Chris Harman

Chris Harman (8 November 1942 – 7 November 2009, Cairo, Egypt^[1]) was a British journalist and political activist, and a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party. He was formerly the editor of International Socialism, and Socialist Worker.

Life

Born into a working class family, Harman attended Leeds University (where he joined the Socialist Review Group) and the London School of Economics (LSE) where he began (but did not complete) a doctorate under the supervision of Ralph Miliband.^[1] He was instrumental in publishing the magazine of the LSE Socialist Society, The Agitator, and was a leading member of the International Socialists (as the SRG had become) 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 (from 1978 the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) was as a theorist and he has produced numerous 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, such as Bookmarks. He was first editor of Socialist Worker in 1976-77 and returned to the role after a break in 1982, remaining in the post until 2004,^[2] when he started editing the SWP's theoretical quarterly International Socialism Journal.

Harman's work on May 1968 in France and other student and workers uprisings of the late 1960s, The Fire Last Time, was recommended by rock band Rage Against the Machine in their album sleeve notes for Evil Empire.

Harman died 7th November 2009 following a cardiac arrest during lecturing in the Socialist Days conference of the Center of Socialist Studies (CSS) in Cairo, Egypt.

Selected works

Books and pamphlets

• 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 (London, 1999) ISBN 189887655x
• Zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx (London, 2009) ISBN 9781905192533

Articles

• "Party and Class"
• "Gramsci Versus Reformism"
• "The 'workers's' government" (with Tim Potter)
• "The State and Capitalism Today"
• "Engels and the origins of human society"
• "The Prophet and the Proletariat"
• "Analysing Imperialism"
• "The workers of the world"
• "Anti-capitalism: Theory and Practice"
• "Spontaneity, strategy and politics"
• "Gramsci, the Prison Notebooks and philosophy"
• "Obituary: Chris Harman 1942-2009", Alex Callinicos, Socialist Worker 14 November 2009

References

External links

• Chris Harman Internet Archive
• Obituary by John Molyneux, The Independent, 19 November 2009.
• RIP Chris Harman, The Third Estate Blog, 7 November 2009
• Obituary by Alex Callinicos, Socialist Worker, 9 November 2009.
• Obituary by Michael Rosen, The Guardian, 9 November 2009.
• Chris Harman’s Back Pages (Blog containing notes, position papers and old articles)
• International Socialism Journal
• Chris Harman and 1968 by John Rose
• Chris Harman on Ho Chi Minh, 1969, from The Left in Britain, 1956-68, edited by David Widgery
• Tribute by Panos Garganas
• 'A thinker and a polemicist' by Larry Elliott