Re: GLW: Boris Kagarlitsky's new book

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Norm Dixon, quoting a Green Left Weekly article:
> After calling on the left to return to its revolutionary roots by
> ``de-revising Marx'' (the title of chapter two), Kagarlitsky goes
> on to analyse what has and hasn't changed within the proletariat
> of the developed capitalist countries, and the implications of
> this for socialist strategy.

Good for Boris. The last time I spoke to him in NYC, he told me that he
thought market socialism was a good idea. Then, a year or so later, he
co-authored an awful book with Roger Burbach that attempted to mix Marxism
and postmodernism ("Globalization and Its Discontents: The Rise of
Postmodern Socialisms"). It advocated every new-fangled idea floating
around, from "civil society" to Foucauldian micropolitics. Then, as the
crisis in the former Soviet Union deepened, Boris seemed to have waken
(woken? woke? waked?) up from his slumber. First off, he wrote an
article--can't remember where--disassociating himself basically from the
Burbach collaboration. It sounds like his book incorporates this article as
chapter 2. I like Boris. It is a good sign that he is evolving away from
all that trendy bullshit of the 1980s. Now if we could only persuade some
other good people to do so as well...

Louis Proyect

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