Chris Harman

Christopher John Harman (8 November 1942 – 7 November 2009) was a British journalist and political activist, and a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party. He was an editor of International Socialism and Socialist Worker.

Life

Harman was born into a working-class family and attended Leeds University (where he joined the Socialist Review Group in 1961) and the London School of Economics (LSE) where he began (but did not complete) a doctorate under the supervision of Ralph Miliband. when he started editing the SWP's theoretical quarterly International Socialism Journal.

Harman's work on the May 1968 events 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 the album liner notes for Evil Empire.

Harman died on 7 November 2009, following a cardiac arrest while lecturing at the Socialist Days conference of the Center for Socialist Studies (CSS) in Cairo, Egypt. He is buried in Highgate Cemetery, London, a few yards from Karl Marx's tomb and adjacent to his comrade Paul Foot.

Selected works

Books and pamphlets Education, capitalism and the student revolt (1968) Russia: How the Revolution Was Lost (1967) Unemployment and how to fight it (with Dave Peers) (1971) The struggle in Ireland (1975) 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) The Revolutionary Press (Summer, 1984) Explaining The Crisis: A Marxist Reappraisal (London, 1984) The Changing Working Class: Essays on Class Structure Today (with Alex Callinicos) (London: Bookmarks, 1987) Russia: from workers' state to state capitalism (with Peter Binns and Tony Cliff) (London, 1987) Class Struggles in Eastern Europe, 1945-1983 (London, 1988) The Fire Last Time: 1968 And After (London, 1988) The revolutionary paper (1991) In The Heat of the Struggle: 25 Years of Socialist Worker (editor) (with an introduction by Paul Foot) (1993) Economics of the Madhouse: Capitalism and the Market Today (London, 1995) How Marxism Works (London, 1997) The Lost Revolution: Germany 1918-23 (London, 1997) Marxism and History: Two Essays (London, 1998) A People's History of the World (1999) The Prophet And The Proletariat: Islamic fundamentalism, class and revolution (London, 1999) The IMF, Globalisation and Resistance (2000) Revolution in the 21st Century (2007) Capitalism's New Crisis: What do socialists say? (2008) Zombie Capitalism: Global Crisis and the Relevance of Marx (London, 2009) Selected Writings (2011)

Articles "Party and Class" "Gramsci Versus Reformism" "The 'workers's' government" (with Tim Potter) "The State and Capitalism Today" "The Summer of 1981 – a post-riot analysis" "Women's Liberation and Revolutionary Socialism" "Base and Superstructure" "From Feudalism to Capitalism" "The Myth of Market Socialism" "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" Trotsky and the New Stalinism