Review
By Ray Jones
Revolutionary Democracy Vol XVII, No 1, April 2011. £3 plus 50p
P&P from NCP Lit. PO Box 73 London
SW11 2PQ. Cheques to New Worker.
IT’S GOOD to see Revolutionary Democracy out again after
a short delay with its the usual mixture of interesting articles from around
the world.
The first is a
piece by N Bhattacharya, which, inspite of an
uninspiring title, is an excellent brief overview of India’s
situation today, full of telling facts and figures but without overloading the
“little grey cells”.
There are a
number of articles about the “Arab Spring” from different parties and
organisations, which although perhaps a little dated now, certainly widen our
perspective.
The question of Libya
is of course addressed and here there is a clear difference of approach (which,
incidentally, has been reflected in the letters in the New Worker).
Everyone agrees
that intervention of the imperialists should be denounced. But while an article
from the Chilean Communist Party (Proletarian Action) points out that the
Gaddafi government was at this time objectively part of the front against
imperialist aggression, the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties
and Organisations, a forum of Hoxhaist parties, on the other hand, labels it as
reactionary.
The
ICMLPO seems to support the Libyan rebels as progressives pursuing “democracy”
while at the same time condemning their Nato allies who also seek “democracy”.
The confusion
into which the ICMLPO has fallen is not uncommon on the left and it stems from
a failure to apply dialectics, a failure to see the situation in the round and
apply your principles with the correct priority.
RD as usual
includes fascinating Russian archive material as well as material on modern Russia.
It concludes with a dose of culture in the form progressive poetry.
