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Have you a comment about this issue of the MIR?
Let's hear trom you.
400 MIR Letters Dear MIR I think that the new layout, typeface and design of the MIR is a vast improvement and the articles are varied and interesting. However, perhaps it would be a good idea to develop the journal by having it regular 'Workers' History' column taking up relevant issues that we can learn lessons from like Red Clydeside, Poplarism, the General Strike, Popular Frontism, Chile etc. I would also suggest that the MIR publish something about the history of the Labour Party which is very important. MIR is a vital complement to Wilitant in building the forces of Marxism.
Guy Baker, Waltham Forest Dear Comrades, Congratulations to all concerned with the 'new look' MIR. and in particular for the excellent survey in MIR No.42 of the conflicting possibilities and forces inside Poland and Hungary:
At one time there was discussion over whether the tasks being carried out by the Soviet bureaucracy could be classified as simply the primitive accumulation'. but in a non-capitalist framework. of the resources upon which a more advanced society could be built. It is presumably in having accomplished this, albeit at an appalling cost because of the bureaucratic and bonapartist deformations of the system. that the bureaucracy can be said to have played some progressive role if only for a period, a period now ended.
The fact that the costs of the bureaucractic deformations have been so high as to completely disorientate many as to the direction to that more advanced society seems to fit with the MIR's analysis. The recent letters of Bill Hopwood and Max Neil questioned the books reviewed in the MIR. True some of them have been 'expensive and obscure' but that does not mean that they do not contain points of real value. To the extent that they do I would suggest that the reviews are more than justified, not because most of us are going to rush out to buy such books but precisely because the review itself gives us access to material which we would otherwise not know about. That said I do agree that reviews drawing attention to popular classics would have a value of their own, especially given the obscurity into which many works which ought to be of value to socialists have unjustifiably been thrown by bourgeois prejudice. Even GK Chesterton, for example, now beloved by many on the extreme right, had a revolutionary anarchistic aspect to him now denied.
Ian Hunter, Sacriston Dear MIR I am writing in reply to Max Neil, MIR No.42, who criticised the books reviewed in the MIR as 'expensive and obscure'. Instead he advocates reviens should be of recently published material, or else they become a nonsense. But what Max Veil seems to be advocating are articles on literature in the VIR. which I think would be an excellent idea.
A few general observations - I think the history of Bolshevism series was very good, giving you an incentive to buy the next issue. For a new serial I would suggest some articles on the basic works of Marx and Engels. Recently I borrowed their Selected Works from the library - and every chapter had a nasty little introduction trying to slag them off. Also some of their articles are heavy going On the last issue I thought the article on East Germany understated the possibility of capitalist re-unification and the article on the national question in the USSR was too short to really go into the specifics of the situation. The article on Hungary and Poland was well backed up and researched with loads of facts and figures. sources for all quotations were given - so readers could look at the articles themselves and it was not glib and sloganeering but honestly explored all the processes unfolding. It was not atraid to say that there are no blueprints or easy answers. which after all is really the fundamental point Andrew Ford, Liverpool The vieu's expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of the Editorial Board We reserve the right to shorten letters for publication. Subscribe now!
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Towards a new revolution Due out in May, Fortress Books are offering this book at a special pre-publication price of $2.95 plus 55p postage and packing. Write to: Fortress Books PO Box 141 London E2 ORL. As the regimes of Eastern Europe crumble, all preconceptions must be re-evaluated. Leon Trotsky, fighting the bureaucracy, predicted a new revolution to restore workers'
democracy. Fifty years after his assassination, is this being borne out?
Elizabeth Clarke and Richard Peters visited the Soviet Union in November/December 1989. Their interviews and discussions provide a penetrating insight into the mood of the Russian people and an invaluable key to understanding the momentous events now unfolding.
Towards a new revolution Workers of the Soviet Union speak Elizabeth Clarke and Richard Peters