrives at and in the sense of being just a little afraid of conflict with the powers that be.” -Marx, 1843

Contents

Preface

A World Market of Opportunities? Capitalist Obstacles and Left Economic Policy
by Gregory Albo

Financial Crises on the Threshold of the Twenty-first Century
by Elmar Altvater

Green Imperialism: Pollution, Penitence, Profits
by Larry Pratt & Wendy Montgomery

China’s Communist Capitalism: The Real World of Market Socialism
by Gerard Greenfield & Apo Leong

Taking Stock of a Century of Socialism
by George Ross

The Marginality of the American Left: The Legacy of the 1960
by Barbara Epstein

Clinton’s Liberalism: No Model for the Left
by Doug Henwood

The Ideology of ‘Family and Community’: New Labor Abandons the Welfare State
by Joan Smith

The Decline of Spanish Social Democracy 1982-1996
by Vicente Navarro

Cardoso’s Political Project in Brazil: The Limits of Social Democracy
by Paul Cammack

The State as Charade: Political Mobilisation in Today’s India
by Ananya Mukherjee-Reed

Marxism, Film and Theory: From the Barricades to Postmodernism
by Scott Forsyth

Cyborg Fictions: The Cultural Logic of Posthumanism
by Scott McCracken

Restoring the Real: Rethinking Social Constructivist Theories of Science
by Meera Nanda

Post Colonial Theory and the ‘Post-’ Condition
by Aijaz Ahmed

About the Author

 Leo Panitch is a Distinguished Research Professor, renowned political economist, Marxist theorist and editor of the Socialist Register. He received a B.A. (Hons.) from the University of Manitoba in 1967 and a M.Sc.(Hons.) and PhD from the London School of Economics and Political Science in 1968 and 1974, respectively. He was a Lecturer, Assistant Professor, Associate Professor and Professor at Carleton University between 1972 and 1984. He has been a Professor of Political Science at York University since 1984. He was the Chair of the Department of Political Science at York from 1988-1994. He was the General Co-editor of State and Economic Life series, U. of T. Press, from 1979 to 1995 and is the Co-founder and a Board Member of Studies in Political Economy. He is also the author of numerous articles and books dealing with political science including The End of Parliamentary Socialism (1997). He was a member of the Movement for an Independent and Socialist Canada, 1973-1975, the Ottawa Committee for Labour Action, 1975-1984, the Canadian Political Science Association, the Committee of Socialist Studies, the Marxist Institute and the Royal Society of Canada. He is currently a supporter of the Socialist Project.