British capitalism evi- European option? in international affairs, Un the cconomy is going into a nose-dive. linked arguments which add up to a package for accepting capitatism. Each one of these argu- ments is either factually wrong. or a • Economic and social restructuring means that of course is where revolutionary socialists dif- The now draft puts forward a scrics of inter- the traditional demarcation lines - especially the division of socicty into two mutually hos- tile basic classes - are being eroded. The ac- quisition of skills and education means that many people are now in a contradictory class locations* and are both exploiters and ex- ploited. "Working class versus bourgoisie" SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 9 October 1988 Schematically, they are as follows: misinterpretation of developments. models are old-fashioned. fer from Marxish Endar:
sights on the process of change in material and the right to open dis- Throughout the mineteenth and tused. If this review concentrates should not be road as a sweeping the Soviet Linion, so long denied cussion to enable them to form a complete understanding of their faced by writers (and others) in condemnation of flie hook sa Russian intelligentsia played a the Soviet Union today. but as central role in the struggle for party, and their class position. pre example of the problems into the twentieth century the whole: which gives many in- lectuals, their function in the This discussion is more con critically on this question, it Intellectuals in the days of cal discussion on the role of intel- unlikely to have been written; hur the effects of perestroika - speed- movement which gave birth to it. some of the contradictions of the - are Without glasmost this book is tuals to the state goes a theoreti- up, higher prices, attacks on the though they were synonomous. relationship of Soviet mtellec- cconomic and political refonn socialism. Buticalso contains not mentioned. Indeed Kagar- historic gains of the working fitsky uses the two words as Alongside the history of the and here we reach the other class of cheap housing etc. problem with the book. Glasnost REVIEWS the imposition of Soviet Socialist Realism, the partial chaw" under an urgent plen to the present-lay after 1917, the rise of Stalin and book, which charts the situation intellectuals to take up the chal- Khruschey, and the disiflusion- ment in the 1970s. It ends with history of the relationship in the Soviet Union, of the between intellectuals and Iris a powerful and vibrant the state from 1917 to the move on from exposure of the horrors of Stalin to develop a lenge offerco by glasnost; to positive way forward to present day. The Thinking Reed: Intel- Boris Kagarlitsky, Trans- leading radical intellectuals lectuals and the Soviet lated by Brian Pearce, State from 1917 to the Verso, 1988, £17.95, This book is a fascinating discussion by one of the Reviewed by JANE hardback. Present KELLY
SOCIALIST OUTLOOK no 9 October 1988 on democratic rights were probab- meant that censorship and atlacks a result of impossible circumstan- dissolution of the Constituent As- tried to find some third way That the question of democracy, albeit their hopes in a free Russia, The the author accepts that the objee- betwoon contending classes, Was Although ly inevitabic, in order lo save the was tragedy for the intellectuals. The division of the intelligentsia adhered to the Bolsheviks, many cconomic collapse, invasion cic, revolution, he emphasises that it hourgenis democratic freedoms. but only a small minority joined sharpened during the Civil War, frocdoms dealt a heavy blew to the intellectuals who had placed failed to understand. Indeed the sembly, the terror and the intro- when: Part of the intelligentsin proletarian dictatorship. Kagar- ligentsia and the Bolsheviks on aligned themseives to the Men- creased burcaucracy and to the joined the Whites: the majority duction of censorship were ac- intelligentsia could not excuse Revolutionaries or the Kadets. Jitsky argues that the suppres and one which the Bolsheviks is a path that steered between sion of bourgeois-democratic implication is that it was this. ces, that led inexorably to in- tive conditions of isolatich. the Bolshevik party. Others division betwcen the intel- bourgeois reaction and tions that the left-wing under any conditions. sheviks, the Social dialectic of self organisation and provoking and often novel idcas of organising which could be ex another with the political move- writing which makes it both im is Radical Records: thirty vears Contrbutions are varied, hut men, and takes a distinctly left- ing point for these essays is the closc-up.on building coalitions Hemmings (Routledge, (7.95). Without exception the start- lived experience of the writers; perimented with here. Perhaps edited by Bob Cant and Susan ment of lesbians and gay men, community's health crisis and the stick the other way and in- tory book by lesbians and gay this confers personalily on the Coming out during the gay the Clause 2% hacklash. It is a This claims to be the first his- mediate and (usually) easy to next year's volume will bend Another book which goes mass struggle has worked in all concerned in one way or socialist perspective for the of lesbian and guy history! and the ways in which the clude ideas of an overall ist editorial line. Dukakis years. timcly book. BookendS Tar left - the insularity of its con- The bombings continue in the. which are the well-Kept secret of The book is eclectic, offering that. If at time the essays scem a some of the many real struggies host now to the major testing of land, is the US base where star thind annual collection of a vory 12 participant-observer perspec- Title local in their purview, this This points to a weakness in Reshaping the US Leftis the developments of the revitalised Us lett, but none the worse for at allows us to see the detail of Besides, many are stimulat- Sprinkler (Verso, £9.95) but it Pacific: Kwajelein, another is- volume of essays from the US uselul series called The Year what the American left like to wars was dreamed up, and is Reshaping the US Left, edited Ing accounts, full of thought- Left, and takes as its subjoct Central American revolution SDI initiatives... It should, by Mike Davis and Michael this otherwise praiseworthy corns (the opcning essay on building solidarity with the therefore, get a mention in tives on key struggles and call movement building being the exception). analytical and humanistic. High- In 1982, the US warned the It had been 28 years since the ploded a homb 1300 times more Micronesian people had realised themselves - explores the social Marshall Islands not to eat of unknown cancerous diseases Micronesian people of the In that time, as Jane Dibblin quic right as they began dying Dibblin's book - much of it themselves that things weren't part of their atoll. It was recounts in Day of Two Suns in the words of the islanders and political realities of the food from the northern Revlewed by NICK powertul than those they"d Nagasaki on Bikini. also in USA uninvited - hid ex- US s nuclear testing in the and giving birth to terribly Pacific in an account both not a timely warning. dropped on Hiroshima or New publications (Virago, E6.95), the ly recommended. reviewed ROBIN Page 30
opposed to the alienation of apart- scene, in what must have been an like any familiar on the Europcan The hospitality and acceptance shown to Molly hy Elsie's family. grandfather ar the end of the table If yuu take the personal theme not by her mother - to the reality is passed Molly's hand to feel in Menges achievement is to allow ofibe story the experience of a when Molly is at last introduced of township life, is a memorable unusually crcative interplay be- heid is, literally, palpable. here humanity of African culture as tween writer, director and cast. recognition and greeting, the the black actors to make the example. As the old blind Screen. ш is therefore unable to play an inde- Stralum" rather than a class which achieving them.' Further he main- ligentsia, both East and West 'was definition of the intelligentsia as a 'many millioned intelligentsia. in returns to throughout the book, 1s especially theirclass position. He tains that while in the nineteenth. the pole and function of intellec- stratumi, capahle not only of for- the Soviet Umion today has be- this raises, to which Kagarlitsky rise of Stalin. The problem that argues that contrary to Stalin's workmg class to the party, and md carly this century the intel- pendent mie in social life. the mulating its aims but often of tuals, their relationship to the come an independent social
daughter whose dominant but dis- shares with that him the ability to compete with the visionary scope tant parent dedicates their life to able, while avoiding the vices of then this film most invites com- heing the central subject, rather MeMullen's powerful study of pose somc questions that make revolutionaries fcci uncomfort- the revolution but not to you than is South African setting. lecturing on the one hand and While / World Apart cannot relationship with her father. Hopped at the box office) it Trousky's daughter and her of Zina (which nonctheless parison with Zina, Ken liberalism on the other. film. This is part of the film's suc- Subversive stuff stands for the mass struggle that cess as a stalement agaist apar is the dynamic backdrop of the heid: it neither sentimentaliscs of the South African state - Director Chris Menges Screenplay by Shawn A World Apart Slovo whereby the intelligentsin are both an independent stratum and being The confusion stenis partly, I feel. very courgeous individuals in the present circumstances (though for been "proletarianised". The Sovict ligenisia both East and West have bourgeors: (or pelly-bourgeois) in name. He thus adopts a position ligentsia to play a loading role in despite the role played by a few. belong to the oppressed and ex- Claim the right to speak in their past, goes agains the history of tured into simple proletarians intelligentsia. Terling that they pioned masscs. incrcasingly Irom his desire for the intel- the changes. But this desirc, different reasons the intel- the way it got its income
Zina novt cmorged from the tragody of het childhood and her scarch for her father's love; she committed suicide as fascism look hold in Nazi Germany. Molly is also shown unsuccess: fully trying to claim the place she wanted at her mother's life: with what consequences for her own development we are not told, since the film covers only the story of 1963, the vear of the Rivonia arrests. In an interview, Slovo said that writing the screenplay was like a form of therapy: her strength in the telling of her story is to do it with frankness naked of any self-indulgence Going for a wide appcal seems to have been a conscious option the struggle nor romanticises the individuals involved in it, black A World Apart has been received to much critical acclaint as a joint debut by Chris Menpos (cinematographer on The Mission and The Killing Fields and Shawn Slovo (who wrote the autohiographical screenplay). The actors portraying the central two characters, 13-ycar old Molly and her mother Diana (Jodhi May and Burhora Her shey are both first rate and sensi- Jodhi May convinces without heing cute as the unhappy, con- fused daughter of her brillint, commited but emotionally reserved mother. Barbara Heror white. tively cast. Reviewed by