Capital & Class

http://cnc.sagepub.com/ Marx: Later Political Writings

Capital & Class 1997 21: 155 DOI: 10.1177/030981689706100111 The online version of this article can be found at: http://cnc.sagepub.com/content/21/1/155.citation

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Book Reviews
period, based on extensive growth with ample supplies of labour power and raw materials. The system collapsed when it attempted to shift toward a more intensive mode of growth. Permanent consumer goods shortages and the alienation of workers sealed its fate. What is remarkable is that the various brands of socialist reformers were completely sidelined once the collapse had taken place. Neoliberalism, amply supported by the west, rose triumphant and what a disaster it has produced.

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Itoh takes heart from the present popular dissatisfaction with neoliberalism and the electoral turn towards the left. He is, perhaps, a little too optimistic. With leftists such as Kwasniewski and Zyuganov who needs neoliberals? There is a lot more in this very wideranging book. Itoh has attempted to broaden the debate on the feasibility of socialism, and he has also tried to introduce the inquisitive reader to the complex and rich literature on these matters. He has been successful in both.

Terrell Carver (ed.)

Marx: Later Political Writings

Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1996. pp. xxxiii + 259. ISBN 0521 367395 9.95 (pbk)

Reviewed by A. Williams
The contents of this publication fall into two groups: rst of all, together with The Civil War in France, Carver offers new translations of The Communist Manifesto, Eighteenth Brumaire, Critique of the Gotha Programme, and the 1859 Preface to A Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy; second, he reissues his translations of Marxs 1857 Introduction to the Grundrisse , and the Notes on Wagner. Carver remarks that in his translations he has made every effort to reect Marxs forthright and punchy style. He bases himself on first editions and he believes himself to have recaptured the freshness of the originals, freed from posthumous schemes of interpretation. This is certainly a worthwhile endeavour, and time will tell how far his new versions come to be accepted over the standard translations. (It should be noted that Hal Draper also did a new translation of the Manifesto before his death, which has been recently published by the Center for Socialist History in Berkeley, California.) However, what needs comment now is the curious nature of the selection of texts given here. While readers of this journal may be grateful for the Notes on Wagner as an alternative to the translation in Marx-Engels Collected Works Volume 24, it is very puzzling why this, and the 1857 Introduction for that matter, are chosen for a volume of Marxs political writings appearing in a series of Texts in the History of Political Thought; for there is very little of immediate political relevance in them. But more astonishing than these inclusions are the numerous exclusions. To begin with Carver does not include Marxs own Prefaces to later editions of the works presented. While there is good reason to disentangle Marxs own work from readings posthumously imposed on it, this cannot justify cutting out Marxs

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own view of his work. The Authors Preface to the second edition of The Eighteenth Brumaire has a very signicant statement on the role of the individual in history. The 1872 Preface to the Manifesto has important remarks on how its reading is to be taken in the context of the experience of the Paris Commune, while the 1882 Preface to the Russian edition gives Marxs view on the possibility of revolution in Russia. These three Prefaces are all short but significant, and should have been supplied in any comprehensive edition of Marxs political writings.

Capital & Class #61

Furthermore, other texts should have been added, notably the 1850 Address to the Communist League (for its battle cry of permanent revolution), and the Inaugural Address of the First International together with its General Rules. As matters stand, these Cambridge Texts oddly give more weight to Marxs Early Political Writings (Ed. J. OMalley) than the more important later work. Cambridge should remedy this by issuing a Shorter Political Writings to round up the missing materialincluding some letters perhaps.

Hanna Behrend (ed.)

German Unication. The Destruction of an Economy

Pluto Press, London, 1995. pp.252. ISBN 074531 004 4 (hbk) 40.00 ISBN 074531 003 6 (pbk) 12.95

Reviewed by Werner Bonefeld

The popular phrase I love Germany so much that I am happy that there are two of them no longer holds. Since 1990 there is only one Germany and publications on the processes leading to unification, unification itself and united Germany have appeared in abundance. Hanna Behrends book adds yet another publication. However, this is a special book. It supplies a timely intervention into what some might well regard as a saturated issue. With a few exceptions, the new Germany is either celebrated for its capacity to integrate the former GDR or viewed as a success story in waiting. Most commentators focus on the consequences of unification in terms of political, economic or social development in Germany and its impact on European integration. Usually, Germany is perceived as the formermerely enlarged West Germany. Accounts on East German conditions since 1990 are few and far between. German Unification examines what unification has meant for East Germany and East-Germans. Eight contributors from the former GDR provide insightful chapters on political parties and movements pre- and post-unification; the privatisation of the entire East German economy; the East German countryside and agriculture; the condition of East German women pre- and post unication, the dismantling of East German culture and scholarship; and right-wing extremism in East Germany pre- and postunification. The cohesion of the volume is achieved by Behrends Foreword and her introductory chapter, Inglorious German Unification. As this title suggests, unification is seen as an Anschlu, a sort of annexation where the conquerer imposes its social, political,