1 As The Communist Manifesto put it, in elaborating on the bourgeoisie’s ‘highly revolutionary role’ historically; ‘the bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society… In a phrase, it creates a world in its own image’. Karl Marx, Later Political Writings, edited and translated by Terrell Carver, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp. 3-5. For a discussion of the continuing implications of this, see Leo Panitch, ‘Capitalism, Socialism and Revolution’, in Ralph Miliband, Leo Panitch, and John Saville, eds., The Socialist Register 1989, London: Merlin Press, 1989; and Renewing Socialism: Transforming Democracy, Strategy and Imagination, London: Merlin Press, 2009.
2 Between the 1987 American stock market crash and the investment banking collapse two decades later, there were upwards of a hundred distinct currency and banking crises as a direct outcome of global capital mobility. States were no longer in the business of ‘crisis prevention’ through regulations that might impede the free flow of capital; rather they were in the business of ‘crisis containment’, as the US Treasury itself put it in explaining why its central role had become ‘firefighting’. See Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin, The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire, London: Verso, 2012, Chapters 10-12.
3 Perry Anderson, ‘Renewals’, New Left Review, 1(January/February), 2000, pp. 7, 13. ‘Whatever limitations persist to its practice, neo-liberalism as a set of principles rules undivided across the globe: the most successful ideology in world history’.
4 Andrew Murray, ‘Jeremy Corbyn and the Battle for Socialism’, Jacobin, 7 February 2016.
5 Marx, Later Political Writings, pp. 9-10.
6 See E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, New York: Pantheon, 1964, pp. 9-11; and ‘Eighteenth Century English Society: Class Struggle Without Class’, Social History, 3(2), May 1978, pp. 133-65.
7 E. H. Hobsbawm, ‘The Making of the Working Class, 1870-1914’, Uncommon People: Resistance, Rebellion and Jazz, New York: The New Press, 1999, pp. 58-9. See also Geoff Eley, Forging Democracy: The History of the Left in Europe, 1850-2000, New York: OUP, 2002.
8 Robert Michels, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, New York: Free Press, 1962.
9 Rosa Luxemburg, ‘The Russian Revolution’, in Peter Hudis and Kevin Anderson, eds., The Rosa Luxemburg Reader, New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004, pp. 304-6.
10 Isaac Deutscher, The Prophet Armed, London: OUP, 1954, pp. 505-6.
11 Quoted in L. Panitch and S. Gindin, ‘Moscow, Togliatti, Yaroslavl: Perspectives on Perestroika’ in Dan Benedict et al., eds., Canadians Look at Soviet Auto Workers’ Unions, Toronto: CAW, 1992, p. 19.
12 ‘An American Proposal’, Fortune, May 1942. See L. Panitch & S. Gindin, 2012, pp. 67-8.
13 See Leo Panitch, ‘Socialist Renewal and the Labour Party’, Socialist Register 1988, pp. 319-65; and Leo Panitch and Colin Leys, The End of Parliamentary Socialism: from New Left to New Labour, Verso: 2001.
14 André Gorz, ‘Reform and Revolution’, in Ralph Miliband and John Saville, eds., The Socialist Register 1968, London: Merlin Press, 1968; Lucio Magri, ‘Problems of the Marxist Theory of the Revolutionary Party’, New Left Review, 60 (March/April), 1970; Tony Benn, The New Politics: A Socialist Reconnaissance, Fabian Tract 402, September 1970; Ralph Miliband, ‘Moving On’, in Ralph Miliband and John Saville, eds., The Socialist Register 1976, London: Merlin Press, 1976; Ralph Miliband, Marxism and Politics, Oxford: OUP, 1977; Sheila Rowbotham, Lynne Segal, and Hilary Wainwright, Beyond the Fragments: Feminism and the making of Socialism, London: Merlin, 1979.
15 Nicos Poulantzas, ‘Towards a Democratic Socialism’, State, Power, Socialism, London: NLB, 1978. The quotes below are drawn from pp. 256-261.
16 Gorz, ‘Reform and Revolution’, p. 112.
17 Gorz, ‘Reform and Revolution’, pp. 132-3. Lucio Magri (‘Problems of the Marxist Theory of the Revolutionary Party’’, p. 128) similarly called for new workers councils ‘right across society (factories, offices, schools), with their own structures as mediating organizations between party, union, and state institutions, for which all of the latter needed to act as elements of stimulus and synthesis’. And even though he presented this in terms of the ‘need for a creative revival of the theme of soviets [as] essential to resolve the theoretical and strategic problems of the Western Revolution’, this was directed at offsetting the total dominance of the party, and emphatically did not mean re-endorsing a dual power strategy for ‘smashing the state’.
18 Poulantzas, ‘Towards a Democratic Socialism’, pp. 256, 258.
19 Ralph Miliband, Class Power and State Power, London: Verso, 1983, esp. Chapters 2-4.
20 Goran Therborn, What Does the Ruling Class Do When it Rules? State Apparatuses and State Power under Feudalism, Capitalism and Socialism, NLB: London, 1978, pp. 279-80.
21 See however Greg Albo, David Langille and Leo Panitch eds., A Different Kind of State: Popular Power and Democratic Administration, Toronto: OUP, 1993.
22 See Sam Gindin, ‘Chasing Utopia’, Jacobin, 10 March 2016.
23 Poulantzas, ‘Towards a Democratic Socialism’, p. 262.
24 Bernie Sanders, ‘Prepared Remarks: The Political Revolution Continues’, 16 June, 2016. https://berniesanders.com/political-revolution-continues.
25 Dan La Botz, ‘Life After Bernie: People’s Summit Searches for the Movement’s Political Future’, New Politics, 21 June 2016. http://newpol.org.
26 See Steve Williams and Rishi Awatramani, ‘New Working-Class Organizations and the Social Movement Left’; and Mark Dudzic and Adolph Reed, Jr., ‘The Crisis of Labour and the Left in the United States’, both in Leo Panitch and Greg Albo, eds., Socialist Register 2015: Transforming Classes, London: Merlin Press, 2014.
27 See Costas Eleftheriou, ‘The Uneasy ‘Symbiosis’: Factionalism and Radical Politics in Synaspismos’, paper prepared for 4th Hellenic Observatory PhD Symposium, n.d.
28 Michalis Spourdalakis, ‘Left Strategy in the Greek Cauldron: Explaining Syriza’s Success’, in Leo Panitch, Greg Albo, and Vivek Chibber, eds., Socialist Register 2013: The Question of Strategy, London: Merlin Press, 2012, p. 102.
29 Available at: https://left.gr/news/political-resolution-1st-congress-SYRIZA.
30 ‘Syriza and Socialist Strategy’, International Socialism, No. 146, April 2015 (transcript of a debate between Alec Callinicos and Stathis Kouvelakis, London, 25 February 2015).
31 Costas Douzinas, ‘The Left in Power? Notes on Syriza’s Rise, Fall and (Possible) Second Rise’, Near Futures Online, March 2016. Available at: http://nearfuturesonline.org.
32 Michalis Spourdalakis, ‘Becoming Syriza Again’, Jacobin, 31 January 2016.
33 See www.solidarity4all.gr/; https://www.greenleft.org.au/content/greece-solidarity-action-visit-solidarity4all-clinic.
34 Ralph Miliband, ‘Moving On’, in Ralph Miliband and John Saville, eds, The Socialist Register 1976, London: Merlin, 1976, pp. 128, 138.
35 See Andrew Murray’s sharp critique of the Left Unity initiative, ‘Left Unity or Class Unity? Working-class politics in Britain’, in Leo Panitch, Greg Albo and Vivek Chibber, Registering Class: Socialist Register 2014, London: Merlin, 2013. Murray himself could hardly have imagined then that only three years later he would be seconded from his position as chief of staff of Unite, Britain largest union, to the Labour party leader’s election campaign office.
36 Tony Benn, ‘Democratic Politics,’ Fabian Autumn Lecture, 3 November 1971, in Speeches by Tony Benn, pp. 277-9; Tony Benn, A New Politics: A Socialist Reconnaissance, Fabian Tract 402, September 1970, p. 9; see also ‘Tony Benn: Articulating a New Socialist Politics’, Panitch and Leys, The End of Parliamentary Socialism, pp. 50-1.
37 Alex Nunns, The Candidate: Jeremy Corbyn’s Improbable Path to Power, London: Or Books, 2018, p. 147.
38 Richard Seymour, Corbyn: The Strange Rebirth of Radical Politics, London: Verso, 2017, p. 174.
39 Nunns, The Candidate, p. 147.
40 Tom Blackburn, ‘Corbynism from Below’, New Socialist, June 12, 2017. https://newsocialist.org.uk/corbynism-from-below/
41 https://labour.org.uk/about/democracy-review-2017/.
42 Max Shanly, ‘Toward a New Model Young Labour’ The Bullet, November 27, 2017. https://socialistproject.ca/2017/11/b1516/.
43 See Panitch and Leys, The End of Parliamentary Socialism, esp. chapter 8.
44 For the Many, Not the Few. https://labour.org.uk/manifesto/.
45 Alternative Models of Ownership, Report to the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer and Shadow Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. https://labour.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Alternative-Models-of-Ownership.pdf.
46 See Hilary Wainwright, A New Politics from the Left, Cambridge: Polity, 2018.
47 See Paul Mason, Post-Capitalism: London: Allen Lane, 2015.
48 Quoted in Panitch and Leys, The End of Parliamentary Socialism, pp.174-5.
49 Nicholas Costello, Jonathan Michie and Seumas Milne, Beyond the Casino Economy, London: Verso, 1989, pp. 254-5.
50 Andreas Karitzis, The European Left in Times of Crises: Lessons from Greece, Amsterdam: Transnational Institute, 2017, p. 29.
51 Ibid, pp. 30-32.
52 Ibid, pp. 20-21.
53 Ibid, pp. 23-4.
54 Nina Power, ‘Digital Democracy’, in L. Panitch and G. Albo eds., Rethinking Democracy: Socialist Register 2018, London: Merlin, 2017, p. 174.
55 Marx, ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte’, Later Political Writings, p. 32.
56 Ibid., p. 35.