I have been following Chris Burford's comments on New Labor and related
discussion sites. He mentioned Marxism Today.
I long wondered about "Marxism Today," who was behind it, where did the
money come from. It appeared in mainstream book store magazine sections
in Toronto in the early-mid 90s. I didn't read it much, but it was
striking (from a journalistic layout perspective) because it was glossy
thing and had some very eye catching design. It jumped out at you from
the magazine rack shelf.
Martin Jacques was the editor. He has an interview with Tribune at
www.tribune.atfreeweb.com/mj.htm
Here's a snippet (dated 9th October 1998):
On Your Marx:
Martin Jacques Interview
MARXISM Today, the Euro-Communist journal that sought
to persuade Neil Kinnock and Tony Blair to ditch
traditional socialist principles, is back next week for
one special issue. Editor Martin Jacques fears New
Labour has lurched too far towards Thatcherism and neo-
liberal economics and will use the journal to argue the
Left still has ideas Blair should listen to.
"I've tried to give a generous berth to New Labour
because I felt an empathy with Blair and got to know
him quite well in the early nineties", explains
Jacques. "I felt that traditional Labour culture was
exhausted, that it needed to be transcended, and I
recognised in Blair someone who understood that. I
thought he would disorganise the Tories in many ways
because they wouldn't know where exactly he was
coming from," he says.
But now the "Blair project", as Marxism Today will call
it, "is more rhetoric than substance. I feel a sense of
disappointment. New Labour had a great historic
opportunity in 1997 to offer a really radical
alternative because the Tories had imploded, and Labour
had won a landslide victory.
"Instead I think that far from doing something with it,
Blair has inherited most of the Thatcherite framework.
He wouldn't put it like that of course but,
predominantly, that is what has happened".
[...]
"But after 1989, Marxism was no longer partisan. It was
liberated from being the weapon of one side. That's why
the New Yorker magazine, in its issue about the next
decade, declared that Marx will be the most important
thinker over the next 10 years." Jacques warms to this
theme: "There are certain things that Marx argued which
still make him the best writer on capitalism. That the
system is inherently unstable. That it is a system which
has an inexorable tendency towards expansion across the
globe.
"Now that Marx isn't trapped in the Cold War, his work
should be released for everyone to appreciate and enjoy.
I mean, he said without the means of subsistence you
cannot engage in anything else, such as art. Now, that
is a commonplace, but then it wasn't. So, I return in a
sense feeling happier about the title of the magazine
than I did when I left eight years ago."
If McRobbie (in the article Chris posted, from openDemocracy) isn't
exaggerating when she writes that the publishers/editors of MT prided
themselves "on taking risks with left orthodoxies, guided by a belief
that a failure to engage with the lives and desires of ordinary people
was making the left more marginalised than ever" -- then fine by me!
As long as one knows one is doing that... And not "reinventing the
wheel."
Ken.
--
"The point that makes me upset is that most of those dictators in the
last 25 or 30 years were put in place by the Americans. As long as they
sell oil and they obey the American position, then they are OK."
-- Benoît Serré, Liberal MP, Canada
January 2003
