New audio uploads
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The following talks have been added to the Audio page here –
Sinn Fein: Will Being in Government Both Sides of the Border Unite Ireland? – Kevin Cronin, 17th May 2024
The SPGB and the Spanish Civil War – Keith Scholey, 24th May 2024
Capitalism in Nigeria – Andy Thomas, 21st June 2024
The General Election 2024 – Discussion, 5th July 2024
How We Live and How we Might Live: Capitalism, Poverty and Global Crises – Richard Field, 12th July 2024
1) What is the explanation for (at least) 20% lost audio from when Keith Scholey was speaking? Very disappointing.
2) I am very much looking forward to eventually hearing a recording of the other Keith (Graham) speaking on POLITICAL CONSCIOUSNESS: WHAT LESSON CAN WE LEARN FROM MARX? and hope there won’t be a similarly missing 20%.
3) During the discussion, an individual identified as ‘Adam’ mentioned that the SPGB has in its archives a full set (he didn’t say ‘full set’, but I assume it’s so) of the mentioned International Review.
For the interested, titles of all articles in International Review, 1936-1938 can be seen here:
https://mrc-catalogue.warwick.ac.uk/records/MSH/1/133
There is a piece by the mysterious Roberto in every or nearly every issue.
The frequently seen name Jonathan Ayres among the authors rings a bell, but I can’t remember in what connection. (Anarchist? Bordigist??)
The problem with the audio was at Keith’s end. His connection wasn’t the best . . . if he will insist on living out in the sticks.
“For the interested, titles of all articles in International Review, 1936-1938 can be seen here”
There also seems to be a, possibly incomplete, collection at the Institute of Social History in Amsterdam. Would be possible to access articles as scans for a fee.
https://search.iisg.amsterdam/Record/1355011
If someone has too much time on their hands it would be worth getting these scanned and put online somewhere. This journal has more or less faded into obscurity.
Some more background on the International Review.
From the 1974 book, THE AMERICAN RADICAL PRESS 1880-1960:
International Review
NEW YORK, 1936-1939
JAMES B. GILBERTTHE International Review of Contemporary Thought and Action, unlike so many of its companions in the 1930s, represented no political party or movement; it was a privately owned and edited magazine, devoted to left-wing causes, but broadly based in its interests. Published in New York by Herman Jersom and his wife, the Review contained articles and translations of articles written by a wide range of European radicals. Most of the articles and translations were composed by Jersom, who was a language teacher in the New York City public school system.
The political position of the magazine was radical but anti-Bolshevik. Jersom reprinted works written by a diverse group, including Rosa Luxemburg, André Malraux, Karl Radek, Simone Weil, Leon Trotsky, Mao Tse-tung, and many others. Much of the writing was theoretical, although after late 1936 articles began to appear on the war in Spain and the organization of industrial labor unions in the United States. The names of many of the authors of articles and translations are presumably pseudonyms for Jersom, although one American Marxist, Paul Mattick, contributed to the magazine.
Jersom took a strong stand against the Communists in Spain, but he did not turn to Trotskyism. On the contrary, the International Review blamed the tragedy of Spain on bolshevism, and the deformation of the Russian Revolution on Lenin as well as Stalin. Bolshevism, it contended, had little to do with communism or Marxism. Thus Jersom found his political moorings in the older writings of J. Martov, Rosa Luxemburg, and Friedrich Engels. Also under the auspices of the International Review, Jersom published three pamphlets: Rosa Luxemburg’s Reform or Revolution , J. Martov’s The State and the Socialist Revolution , and M. Yvon’s What has Become of the Russian Revolution?
The International Review suffered from the same types of financial problems as other little magazines. lt announced somewhat mysteriously in 1937, for example, that available funds to continue publication were being denied to the editors and the magazine was in danger of suppres- sion. Again, in early I939, the magazine discussed financial affairs, this time assuring its readers that enough funds had been found to continue the journal for a year. Shortly after that, however, the International Review ceased publication. Jersom’s attitude toward radical politics had changed after the outbreak of war in Europe. For some time after the demise of his periodical, he published a mimeographed newsletter supporting American participation in the war, and then, apparently, he disappeared from
radical political life altogether.The International Review is thus a strange, but interesting, radical magazine of the 1930s, for it was not devoted to any political movement, nor did it stand strongly behind a single cause. Its private view of the period led it to reprint some of the lesser known writings of older, but important, Socialists and Marxists. In addition to commentary by Jersom, it reprinted significant articles on Spain and on the Soviet Union. When the war intruded—when present politics became of great importance—the International Review proved perhaps too remote to support Jersom’s new interest in supporting the war, and his publishing
College Park, Maryland, 1968
PS – I think Jersom is the ‘Gersom’ who had the front page article in the January 1934 issue of the Socialist Standard:
Bolshevism: Past and Present (1934)
In that January 1934 he was listed as a member of the American party but the March 1934 issue carried the following correction:
“Owing to a misapprehension it was incorrectly stated in the January SOCIALIST STANDARD that the writer of the article “Bolshevism, Past and Present” is a member of the Workers Socialist Party, U.S.A.”
Funnily enough, when I was scanning in the article at the time, it did strike me that the author’s politics did come across as somewhat Council Communist’ish.
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