Since beginning publication in1964, The Socialist Register has been one of the most important sources of engaged, critical, and influential theoretical interventions on the socialist left. Released as an annual with a focus on publishing rigorous, sustained pieces that take up particular themes, it has always been committed to developing an independent, nonsectarian relationship with Marxism.
This volume—the Register’s first-ever reader—grapples with the question of whether political organization is a necessary part of the struggle by the working-class to overthrow capitalism. In pieces published over the course of publication’s entire history contributors, from Ralph Miliband to Jean-Paul Satre, examine various aspects of this theme.
Greg Albo teaches political economy at the Department of Political Science, York University, Toronto. He is currently co-editor of the Socialist Register. He is also on the editorial boards of Studies in Political Economy, Relay, Capitalism, Nature, Socialism, Canadian Dimension, The Bullet and Historical Materialism (England). Albo is co-editor of A Different Kind of State: Popular Power and Democratic Administration and author of numerous articles in journals such as Studies in Political Economy, Socialist Register, Canadian Dimension, and Monthly Review.
Leo Panitch is Canada Research Chair in Comparative Political Economy and Distinguished Research Professor of Political Science at York University. Editor of The Socialist Register for 25 years, his many books include Working Class Politics in Crisis, A Different Kind of State, The End of Parliamentary Socialism, and American Empire and The Political Economy of Global Finance.
Publication date: October 16, 2018
Introduction
Monty Johnstone—Marx and Engels and the Concept of the Party 1967
Andre Gorz—Reform and Revolution 1968
John Merrington—Theory and Practice in Gramsci's Marxism 1968
Lucio Magri—The May Events and Revolution in the West 1969
Ralph Miliband—Lenin’s The State and Revolution 1970
Rossana Rossanda—Class and Party 1970
J.-P. Sartre—Masses, Spontaneity, Party 1970
Wolpe—Some Problems Concerning Revolutionary Consciousness 1970
Hal Draper—The Principle of Self-Emancipation in Marx and Engels 1971
Alastair Davidson—Gramsci and Lenin 1917-1922 1974
Leo Panitch, Sam Gindin—Class, Party and the Challenge of State Transformation 2017
August H. Nimtz—Marx and Engels on the Revolutionary Party 2017
“The intellectual lodestone for the international Left since 1964”
—Mike Davis
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—Daniel Singer
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—Tony Benn
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Edited by Greg Albo, Stephen Maher, et al.
Edited by Greg Albo, Leo Panitch, et al.
