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Sexual abuse and the family

1st May 1989 Socialist Action 0

First published: May 1989

‘Despite the revulsion incest has provoked, it opens a frightening but vital line of questioning about ordinary family relations. It identifies tensions between family solidarity and individual autonomy and children’s’rights, between women’s status as victims and their responsibility as parents, tensions that one should not expect to resolve easily. It shows that many feminine virtues, not only those one might want to reject – obedience, quietness, obligingness – but also those one might want to preserve – discipline, responsibility, loyalty – can support victimisation’.

Linda Gordon, Heroes of Their Own Lives, Virago 1989

Marx on England

1st January 1983 Socialist Action 0

First published in January1983

By John Ross
In the 1960s a major debate took place on the British Left concerning the overall development of English history. The major contributions were Perry Anderson’s Origins of the Present Crisis and EP Thompson’s The Peculiarities of the English. One figure was however strangely absent in the discussion: Karl Marx himself. Yet Marx’s writings are probably the most striking, original and coherent of all on English history. On the 100th anniversary of his death, JOHN ROSS therefore re-examines Marx’s writings on the development of English history.