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Street-Fighting Years: An Autobiography of the Sixties
In this new edition of his memoirs, Tariq Ali revisits his formative years as a young radical. It is a story that takes us from Paris and Prague to Hanoi and Bolivia, encountering along the way Malcolm X, Bertrand Russell, Marlon Brando, Henry Kissinger, and Mick Jagger.
Ali captures the mood and energy of those years as he tracks the growing significance of the nascent protest movement.
This edition includes a new introduction, as well as the famous interview conducted by Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn with John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1971.
Ali captures the mood and energy of those years as he tracks the growing significance of the nascent protest movement.
This edition includes a new introduction, as well as the famous interview conducted by Tariq Ali and Robin Blackburn with John Lennon and Yoko Ono in 1971.
403 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1987
18 people are currently reading
575 people want to read
About the author
Tariq Ali
137 books804 followersTariq Ali (Punjabi, Urdu: طارق علی) is a British-Pakistani historian, novelist, filmmaker, political campaigner, and commentator. He is a member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review and Sin Permiso, and regularly contributes to The Guardian, CounterPunch, and the London Review of Books.
He is the author of several books, including Can Pakistan Survive? The Death of a State (1991) , Pirates Of The Caribbean: Axis Of Hope (2006), Conversations with Edward Said (2005), Bush in Babylon (2003), and Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002), A Banker for All Seasons (2007) and the recently published The Duel (2008).
He is the author of several books, including Can Pakistan Survive? The Death of a State (1991) , Pirates Of The Caribbean: Axis Of Hope (2006), Conversations with Edward Said (2005), Bush in Babylon (2003), and Clash of Fundamentalisms: Crusades, Jihads and Modernity (2002), A Banker for All Seasons (2007) and the recently published The Duel (2008).
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
September 1, 2016
I liked this and liked Tariq’s writing style. I saw Tariq give a lecture at the LSE I think in the early noughties and was impressed then as I was now with this book of his which he wrote in the late 80s. The book is about his political activism in the 60s when he was quite young. He went to Vietnam when things were kicking off then and returned to live the tale. The book covers some interesting tales of this well-educated (originally) Pakistani individuals time there and some of the time that he spent in Bolivia around the time that Ernesto Che Guevara was there also. There is a short description of how Che was eventually killed after he was caught in Bolivia which I never knew about which was sad to hear about. I had to take a star off mostly because there were some parts of the book that were about British Politics and after having read about Vietnam and Cuba somehow that just paled into vanilla. The book had an insightful section on the student revolution in France in the late 60s which was inspiring and but now juxtaposed against France’s pathetic political stance against the banning of Burkinis (for example) in order to win brownie sycophant ass licking points with America, it all seems like such wasted effort. Don’t see any student revolt happening from that country any time soon on ANY subject matter that’s for sure. Students are becoming more and more like excellent sheep. Other interesting bits from the book were as follows:
• “Every single medical expert has admitted that marijuana is less harmful than tobacco and alcohol. The big capitalist lobbies know this well and refuse to legalize it because they fear massive loss in profits on alcohol and tobacco.”
• An interesting meeting happened in the communist part in Cuba. Fidel Castro asked the audience of key members if anyone there was an economist. Apparently Che misheard and thought Fidel was asking if anyone there was a “communist” so he raised his hand - obviously. Later and by pure serendipity Che became the chief economic lead for the party and apparently had a natural talent for the role.
• History has to be taken as it is and when she allows herself such extraordinary and faulty outrage one must fight back with one’s fists.
• “Every single medical expert has admitted that marijuana is less harmful than tobacco and alcohol. The big capitalist lobbies know this well and refuse to legalize it because they fear massive loss in profits on alcohol and tobacco.”
• An interesting meeting happened in the communist part in Cuba. Fidel Castro asked the audience of key members if anyone there was an economist. Apparently Che misheard and thought Fidel was asking if anyone there was a “communist” so he raised his hand - obviously. Later and by pure serendipity Che became the chief economic lead for the party and apparently had a natural talent for the role.
• History has to be taken as it is and when she allows herself such extraordinary and faulty outrage one must fight back with one’s fists.
March 18, 2019
I had worried this would be too Trot-y to enjoy, but it was actually quite enjoyable and mostly avoided too much in the way of self-celebration (but not name-dropping). In fact, what came through quite strongly for me was the profound importance of Mao, from his early criticisms of official Communism in Pakistan to the work on Black Dwarf and support for various guerrilla movements, all the more significant given Ali was presumably not setting out to emphasise it! There's a lot in this book that feels very familiar, and much which feels alien - including, curiously, the serious connections to the French and German (as well as Pakistani and South American) Left which Tariq Ali discusses.
The interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono at the end was actually quite interesting, but without any discussion of Lennon as an abuser it should not have been included.
The interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono at the end was actually quite interesting, but without any discussion of Lennon as an abuser it should not have been included.
August 14, 2025
Highly readable and enjoyable memoir by one of the leading figures of the radical left in the 1960's
June 17, 2009
Tariq Ali's memoir is a great read. Ali, an international socialist activist/intellectual, includes photos which add flavor: among journalists with Chou-en-Lai in Lahore, with Malcolm X in Oxford, visiting Regis Debray imprisoned in Bolivia, with the War Crimes Tribunal in Vietnam, speaking during 1969 insurrection in Pakistan, walking in the streets with May 68er Daniel Cohn-Bendit, celebrating Belgian Marxist Ernest Mandel, posing with Derek Jarman on the Wittgenstein set, dinner with Edward Said and Stuart Hall, marching with his daughter Aisha against the 2003 Iraq War. Plus, the interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
October 3, 2007
I have a lot of trouble with Tariq Ali, and I think this book embopdies the majority of it- take some misguided protest-politics, mix in a bit of cult of personality and reminiscences about the Good Old Days and here we are. As has become his habit, Ali glorifies an era which, ultimately collapsed into the decadence of the eighties- driven in large part by ex radicals who were just along for the ride.
Protest politics is a dead end, something which needs to be studied, not glorified, and certainly not repeated.
Protest politics is a dead end, something which needs to be studied, not glorified, and certainly not repeated.
May 7, 2020
I'm preparing to read Tariq Ali's Islam Quintet, a five-novel fictional history of the Islamic world, for a group on Goodreads, so I decided to learn somewhat more about the author first. Today, he is probably best known for his novels and plays of the eighties and nineties, but in the sixties and seventies he was better known as a socialist and antiwar activist, and that's how I first heard of him at the time. This autobiography deals with that period of his life. The subtitle is ambiguous -- is this his autobiography from the sixties, or an "autobiography" of the Sixties? Actually, it's a bit of both.
The first sixty pages of the revised edition is a new introduction, asking the question why the Sixties are still such a controversial period, remembered with nostalgia by some of us, but vilified by others, and particularly the conservative/liberal media. The introduction also pays homage to some people from that time who have died in the intervening years, and gives a thumbnail sketch of various wars and other political developments up to 2005.
The original book begins with a chapter called "Preludes", which describes his childhood and adolescence from 1946 to 1962 in newly-independent Pakistan, but also chronicles year-by-year the major events of the period, such as the Chinese Revolution, Nasser's revolution in Egypt, Kruschev's revelations about Stalin, and the Cuban Revolution. He came from a secular left-wing family; his mother was an active member of the Communist Party. Tariq himself was basically sympathetic to the Maoists, until the 1967 massacre of the Indonesian communists caused him to question Mao's policies. In college, he became a leader of student demonstrations, and his family decided it was safer to pack him off to study at Oxford.
The next two chapters go from 1962 to 1967 and deal with his activities at Oxford and in the left of the Labour Party, and his eventually disillusionment with the Labour Party as Harold Wilson abandoned all his promises and showed himself as an obedient lieutenant of Washington, particularly in supporting the war in Vietnam. He describes among other things his meeting with Malcolm X at Oxford, the beginning of his work with the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, and the first British teach-ins around Vietnam. This is followed by a very interesting chapter about his fact-finding trip to Hanoi for the Russell Foundation's War Crimes Tribunal. The founding of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and the Black Dwarf magazine, the two axes of his political work for the next few years, are described in a short chapter.
There are three chapters focused on "The Year", 1968. The first and third are largely about the VSC, and are the real essence of the book; the second is about May '68 in France and the Prague Spring, neither of which he was able to witness first hand due to legal restrictions on his travel. This is also the time at which he joined the International Marxist Group, the British section of the (Trotskyist) Fourth International, which at the time had about fifty members, though it grew to about 200 as a result of the big anti-Vietnam War demonstrations of the next couple years. There was less about this than I was hoping for. I had had the impression that Ali was somewhat of an "ultraleft", but from this book it seems that much of his effort was to combat the more ultraleft elements within the VSC and keep the demonstrations from ending up in confrontations with the police or worse. He heads up one of the chapters with a perfect quotation from Lenin: "A terrorist is a Liberal with a bomb." A final chapter deals with the years 1969-1975, marked largely by defeats, and ending with the beginning of the long period of reaction which has more or less continued until the present. There is a sort of epilogue called "Heretics and Renegades", a "where are they now?" kind of thing which separates those who have retained the spirit of the sixties from those who sold out, and of course those who had died by 1987.
The book ends with an interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, added in the revised edition, which is interesting but not really connected to the rest of the book.
The real interest of the book to me was the description of the antiwar movement in England. The biggest weakness was its serious misunderstanding of the dynamics of the antiwar movement (and left politics in general) in the United States, one country that he never visited but relied on information about from visitors to the Black Dwarf offices. Ali greatly overestimates the role of SDS in the antiwar movement (in fact the national organization basically abandoned the antiwar movement after the first big demonstration) and dismisses the role of the American Socialist Workers Party as "aparatchniks pure and simple" (who actually played a major role in organizing the movement). This made clearer to me some of the polemics from that time, although I suspect that his remembrances may be colored by later factional developments. I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to know about the antiwar movement abroad, but suggest that it be read along with Fred Halstead's Out Now on the United States as a necessary corrective.
The first sixty pages of the revised edition is a new introduction, asking the question why the Sixties are still such a controversial period, remembered with nostalgia by some of us, but vilified by others, and particularly the conservative/liberal media. The introduction also pays homage to some people from that time who have died in the intervening years, and gives a thumbnail sketch of various wars and other political developments up to 2005.
The original book begins with a chapter called "Preludes", which describes his childhood and adolescence from 1946 to 1962 in newly-independent Pakistan, but also chronicles year-by-year the major events of the period, such as the Chinese Revolution, Nasser's revolution in Egypt, Kruschev's revelations about Stalin, and the Cuban Revolution. He came from a secular left-wing family; his mother was an active member of the Communist Party. Tariq himself was basically sympathetic to the Maoists, until the 1967 massacre of the Indonesian communists caused him to question Mao's policies. In college, he became a leader of student demonstrations, and his family decided it was safer to pack him off to study at Oxford.
The next two chapters go from 1962 to 1967 and deal with his activities at Oxford and in the left of the Labour Party, and his eventually disillusionment with the Labour Party as Harold Wilson abandoned all his promises and showed himself as an obedient lieutenant of Washington, particularly in supporting the war in Vietnam. He describes among other things his meeting with Malcolm X at Oxford, the beginning of his work with the Bertrand Russell Peace Foundation, and the first British teach-ins around Vietnam. This is followed by a very interesting chapter about his fact-finding trip to Hanoi for the Russell Foundation's War Crimes Tribunal. The founding of the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and the Black Dwarf magazine, the two axes of his political work for the next few years, are described in a short chapter.
There are three chapters focused on "The Year", 1968. The first and third are largely about the VSC, and are the real essence of the book; the second is about May '68 in France and the Prague Spring, neither of which he was able to witness first hand due to legal restrictions on his travel. This is also the time at which he joined the International Marxist Group, the British section of the (Trotskyist) Fourth International, which at the time had about fifty members, though it grew to about 200 as a result of the big anti-Vietnam War demonstrations of the next couple years. There was less about this than I was hoping for. I had had the impression that Ali was somewhat of an "ultraleft", but from this book it seems that much of his effort was to combat the more ultraleft elements within the VSC and keep the demonstrations from ending up in confrontations with the police or worse. He heads up one of the chapters with a perfect quotation from Lenin: "A terrorist is a Liberal with a bomb." A final chapter deals with the years 1969-1975, marked largely by defeats, and ending with the beginning of the long period of reaction which has more or less continued until the present. There is a sort of epilogue called "Heretics and Renegades", a "where are they now?" kind of thing which separates those who have retained the spirit of the sixties from those who sold out, and of course those who had died by 1987.
The book ends with an interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono, added in the revised edition, which is interesting but not really connected to the rest of the book.
The real interest of the book to me was the description of the antiwar movement in England. The biggest weakness was its serious misunderstanding of the dynamics of the antiwar movement (and left politics in general) in the United States, one country that he never visited but relied on information about from visitors to the Black Dwarf offices. Ali greatly overestimates the role of SDS in the antiwar movement (in fact the national organization basically abandoned the antiwar movement after the first big demonstration) and dismisses the role of the American Socialist Workers Party as "aparatchniks pure and simple" (who actually played a major role in organizing the movement). This made clearer to me some of the polemics from that time, although I suspect that his remembrances may be colored by later factional developments. I would recommend this book to anyone wanting to know about the antiwar movement abroad, but suggest that it be read along with Fred Halstead's Out Now on the United States as a necessary corrective.
June 19, 2020
Book that turned me into a serious revolutionary. Conversational writing style, great turn of phrase, and an insight into the broader political movements of British and int. trotskyists at the time.
March 3, 2020
A dishonest book from a dishonest man who seems to have wanted to be some sort of Nehru of England, or at least of London, and achieved to become a minor somebody in his own niche.
It is presented as an autobiography "of the Sixties". And somehow his petty attempts at scamming some money, not for him, but for "the revolution" in London and a few Asian countries equate with the achievements of Lennon in New York. I don't doubt that Ali had times when he thought he could be bigger than Lennon. Inside, it is less about his well manicured diary, and more about what the reader should feel on a given issue. Hence his 1990s wishes become what unspecified lots of people were feeling. The facts themselves are of dubious quality, as people can be "virtually unconscious" and intermittently "endlessly interrogated". For Ali the world is as complicated as seen by a 6 year old. Hence Debray is interrogated by CIA agents and Cuban exiles from Miami. He knows there were no Cubans among the proud Western CIA agents and that all exiles were from Miami. At one point I realized this is all a fairy tale weaved by Ali based on gossiping with unmentioned sources.
So is it Ali's biography? Yes, in the sense that his ego is too big to be kept out. Is it a biography? Yes, if your definition is generous enough to include stories retold three decades later about situations that some unmentioned source gossiped with Ali some three decades earlier.
It is presented as an autobiography "of the Sixties". And somehow his petty attempts at scamming some money, not for him, but for "the revolution" in London and a few Asian countries equate with the achievements of Lennon in New York. I don't doubt that Ali had times when he thought he could be bigger than Lennon. Inside, it is less about his well manicured diary, and more about what the reader should feel on a given issue. Hence his 1990s wishes become what unspecified lots of people were feeling. The facts themselves are of dubious quality, as people can be "virtually unconscious" and intermittently "endlessly interrogated". For Ali the world is as complicated as seen by a 6 year old. Hence Debray is interrogated by CIA agents and Cuban exiles from Miami. He knows there were no Cubans among the proud Western CIA agents and that all exiles were from Miami. At one point I realized this is all a fairy tale weaved by Ali based on gossiping with unmentioned sources.
So is it Ali's biography? Yes, in the sense that his ego is too big to be kept out. Is it a biography? Yes, if your definition is generous enough to include stories retold three decades later about situations that some unmentioned source gossiped with Ali some three decades earlier.
January 27, 2021
'68 denildiğinde dünyanın her yerinde akla ilk önce Fransa geliyor herhalde. Ardından Almanya, Amerika ve belki de tüm ülkelerin kendi yaşadığı olaylar, gençlik isyanları...
İngiltere'de olup bitenler ise çok da bilinen, anılan olaylar zinciri gibi değil. Tarık Ali, Pakistan'dan entelektüel solcu bir ailenin çocuğu olarak 60'ların ilk yarısında Oxford'a okumaya gelen, ardından ülkesindeki Amerikan destekli dikatörlük ile mücadelesini, emperyalizmle mücadeleye eviren ve Vietnam savaşı karşıtı eylemlerin önemli isimlerinden biri. Onun anıları ise, kitabın isminin radikalizmi kadar keskin değil.
Kitabın orjinal ismi, Mick Jagger'ın "Street Fighting Man" isimli şarkısından, "Her yerden ayak sesleri duyuyorum, yüklü adımlar, evlat / Çünkü yaz geldi ve sokakla dövüşmenin tam zamanıdır,
evlat / ne yapabilir yoksul bir çocuk, şarkı söylemekten başka / bir rock n’roll grubunda, çünkü mahmur / Londra’da yer yok / Sokakta Kavga Eden Adama / bir saray devriminin vaktinin geldiğini söylediler..." diyen satırlardan yola çıkılarak konulmuş. Ancak Türkçeleştirilirken "Sokak kavgası yılları" yerine "Sokak savaşı yılları" tercih edilmiş. Eh "savaş" daha dikkat çekici...
İngiltere'de olup bitenler ise çok da bilinen, anılan olaylar zinciri gibi değil. Tarık Ali, Pakistan'dan entelektüel solcu bir ailenin çocuğu olarak 60'ların ilk yarısında Oxford'a okumaya gelen, ardından ülkesindeki Amerikan destekli dikatörlük ile mücadelesini, emperyalizmle mücadeleye eviren ve Vietnam savaşı karşıtı eylemlerin önemli isimlerinden biri. Onun anıları ise, kitabın isminin radikalizmi kadar keskin değil.
Kitabın orjinal ismi, Mick Jagger'ın "Street Fighting Man" isimli şarkısından, "Her yerden ayak sesleri duyuyorum, yüklü adımlar, evlat / Çünkü yaz geldi ve sokakla dövüşmenin tam zamanıdır,
evlat / ne yapabilir yoksul bir çocuk, şarkı söylemekten başka / bir rock n’roll grubunda, çünkü mahmur / Londra’da yer yok / Sokakta Kavga Eden Adama / bir saray devriminin vaktinin geldiğini söylediler..." diyen satırlardan yola çıkılarak konulmuş. Ancak Türkçeleştirilirken "Sokak kavgası yılları" yerine "Sokak savaşı yılları" tercih edilmiş. Eh "savaş" daha dikkat çekici...
November 10, 2019
Fascinating tales from one of British Trotskyism's most eloquent and forceful voices; an original soixante-huitard, Ali has known them all - Malcolm X, John and Yoko, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the list goes on and the prose is engaging at every level from charting his radical awakening as a youth in Pakistan, through following Che Guevara's final footsteps in Bolivia right up to the encroaching shadow of glasnost that was present upon the book's inital publication in 1987. The first chapter is a collection of more recent musings which doesn't make a lot of chronological sense (surely this would have worked better as an appendix than an opening chapetr?) but for those who weren't there and want to know what it was like, this is essential reading.
October 23, 2023
Tariq Ali makes me want to run through a wall lol. An incredibly well written book, that painted such a rich picture of the times and managed to connect with me viscerally anyway, 40 years after its date of publishing. Engaging, funny, sincere and hopeful. The end, as he sums up the passing of the revolutionary fervour of the sixties made me want to weep.
On a personal note, my dad first read this book in November 1990. He gave the same dog-eared copy to me in 2020, when I was leaving South Asia to study in the West. I only ended up finishing it in 2023 halfway into my degree. The value of this book, it's physical form, it's connection to my dad, and it's ideological influence, are very important to me. Thank you Mr. Ali.
On a personal note, my dad first read this book in November 1990. He gave the same dog-eared copy to me in 2020, when I was leaving South Asia to study in the West. I only ended up finishing it in 2023 halfway into my degree. The value of this book, it's physical form, it's connection to my dad, and it's ideological influence, are very important to me. Thank you Mr. Ali.
April 29, 2019
Very moving autobiography of Tariq Ali. I would have given it more stars but I was lacking in understanding earlier texts that he references about socialism and Trotsky. He is not afraid to admit to his mistakes and stays true to his views and values. I had no idea of the impact of USA losing in Vietnam sparked so many movements in other parts of the world. I guess this loss demonstrated the power of a country and people who had less technology, less backing, less financial resources but the will to keep fighting. Also part of the book that was enlightening was the interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono.
August 10, 2017
Surprisingly relevant book, 30 years later. Ali goes into some detail about the various movements that marked the 60s in Europe and America, but does so from the point of view of a Pakistani-born activist who has a wide command of both the language and the issues of those fretful times. A book not to be underrated...
April 30, 2019
I was dubious of this novel at first, having never heard of it & thinking the topic sounded rather heavy. I was also daunted by how thick the book was for what it was about but found I couldn't put it down once I started! I love those kind of surprise books that just sneak up on you & glomp you with awesome
April 14, 2020
A marvellous book. Gets the reader to know the euphoria and utopia of the 1960s. Hets a little boring when the author discusses the minute details of the Left in England. Nonetheless a very good read.
November 21, 2024
Very inspirational and very fun to read.
Unexpectedly starring a cast ranging from Che to Marlon Brando to John Lennon.
Unexpectedly starring a cast ranging from Che to Marlon Brando to John Lennon.
January 19, 2019
This was a fun read, even though I had to conclude by the end that TaRIQ is a bit of a narcissistic idiot. Seldom does he question any of his own opinions. He is convinced that he is on the right side of history and makes a series of wonderful career choices, and builds a fantastic network of connections with other international socialists. It reminded me of the title of Max Stirner's classic "The Ego and its Own". This is the tale of a semi-aristocratic Pakistani lord's journey to the capital of the old empire, where he earns his place among another privileged elite, namely the socialists.
May 25, 2025
'Ere Kieth have you seen the date on these marshmallows?
In all seriousness this is an excellent book and gave me a deeper appreciation for the Sino-Soviet split
In all seriousness this is an excellent book and gave me a deeper appreciation for the Sino-Soviet split
March 12, 2025
im OBSESSED with this book. i dont even know where to start so im not gonna try at all except to express ONE single thing that i cant ignore as it hit TOO CLOSE to home!
the possibility of accessing what other socialists, communists and activists, on the other side of the world, thought about 1965 coup and 1965-1966 political genocide in indonesia in real time as it was happening THROUGH THIS BOOK.. is.. making me cry tbh. it is amazing. felt so surreal reading tariq's impression of hearing the news in indonesia for the first time, and him developing his thoughts on the matter as the news regarding the situation kept on developing. not to mention his thoughts + commentaries on soekarno ????? omg
u and i both tariq
preach king
this is my favorite book of all time its the only thing im bringing to a deserted island and its the only thing i need to reread for the rest of my life in order to sustain my optimism living under capitalist hell
the possibility of accessing what other socialists, communists and activists, on the other side of the world, thought about 1965 coup and 1965-1966 political genocide in indonesia in real time as it was happening THROUGH THIS BOOK.. is.. making me cry tbh. it is amazing. felt so surreal reading tariq's impression of hearing the news in indonesia for the first time, and him developing his thoughts on the matter as the news regarding the situation kept on developing. not to mention his thoughts + commentaries on soekarno ????? omg
"Sukarno did not suffer, but the PKI, which the dictator had use as one important pillar of his Bonapartist project, was physically and politically eliminated by Generals closely identified with the Pentagon." — "I suppose what made me angry was the fact, irrelevant to all but myself, that I have never found Sukarno to be a particularly inspiring political leader. His rhetoric was stale, his vision severely limited, and his achievements few. Nehru had fathered the concept of nonalignment, Nasser had nationalized the Suez canal, Nkrumah had dreamt of African unity, Mao Zedong and Fidel Castro had led successful revolutions and Ho Chi Minh was in the process of completing another."
u and i both tariq
"But what had the degenerate mystagogue of Jakarta ever achieved, apart of a futile and thoughtless confrontation with Malaysia, which had ended in a disaster?"
preach king
"For months afterwards I was dejected by the news from Indonesia. It had raised the first real doubts in my mind about Chinese policies. The PKI had been extremely close to Peking. The advise they had received from Peng Chen and other Chinese leaders was that the alliance with Sukarno must be the cornerstone of their policy because of Sukarno's anti-imperialist stance. The pro-Moscow parties were not too embarrassed by the turn of events since it was an opportunity to criticize the supposedly 'leftist errors' of the PKI, which the East German daily Neues Deutschand did in its issue of 24 October 1965 while extending the fullest possible support to Sukarno. The Chinese leaders had been denouncing Moscow repeatedly for advancing the 'absurd and revisionist thesis' that it was possible to have a state that was neither fish nor fowl, neither socialist nor bourgeois. They had heaped scorn and abuse on Soviet analysts for even suggesting that in the Third World it was perfectly permissible for local communists to enter into alliances with their rulers, provided the latter were anti-imperialist. The PKI leaders had been guilty of all these errors and the mass murders of at least 250,000 communists was the clearest indication of the linkages between theory and practice. The political blunders of the PKI had led to the loss of lies on a sensational scale. What would be Peking's response? We waited anxiously and eagerly for some clarification, but Peking remained silent. No explanation."
this is my favorite book of all time its the only thing im bringing to a deserted island and its the only thing i need to reread for the rest of my life in order to sustain my optimism living under capitalist hell
April 6, 2024
Wonderful insights into the early life and work of a true icon of resistance, and many of the political figures of the day. A story of energy, persistence and calm in the face of provocation and oppression.
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews