Socialist Register 1982 Preface

Abstract

This year's Socialist Register is being edited by David Musson and myself. Through pressure of work Ralph Miliband and John Saville have temporarily stepped aside for 1982, but our intervention from inside the publishing house is for one year only. As befits caretakers, we are making no major changes in direction; readers may find small nuances of difference, but these we have not intended. A journal such as this which has now come of age has a life of its own which tends to resist arbitrary change. Having said that, there are one or two innovations that have come about. One is that we have a larger number of review articles than has been usual in the past. Peter Sedgwick writes on Alasdair MacIntyre, Paul Kelemen reviews Halliday and Molyneux's The Ethiopian Revolution, Huw Beynon contests Jeremy Seabrook's account of changes in the British working class, John Saville reviews developments in Labour History. Along with these is included Valentine Cunningham's answer to a review article last year; the Register has always adhered to the principle of the right of reply. Another innovation this year is the reprinting of Isaac Deutscher's essay on the early history of the Polish Communist Party from his collection of essays Marxism in Our Time. Isaac Deutscher contributed to the first two issues of the Register, and two posthumous essays appeared in 1968 and 1969, but these were all making their first appearance in the covers of the Register. Apart from translations, there has hitherto been no reprinting of articles. Two reasons have suggested to us that we should make an exception in this instance. The first is that this highly apposite piece of historical writing is not now available in any form, nor has anyone else covered the same ground. Deutscher was himself a participant in these early struggles of the Polish CP and was uniquely qualified to write about them. We felt it would be a great loss if this was not made available. A second consideration was that only a small minority of our readers would already be in possession of the original essay; they, we are sure, will be the first to agree with its importance today. To Tamara Deutscher we are grateful for permission to republish and for the Introduction she has written.