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By Der Funke
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Wednesday, 23 April 2003 |
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From the fourth to the twelfth of April, shortly after returning from an
outstanding congress of the Pakistan Marxists, Alan Woods was in Austria on a
speaking tour, organised by the Austrian Marxist newspaper, Der Funke ("The
Spark"). The tour, which was partly taken up by anti-war meetings and
partly to present the German language edition of Reason in Revolt, was a great
success. |
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By Alan Woods
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Friday, 04 April 2003 |
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The first volume of Reason in Revolt has, by all accounts, been well
received in the USA. In general, the Anglo Saxon world has been highly resistant to broad
philosophical generalizations and to Marxism in particular. Yet without such
philosophical generalizations it is impossible to acquire a rational
understanding of the world in which we live. |
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By Harald Lindner and Andi Wolf
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Tuesday, 17 December 2002 |
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Over 400 people attended 3 different meetings in Vienna and Linz organised to
launch the German edition of Reason in Revolt in Austria between December
12 and 14. Alan Woods spoke at these meetings and huge interest was shown by
those attending. Now several discussion groups have been set up around the book
in different universities and schools, and the campaign around the book is to
continue next year. |
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By In Defence of Marxism
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Wednesday, 16 October 2002 |
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On Saturday, October 12, Alan Woods participated in the official launch of the German edition
of Reason in Revolt (Aufstand der Vernunft) which has just come
out. The publication has already aroused a lot of interest in left circles in
Germany and Austria, where a series of public presentations is being prepared
for the next few months. |
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By Alan Woods
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Thursday, 06 June 2002 |
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We are publishing for the first time on our website the preface to the
first volume of the US edition of Reason in Revolt, published last summer.
Though written one year ago, we think that it is still an useful introduction to all the
main subjects dealt with in the book, such as Marxism and religion, the Big Bang
theory and chaos and complexity. |
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By Fred Weston
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Thursday, 23 May 2002 |
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On Monday, May 20, the famous American palaeontologist Stephen Jay Gould died of cancer at his home in New York.
Gould made a major contribution to development of modern science with his theories on evolution, and challenged
some of the accepted views of bourgeois science. |
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By Alan Woods
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Tuesday, 30 April 2002 |
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When Reason in Revolt was published seven years ago, it was
greeted with enthusiasm by many people, not just by Marxists
but those who were interested in the new scientific theories of chaos
and complexity. But some readers found the authors' opposition to the
theory
of the Big Bang hard to accept, after all it seemed that the whole
scientific community accepted the theory
without question.
But last week Paul Steinhardt and Neil Turok published a paper in Science in which they propose an
alternative model to the Big Bang theory. They suggest that the universe goes through and endless cycle of big
bangs, expansion and then stagnation. Their ideas are at an early stage but they are clearly a step forward
from the mystical idea that the universe was created out of nothing. |
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By In Defence of Marxism
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Saturday, 27 April 2002 |
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The German translation of Reason in Revolt has just come out, and was
presented at the recent Frankfurt book fair (see above article). Alan
Woods wrote a
new introduction for this edition, which for editorial reasons was
shortened and
slightly edited. Here we publish the full original text in English. |
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By Ted Grant and Alan Woods
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Saturday, 07 July 2001 |
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"With the greatest enthusiasm we welcome the republication of
Reason in Revolt in Spanish. In the six years since the book was first published in
English and Spanish it has received a favourable response from many parts of the
world, both from labour movement activists and from scientists. Interest in our
ideas has been expressed in many countries. It has so far been translated into Spanish,
Italian, Greek, Urdu and
Turkish,
and new translations are being prepared in German and Dutch." Alan Woods and Ted Grant comment
on the latest scientific discoveries in genetics, black holes and the Big Bang, and how they
confirm the views put forward in Reason in Revolt six years ago. |
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By Martin Oscarsson
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Thursday, 12 April 2001 |
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This is the headline of an article
about
Vygotsky written at the University of Joenkoeping in Sweden. Lev
Semenovich Vygotsky
(1896-1934) was a Russian Marxist psychologist and pedagogue
active from the years
before the revolution until his death in 1934. His theories, for a
long period unknown
outside Russia, have gained an increasing echo among radical
psychologists and
pedagogues during the last decade, not least in the US, but also in
Europe. |
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By Mick Brooks
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Tuesday, 13 March 2001 |
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Over the past weeks the news has been dominated by the story of
yet another crisis in
farming. The rapid spreading of the food and
mouth epidemic in Britain is a direct
consequence of capitalist
farming methods. |
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By Jordi Martorell
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Friday, 09 March 2001 |
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Nearly 40 South African pharmaceutical
companies are taking the South African
government to court in
order to defend their massive profits, even if this means
the death
of millions of people who are HIV positive. The case opened at the
Pretoria High Court on March 5th. This article examines how the
profit motive of the pharmaceutical
multinationals prevails over
the lives of millions of people. |
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By Alan Woods
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Friday, 16 February 2001 |
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Once every century or
so great scientific breakthroughs grip the imagination of the world.
With the publication of the results of the human genome project,
we stand on the threshold
of such a breakthrough. Science is now
poised to understand the forces behind evolution,
explode racial
myths, change the way doctors diagnose disease, and try to help
people live
longer. The new approach - looking at systems of
genes rather than individual genes - will
transform biologists' view
of the human body. Alan Woods explains how this discovery proves
amongst other things that there is no scientific ground for racism
or genetic determinism,
and analyses the significance of this
discovery from a socialist point of view. |
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By Rikard Erlandsson
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Thursday, 20 July 2000 |
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On June 26 this year Clinton
and Blair made a joint statement saying that the human genome
had been sequenced. Rikard Erlandsson looks at the scientific
implications of this development. |
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By John Pickard
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Thursday, 15 June 2000 |
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We reprint this article by John
Pickard which reviews Engels contribution to the understanding of
human development and specifically his pamphlet The Part
Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man. |
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By Phil Mitchinson
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Thursday, 27 April 2000 |
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Science is big business, and none
more so than genetics. The Human Genome Project,
the
deciphering of the make up of human DNA has already
resulted in some startling
breakthroughs. But, while our scientific
understanding of life attempts to race ahead,
once again we find
ourselves hemmed in by the enormous waste of capitalism. In this
field,
as in any other, competition plus profit equals waste. |
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By ES
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Friday, 07 April 2000 |
We received a letter from Hong Kong in reply to our articles on GM foods.
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By Alan Durant
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Wednesday, 15 March 2000 |
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Genetic
engineering has come upon the world with a rush, accompanied by
the usual claims
of being a way of feeding the earth's poor
and removing want. However these claims need to
examined in the light of what has actually been done to date, and
what is planned for the
future. In fact the impetus for the
development of genetic engineering, namely the rapid
pursuit of maximum profits and futher control of world agriculture
runs counter to the
stated aims as well as encouraging
unsafe science. |
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By Michele Fabbri
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Wednesday, 16 February 2000 |
Sewage-fed cows,
"mad cows", dioxin contaminated chickens, hormone
injected cattle, genetically modified Soya, animal carcasses used to
make animal feed,
contaminated mineral water and Coca-
Cola. A common thread runs through all these cases:
the
search for the highest profits on the part of the food industry to
the detriment of
everybody's health. Michele Fabbri, Italian
Marxist magazine Falce Martello.
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By Heiko Khoo
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Friday, 15 October 1999 |
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Heiko Khoo looks at the
history of the internet and the relevance of issues like
open
source programming for socialists. |
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