Marxist theory

By Jonathan Strauss

I. The theory of the labour aristocracy

By Jose Ramon Balaguer Cabrera

By Humphrey McQueen

Humphrey McQueen is a leading Marxist writer in Australia and an activist in the Socialist Alliance. A version of this article appeared in the Journal of Australian Political Economy, No. 51 (Jime 2003).

CONTENTS

Globalising capitals

Labour times

Money-capital

Commodity-capital

Production-capital

The nation-market-state

Summing up

Notes

By Jeremy Smith

CONTENTS

After the 1960s

The post-structuralist origins of postmodernism

By Jonathan Strauss

The labour aristocracy in monopoly capitalism

The sources of monopoly superprofits

The bribe and other causes of working-class material differentiation

The bribe as a mass social relationship

Incorporation and integration

Notes

Stuart Munckton is the national coordinator of the Australian socialist youth organisation Resistance. This the text of a talk presented to a Democratic Socialist Perspective (DSP) educational conference in January 2005.

By Jonathan Strauss

Contents

Dimensions of the composition of the labour aristocracy

Skilled workers in the labour aristocracy

The bureaucratisation of the labour apparatus and opportunism

The labour apparatus and the labour bureaucracy

The labour aristocracy and the labour bureaucracy

The labour aristocracy and the `lower strata' of the working class

Opportunism and preparation of the proletariat for revolution

Proletarian tactics under the domination of monopolising capitals

The labour aristocracy as the social base for opportunism

Footnotes

By Armando Hart

Armando Hart is the former minister of culture of Cuba. Our translation largely relies on a CubaNews translation by Ana Portela.

These thoughts are intended as a tribute to all revolutionaries, without exception, who suffered the great historical drama of seeing the socialist ideas of October 1917 frustrated. We write this with admiration and respect for the Russian people, who were the protagonists of the first socialist revolution in history and who defeated fascism decades later under the leadership of Stalin. The same Russian people, 130 years before, defeated the military offensive of Napoleon Bonaparte.

Fundamentally, I have the experience of fifty years of working for socialist ideas in the beautiful trenches of the Fidel and Martí-inspired Cuban Revolution, that is to say, the first revolution of Marxist orientation that triumphed in what has become known as the West.

by Doug Lorimer