I/II. http://histomatist.blogspot.com/2009/11/chris-harman-1942-2009.html
Saturday, November 07, 2009 Chris Harman (1942-2009) <http://server40136.uk2net.com/~wpower/images/product_images/9781905192250.jpg> It is still kind of hard to take in the sad news of the passing of Chris Harman <http://www.socialistworker.co.uk/art.php?id=19502>, who at the time of his relatively early death while out inEgypt<http://arabist.net/arabawy/2009/11/07/chris-harman-rip/> was perhaps the leading theoretician of the International Socialist tradition. That his death comes as a political blow to those who stand in that tradition does not need to be stated - the greater one's understanding of the history of that tradition in general and knowledge of his contribution in particular, the deeper the understanding one has of just how sorely he will be missed in the struggles ahead. A former pupil of Ralph Miliband at the University of Leeds, it was during the 1960s and particularly the year 1968 while around the London School of Economics that Chris Harman came to prominence as a leader of the student revolt,. It seems he had embarked on a Phd with Miliband when 1968 broke out - but then abandoned this along with any idea of making an academic career - no doubt agreeing with the sentiment of Lenin that 'It is more pleasant and useful to go through the ''experience of revolution'' than to write about it.' I don't have the exact reference at hand, but in David Caute's book on *1968 Year of the Barricades*, there is a description of Harman striding to the front to address a mass meeting of students and telling them that 1968 was 'a year of international revolution that would go down in history like 1789, 1830, 1848, 1871, 1917 and 1936' and noting that students turned to each other with puzzled expressions to see if anyone knew anything about the 1830 revolution. Yet after 1968, Harman did decide to write about that 'year of revolution'. An autodidactic at heart, whose interests ranged widely, he seems to have among other things taught himself a whole range of European languages in order in part to write a genuinely internationalist account of the year 1968 and its aftermath- a year marked as much by workers' struggles as the rise of the New Left intellectually. While he could with ease have risen in academia in a whole number of disciplines (economics, philosophy, history, politics) he stayed the course as a leading member of the Socialist Workers' Party in Britain and so lived out his life as 'above all, a revolutionary'. It is doubtful that he would have enjoyed a career in academia greatly though - where the driving pressure is to say something 'new' - regardless of whether it is profoundly useful or utter rubbish. Harman was of course an original Marxist in many ways - think for example of his pamphlet on the contradictions of Islam, The prophet and the proletariat<http://www.marxists.de/religion/harman/index.htm>, but the idea of a 'Harmanite' is unthinkable - above all Harman was a disciple and follower of Tony Cliff - and unapologetic about the fact (see what must be one of his last articles on the importance of the theory of State capitalism<http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=11016> as developed by Cliff for understanding the 1989 Revolutions in Eastern Europe). As a result, as a Marxist theorist he was often ignored and snubbed by the more snobbish dedicated followers of contemporary intellectual fashion on the Left, despite the fact that intellectually he towered above almost all of those he critically analysed as 'academic Marxists'. Time and again for example, at meetings at say Historical Materialism conference, one would hear a presentation given by some leading theorist - almost certainly a professor of something or other - that left most people just feeling small at how little one knew of say the minute complexities of certain details of Marxist economic theory - only for Chris Harman to invariably rise from his seat, grab the key point of the speaker and then either develop or critique it but in language anyone there could understand - and so one would leave the meeting feeling one had learnt something new about Marxism as a result. Yet it is telling for example, that to the best of my knowledge those times he did offer articles to *New Left Review*, they were turned down (interestingly he does get the briefest of mentions in the latest issue of* NLR*, in an interview given by the late Peter Gowan, giving a talk for the International Socialists on the Cuban Revolution that was attended by Gowan, who was unimpressed by Harman's principled Marxist criticism of Castro). Yet, and what was critical, Harman did not write such still unparalleled works as *The Fire Last Time *(a work respected by Rage Against the Machine among others) and *A People's History of the World*with academics in mind as his audience - he wrote to educate and engage with a working class audience and win young people to revolutionary politics. As a result some of his writing could be dismissed as 'populist' - but this is to mistake his purpose in writing and the audience he had in mind. It was as primarily an outstanding populariser of Marxism then, and at first through such accessible and clearly written books such as *How Marxism Works *or his contribution to the collection *Party and Class* that I guess many people of my generation first encountered Harman's work. Those of us in the SWP in Britain were lucky that we could regularly hear him speak - if sometimes we were a little embarrassed and ashamed when he turned up to give a meeting to say only a handful of students. In later years, the intellectual respect for him among particularly young people internationally who had been won to revolutionary Marxism through reading the likes of Tony Cliff, Duncan Hallas and himself was profound. Yet on meeting him, one was struck by how incredibly modest about his intellectual abilities he was, and his endearing humility was something in utter contrast to some Marxists one meets. It is impossible here to give more than a sense of the intellectual debt I and no doubt others feel we owe to Chris Harman - a debt that can in no way be repaid in a blog post. While I will obviously add obituaries, tributes etc etc as and when they appear to this post - one is just left with a sense at the profound injustice of his passing. Why, when fighters of the ruling class such as Thatcher and Kissinger seem to be able to live on and on forever, do those who devote their lives to fighting for the oppressed and exploited of the world so often have to die before their time? II. http://socialistresistance.org/?p=728 Chris Harman: a life in the heart of the struggle<http://socialistresistance.org/?p=728> November 7th, 2009 • Chris Harman, the editor of *International Socialism* and a central committee member of the Socialist Workers’ Party (SWP), died from a massive heart attack on November 6th. He was 66. We, and others in the Fourth International, join in sending condolences to Chris’ family, friends and comrades. A convinced revolutionary socialist all his adult life, Harman had played a key role in founding *Socialist Worker* and editing it until 2004. Harman was an internationalist from the start. That was reflected in myriad ways, from his participation in the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign in the the late 1960 to the symbolic location of his death: Cairo. Harman was a polymath, gifted as an author, speaker, editor, leader and economist. His book *The Lost Revolution: Germany 1918 to 1923*<http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lost-Revolution-Germany-1918-1923/dp/1898876223> is a powerful tool for revolutionary socialists. His greatest work, *A Peoples’ History of the World*, is invaluable. He was also outstanding as an activist and leader of the SWP and its forerunner, the International Socialists. Harman played a major role in helping the organisation develop its political direction and in explaining its choices to a radical audience. His famous 1992 debate with Ernest Mandel on the bureaucratic Stalinist dictatorships in *Quatriéme Internationale* (now *ContreTemps*<http://www.contretemps.eu/>) was translated into English and is still in print as *The Fallacies of State Capitalism*<http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listing/1872242014/ref=dp_olp_new?ie=UTF8&condition=new>. His analysis of SWP split from Respect was valued even by those who opposed the SWP’s decision: it was translated by *Inprecor *and published in *Respect: Documents of the Crisis<http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/0902869892?ie=UTF8&seller=A1IQ45MEW0OOAF&sn=Resistance%20Books> * as the clearest exposition of the SWP’s viewpoint. Harman took his role as an SWP leader seriously, but that did not stop him from having a transparent and comradely working relationship with socialists outside the SWP. Last month he was an active participant in the IIRE’s economists seminar <http://www.iire.org/content/view/179/30/lang,en/>, in which most participants were Fourth Internationalists. While there, he spoke at a public meeting sponsored by *Grenzeloos*<http://www.grenzeloos.org/nieuwslog/index.php/id/342.html>, the magazine of the Fourth International in The Netherlands. As one of our comrades, Clement, put it on hearing the news: “Harman was for me the person from which I discovered Marxism, and which showed and revealed that revolutionary engagement was compatible with highly demanding scientific investigation for understanding and changing the world.” Harman’s openness, his books and articles, his work in the struggle and the contribution he made to developing the socialist consciousness of tens of thousands of people are a fitting monument to his revolutionary life. *Socialist Resistance editorial board,* *November 7 2009.* P.S. Photos of Chris and others at the economists seminar are online at http://bit.ly/2oFMZv while the speeches by Chris, Claudio Katz and Michel Husson are available as audio files at http://bit.ly/4fmACP. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Green Youth Movement" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/greenyouth?hl=en-GB -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
