Sad to hear the British socialist Chris Harman died yesterday of a heart attack.
He was attending a conference in Cairo.
He was one of the leaders of the Socialist Workers Party.
I would be dishonest to say that I am a fan of the SWP however....
I have got Explaining the Crisis, one of dozens of introductory books on Marxist politics and economics written by Chris on my book shelf.
One thing the SWP are good at and in this regard Chris will be sadly missed is producing some excellent education material, I was thumbing through his Zombie Capitalism book in Bookmarks a couple of days ago
Lenin's Tomb notes:
Before his death, he edited the International Socialism journal, and had written an accessible critique of mainstream economic theory, Zombie Capitalism. I personally owe a considerable portion of my Bildung to the man, as it was trawling his back catalogue - Explaining the Crisis, Economics of the Madhouse, etc., plus innumerable articles for International Socialism, (sophisticated polemics against high theorists such as Ernest Mandel and Alec Nove among them) - that enabled me to first get a basic grip of some economic theory. In addition, his historical work, culminating in the magisterial A People's History of the World, provided an invaluable introduction to the topics I would later have to deal with in my degree. Generations of socialists will owe a similar debt, I expect. He is also one of the few such writers to have his work recommended in an album sleeve.
News of his sad death here
1 comment:
I agree, he is a loss to the movement. Although I left the SWP quite a few years ago, I still had a lot of respect for Harman, and enjoyed going to his talks at Marxism.
Post a Comment