Marxism Today

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Marxism Today was a British magazine published by the Communist Party of Great Britain and considered its authoritative publication on theoretical issues. It emerged from the quarterly magazine Marxism Quarterly (until 1954 Modern Quarterly ), which was discontinued in the course of the serious party crisis in 1956/1957. Marxism Today was published monthly from September 1957 and was subtitled Theoretical and Discussion Journal of the Communist Party . The historian James Klugmann acted as editor until 1977 . Among his successors - recommended by Eric Hobsbawm , among othersMartin Jacques played the magazine from November 1977 an important role in the factional struggles in the CPGB, in which it emerged as the most active advocate of the Eurocommunist wing. The extent of Marxism Today's responsibility for the decline and eventual (self) dissolution of the CPGB is the subject of ongoing controversy. In the second half of the 1980s, the magazine almost completely said goodbye to Marxist positions and functioned - although officially an organ of the British CP until the end - as a discussion platform for a left-liberal , mainly academic public. During this phase it attracted authors such as Ralf Dahrendorf , André Gunder Frank , Louis Althusser , Ernesto Laclau , David Marquand and Chantal Mouffe . With the December 1991 issue, the magazine ceased to appear. In the last issue, the editors printed, among other things, a letter to the editor from the then managing director of the Conservative Party ( Chris Patten ), in which he - with a view to the role of the magazine in previous years - said: "I shall miss you." The editor of the Morning Star and long-time internal party opponent of Jacques Tony Chater , however, wrote at the same point that Marxism Today "has gradually turned into an eclectic, yuppified magazine of little interest to most marxists."

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  1. ↑ See Laybourn, Keith, Marxism in Britain. Dissent, decline and re-emergence 1945-2000, London 2006, p. 137: “However, Marxism Today's sales success was something of a mixed blessing because its articles demolished many of the political icons of the CPGB and the labor movement. It (...) undoubtedly lost the party support. (...) The political views of Marxism Today , which pushed the Party even further towards the right, won the day and were expressed through the redrafted version of The British Road to Socialism which became Manifesto for New Times at the November 1989 Congress. “Eine A very critical view of the role of the magazine can also be found in Edmund and Ruth Frow, The Liquidation of the Communist Party of Great Britain. A Contribution to the Discussion, Salford 1996, passim. In contrast, the action of the paper by Jacques was repeatedly celebrated as the "golden age" of British Marxism. See, for example, The Marxism Today Story, in: Marxism Today, 12/1991, pp. 13ff.
  2. ↑ See Fishman, Nina, The British Road is Resurfaced for New Times: From the British Communist Party to the Democratic Left, in: Bull, Martin J., Heywood, Paul (eds.), West European Communist Parties after the Revolutions of 1989 , London 1994, pp. 157f.
  3. ↑ Marxism Today, 12/1991, p. 4
  4. ↑ Marxism Today, 12/1991, p. 5