Chris Harman

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Chris Harman is the editor of International Socialism, a former editor of Socialist Worker and a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party.

From a working class background, Harman attended the London School of Economics where he joined the International Socialists. He was instrumental in publishing the magazine of the LSE Socialist Society, The Agitator, and was a leading member of the IS by 1968. He was involved in the Vietnam Solidarity Campaign and outraged many leftists when, at a meeting in the Conway Hall, he denounced Ho Chi Minh for murdering the leader of the Vietnamese Trotskyist movement, Ta Thu Thau, in 1945 after crushing the workers' rising of that year in Saigon.

His main role in the IS, which from 1978 has been called the Socialist Workers Party (SWP), was as a theoretician and he has produced many books and articles on a wide variety of topics. Almost all his writing has appeared in the publications of the IS and SWP or has been published by related publishing houses. He first became editor of Socialist Worker in the late 1970s and returned to the role after a break in the 1980s until 2004.

Harman is parodied in Tariq Ali's 1990 novel Redemption which contains a character named "Nutty Shardman" who menaces others on the left with whom he has theoretical disagreements. Harman's work on 1968, The Fire Last Time was recommended by rock band Rage Against the Machine in their album sleeve notes for Evil Empire.


[edit] Works

Books and pamphlets include:

  • Education, capitalism and the student revolt (1968)
  • Russia: How the Revolution Was Lost (1969)
  • Unemployment and how to fight it (with Dave Peers) (1971)
  • Russia: How the Revolution was lost (1974)
  • The struggle in Ireland (1974)
  • Why Labour fails (1979)
  • New technology and the struggle for socialism (1979)
  • The summer of 1981 : a post-riot analysis (1981)
  • Days of Hope: The General Strike of 1926 (with Duncan Hallas) (1981)
  • Gramsci versus Reformism (1983)
  • Explaining The Crisis: A Marxist Reappraisal (London, 1984) ISBN: 090622411X
  • The Changing Working Class: Essays on Class Structure Today (with Alex Callinicos) (London: Bookmarks, 1987) ISBN: 0906224403
  • Russia: from workers' state to state capitalism (with Peter Binns and Tony Cliff) (London, 1987)
  • Class Struggles in Eastern Europe, 1945-1983 (London, 1988) ISBN: 0906224470
  • The Fire Last Time: 1968 And After (London, 1988) ISBN: 1898876355
  • The revolutionary paper (1991)
  • In The Heat of the Struggle: 25 Years of Socialist Worker (editor) (with an introduction by Paul Foot) (1993) ISBN: 0906224942
  • Economics Of The Madhouse: Capitalism and the Market Today (London, 1995) ISBN: 1898876037
  • How Marxism Works (London, 1997) ISBN: 1898876274
  • The Lost Revolution: Germany 1918-23 (London, 1997) ISBN: 1898876223
  • Marxism And History: Two Essays (London, 1998) ISBN: 1898876312
  • The Prophet And The Proletariat: Islamic fundamentalism, class and revolution (London, 1999) ISBN: 1898877181
  • A People's History of the World (1999 and 2008) ISBN: 189887655x

Articles include:

[edit] External links