Dave Osler reviews Press International, £39.95 ACTIVISTS' reading time is always at a premium, so Hal Draper is a name many will have often seen in the footnotes of modern Marxist literature, but never read firsthand.
While his most famous work. 'Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution', is acknowledged as a classic study, it unfortunately weighs in at an off-putting five hefty volumes. I've always reasoned that Marx himself only needed three, and never quite got round to Draper until now.
Humanities Press has done well to make a 270-page selection of his key writings avail able. I would like to have said tag means this book is unlikely to get far beyond the better aca demic libraries. More's the pity. because interest in Draper's ideas is currently growing on the British left.
Both the Socialist Workers Party and some anarcho-syndithe whole content of his Capital' is secondary'.
While the author's style is completely accessible, superlative scholarship is evident on almost every page. A case in point is "The Principle of Self-Emancipation in Marx and Draper's analysis of Marx's carliest journalistic writings details how Marx moved from the young liberal, earnestly beseeching the incoming Prussian monarch to band down constitutional reform from on high, to a communist advocate of workers" democracy.
Of course, all revolutionaries A regular look at the world of business, compiled by INSIDER DEALER will say they of socialismfrom-below; this is as axiomatic politicians' support for motherhood and apple pie. The problem is fleshing the content out.
What is essentially a volume of historical studies is inevitably weak on now the concopt should be used as a guiding light in day-to-day class struggle. The closest Draper comes is the reduction of all politics to the explicitly stated question. which side are you on? Pemberton While I'm the subject of will be out of pocket by loans it made to prop up a small and medium banks. the Bank had to organise a banking system. unusual outbreak of largesse City Merchant Banks, part of add is that the chair of the depo Mass struggles - this protest by Bolivian peasants - are crucial If that was all there was to it. there would be no need for Marxist theory whatsoever: any old egalitarianism would fit the bill. For Draper, 'Capital" is indeed secondary. But while socialism-from-below undoubtedly necessary, it is nowhere near sufficient.
Incidentally, this book is the second in a series entitled "Revolutionary Studies', which promises works by key Fourth ber, they are continuing to pay him until this September. Sounds good to me Lord Stevens is also chair of United Newspapers, pub. lishers of the ultra-Tory Daily Express and Sunday Express. Wonder if either of those organs picked up on the story? eblos I International theoreticians such as Ernest Mandel, Michael Pierre Rousset. Alan Wald, Paul Le Blanc and Enzo Traverso. Sounds good, if pricey.
One lase quibble: I suspect most British readers could have done with more explanatory material on the illustrations Draper draws from American history. For £40, it ought to be
Fingers In the TILL
What a bunch of bankers