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New Left Review #104
New Left Review 104
Wolfgang Streeck: The Return of the Repressed
Is the long reign of neo-liberalism coming to an end, struck by the untoward blows of Brexit, Trump and spread of populist insurgencies across Europe, as victims of its pattern of globalization start to find a voice? If so, with no radical alternative yet in sight, is a strange interregnum looming, where ‘everything is possible and nothing consequential’?
Gopal Balakrishnan: Counterstrike West
Conceptions of a revolution from the right in the era of European fascism, and an activist overcoming of conservative dejection at the fate of the West. Political and philosophical imaginings of an alternate capitalist modernity, capable of settling accounts with decadence and Bolshevism.
Rohana Kuddus: The Ghosts of 1965
Half a century after the massacres that wiped out Indonesian communism, and twenty years since the arrival of electoral democracy, how far does the legacy of Suharto’s New Order live on? Under a smothering canopy of reaction—and accommodations to it—seedlings of hope and progress in the world’s fourth-most populous society.
Jennifer Quist: Laurelled Lives
What literary credentials are required for consecration by the Swedish Academy? How Western liberalism reproduces itself in a set of standardized ideological and cultural preferences underlying the ostensible cosmopolis of Nobelists.
Joshua Rahtz: The Soul of the Eurozone
The character, career and intellectual output of Europe’s most consequential politician, Germany’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble—longest-standing member of parliament in his country’s history, superintendent of national reunification and drill-master of continental austerity, obliged to serve in the shadow of a muddle-through mediocrity.
John Grahl: A New Economics
John Grahl on Anwar Shaikh, Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises. An ambitious recasting of economic thought, from classical political economy to the mathematized present, in a synthesis aiming at realistic capture of the vicissitudes of contemporary capitalism.
Emma Fajgenbaum: An Aphorist of the Cinema
Emma Fajgenbaum on Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematograph and Bresson on Bresson. The lapidary sayings and injunctions to the self, admiring interviews and guarded replies, of the most auratic and least documented director of post-war French cinema.
Carlos Sardiña Galache: Arakan Divided
Carlos Sardiña Galache on Azeem Ibrahim, The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Hidden Genocide and Khin Maung Saw, Behind the Mask: The Truth Behind the Name ‘Rohingya’. Two opposite versions of the identity and condition of the Muslim population of the province of Arakan.
Is the long reign of neo-liberalism coming to an end, struck by the untoward blows of Brexit, Trump and spread of populist insurgencies across Europe, as victims of its pattern of globalization start to find a voice? If so, with no radical alternative yet in sight, is a strange interregnum looming, where ‘everything is possible and nothing consequential’?
Gopal Balakrishnan: Counterstrike West
Conceptions of a revolution from the right in the era of European fascism, and an activist overcoming of conservative dejection at the fate of the West. Political and philosophical imaginings of an alternate capitalist modernity, capable of settling accounts with decadence and Bolshevism.
Rohana Kuddus: The Ghosts of 1965
Half a century after the massacres that wiped out Indonesian communism, and twenty years since the arrival of electoral democracy, how far does the legacy of Suharto’s New Order live on? Under a smothering canopy of reaction—and accommodations to it—seedlings of hope and progress in the world’s fourth-most populous society.
Jennifer Quist: Laurelled Lives
What literary credentials are required for consecration by the Swedish Academy? How Western liberalism reproduces itself in a set of standardized ideological and cultural preferences underlying the ostensible cosmopolis of Nobelists.
Joshua Rahtz: The Soul of the Eurozone
The character, career and intellectual output of Europe’s most consequential politician, Germany’s Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble—longest-standing member of parliament in his country’s history, superintendent of national reunification and drill-master of continental austerity, obliged to serve in the shadow of a muddle-through mediocrity.
John Grahl: A New Economics
John Grahl on Anwar Shaikh, Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises. An ambitious recasting of economic thought, from classical political economy to the mathematized present, in a synthesis aiming at realistic capture of the vicissitudes of contemporary capitalism.
Emma Fajgenbaum: An Aphorist of the Cinema
Emma Fajgenbaum on Robert Bresson, Notes on the Cinematograph and Bresson on Bresson. The lapidary sayings and injunctions to the self, admiring interviews and guarded replies, of the most auratic and least documented director of post-war French cinema.
Carlos Sardiña Galache: Arakan Divided
Carlos Sardiña Galache on Azeem Ibrahim, The Rohingyas: Inside Myanmar’s Hidden Genocide and Khin Maung Saw, Behind the Mask: The Truth Behind the Name ‘Rohingya’. Two opposite versions of the identity and condition of the Muslim population of the province of Arakan.
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160 pages, Paperback
Published April 1, 2017
13 people want to read
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New Left Review
74 books53 followersA 160-page journal published every two months from London, New Left Review analyses world politics, the global economy, state powers and protest movements; contemporary social theory, history and philosophy; cinema, literature, heterodox art and aesthetics. It runs a regular book review section and carries interviews, essays, topical comments and signed editorials on political issues of the day. ‘Brief History of New Left Review’ gives an account of NLR’s political and intellectual trajectory since its launch in 1960.
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Submissions to the journal are welcome, but please consult the submission guidelines before sending in an article or book review. For queries concerning advertising, bookshop distribution or subscriptions, please consult the full contact details.
The NLR Online Archive includes the full text of all articles published since 1960; the complete index can be searched by author, title, subject or issue number. The full NLR Index 1960-2010 is available in print and can be purchased here. Subscribers to the print edition get free access to the entire online archive; two or three articles from each new issue are available free online. If you wish to subscribe to NLR, you can take advantage of special offers by subscribing online, or contact the Subscriptions Director below.
NLR is also published in Spanish, and selected articles are available in Greek, Italian, Korean, Portuguese and Turkish.
Submissions to the journal are welcome, but please consult the submission guidelines before sending in an article or book review. For queries concerning advertising, bookshop distribution or subscriptions, please consult the full contact details.
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June 5, 2017I'd say the highlight here is the piece on Indonesia. One of the most appalling crimes of the twentieth century occurred in that country in the years 1965-66. A veritable political genocide with a death toll of 500,000 or more (for context, roughly the same body count as Stalin's great terror of '37-38).
These massacres fit into a larger Cold War pattern in which third world military regimes would slaughter or imprison their country's left, often with US aid and military backing. Suharto's Indonesia was the most extreme example, but other cases abound throughout Asia and Latin America.
Rohana Kuddus's lengthy article is valuable both as history of a particular country and a more general meditation on the ideology of remembrance.
*
Wolfgang Streeck remains my favorite leftwing prophet of doom. So naturally I was beside myself with excitement to see he had a new piece in the NLR. After reading it, however, I have to say I'm not entirely satisfied with his analysis of Trump. Basically I think he may attribute too much ideological coherence to the man and his movement. For instance, Streeck seems to accept on face value Trump's supposed stance against military intervention. I take it his piece went to press before the bombing of Syria. The myth of a dovish Donald is one we really ought to put to rest.
Everything suggests our president is neither hawk nor dove, that he has no serious ideological commitments of any kind. His election marked more the collapse of longstanding consensus than the arrival of any new formation. It would be a serious mistake for an intellectual to try and impose consistency where there is none. Streeck is actually at his best analyzing Trump when he doesn't speak of him at all. In his great collection How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System, the president's name appears nowhere in the index, yet Streeck is able to show convincingly why chaos would come have such purchase on both our institutions and our consciousness.
These massacres fit into a larger Cold War pattern in which third world military regimes would slaughter or imprison their country's left, often with US aid and military backing. Suharto's Indonesia was the most extreme example, but other cases abound throughout Asia and Latin America.
Rohana Kuddus's lengthy article is valuable both as history of a particular country and a more general meditation on the ideology of remembrance.
*
Wolfgang Streeck remains my favorite leftwing prophet of doom. So naturally I was beside myself with excitement to see he had a new piece in the NLR. After reading it, however, I have to say I'm not entirely satisfied with his analysis of Trump. Basically I think he may attribute too much ideological coherence to the man and his movement. For instance, Streeck seems to accept on face value Trump's supposed stance against military intervention. I take it his piece went to press before the bombing of Syria. The myth of a dovish Donald is one we really ought to put to rest.
Everything suggests our president is neither hawk nor dove, that he has no serious ideological commitments of any kind. His election marked more the collapse of longstanding consensus than the arrival of any new formation. It would be a serious mistake for an intellectual to try and impose consistency where there is none. Streeck is actually at his best analyzing Trump when he doesn't speak of him at all. In his great collection How Will Capitalism End? Essays on a Failing System, the president's name appears nowhere in the index, yet Streeck is able to show convincingly why chaos would come have such purchase on both our institutions and our consciousness.
Displaying 1 of 1 review