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词条 Tony Cliff
释义

  1. Biography

  2. Ideology

  3. Selected works

  4. Personal life

  5. Archives

  6. See also

  7. Notes

  8. References

  9. External links

{{Multiple issues|section=|{{refimprove|date=January 2018}}{{more footnotes|date=May 2010}}
}}{{Infobox scientist
|name = Tony Cliff
|image = Tony Cliff.jpg
|caption = Tony Cliff in 1986
|birth_name = Yigael Gluckstein
|birth_date = 20 May 1917
|death_date = 9 April 2000 (aged 82)
}}{{EngvarB|date=August 2014}}{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2014}}

Tony Cliff (born Yigael Gluckstein ({{lang-he|יגאל גליקשטיין}}); 20 May 1917 – 9 April 2000) was a Trotskyist activist. Born to a Jewish family in what is now Israel, he moved to Britain in 1947 and by the end of the 1950s had assumed the pen name of Tony Cliff. A founding member of the Socialist Review Group, which became the International Socialists and then the Socialist Workers Party, in 1977, Cliff was effectively the leader of all three.

Biography

{{Trotskyism}}

Tony Cliff was born Yigael Gluckstein in Zikhron Ya'akov in the Ottoman Empire's Mutasarrifate of Jerusalem, now part of Israel, during World War I, one of four children born to Akiva and Esther Gluckstein, Jewish immigrants from Poland who had come to Palestine as part of the Second Aliyah. His father was an engineer and contractor. He had two brothers and a sister. His brother Chaim later became a notable journalist, theater critic, and translator. Through his sister Alexandra, he was the uncle of Israeli graphic designer David Tartakover. He grew up in British-ruled Mandatory Palestine. Notable Zionist activist and future Israeli Prime Minister Moshe Sharett was a family friend and frequent visitor to his family home, and he had two prominent uncles: the noted doctor Hillel Yaffe and agronomist and Zionist activist Chaim Margaliot Kalvarisky. In his youth, he came to identify with Communism, though he never joined the Communist Party of Palestine, as he had not met any of its members before becoming a socialist activist. However, he did join the socialist-Zionist youth movement Hashomer Hatzair, and soon became not only a Trotskyist in 1933, but also a confirmed opponent of Zionism. Along with other Hashomer Hatzair members, he joined the illegal Palestine Revolutionary Communist League, necessitating the use of several pseudonyms in three languages.

During World War II, Gluckstein was imprisoned by the British authorities. After his release he moved to Britain in 1947, but was never able to become a citizen and remained a stateless person for the rest of his life. To the end of his life he spoke English with a distinct Israeli accent. He was deported by the British authorities and lived in the Republic of Ireland for several years. During this period, he was active in left-wing circles in Dublin, and was acquainted with Owen Sheehy-Skeffington and his wife, Andrée.[1] He was only permitted to take up British residency due to the status of Chanie Rosenberg, his wife, as a British citizen. Living in London he again became active with the Revolutionary Communist Party, on to the leadership of which he had been co-opted. For most purposes Gluckstein was a supporter of the leadership of the RCP around Jock Haston,[2] and as such he was involved with the discussions concerning the nature of those states dominated by Russia and the Communist parties initiated by a faction within the RCP. This debate was linked to other discussions on the nationalised industries in Britain and the increasingly critical stance of Haston and the RCP as to the leadership of the Fourth International with regard to Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia in particular.

On the break-up of the RCP his supporters joined Gerry Healy's group The Club although, having been deported to Ireland, Gluckstein himself did not. In 1950 he helped launch the Socialist Review Group which was based around a journal of the same name. This was to be the main publication for which Gluckstein wrote during the 1950s, until it was superseded by International Socialism in 1960, eventually ceasing publication altogether in 1962.

By the time he gained permanent residency in Britain his supporters in The Club had been expelled due to differences on Birmingham Trades Council regarding socialist policy concerning the war in Korea, where Gluckstein's co-factionalists refused to take a position of support for either side in the war.

Owing to his lack of established residency rights in Britain and during his earlier exile in Ireland the name Roger or Roger Tennant was used as a pseudonym. The first edition of his short book on Rosa Luxemburg in 1959 was possibly the first use of the pen name 'Tony Cliff'. In the 1960s Cliff would revive many of his earlier pseudonyms in the pages of International Socialism in which journal reviews are to be found by Roger, Roger Tennant, Sakhry, Lee Rock and Tony Cliff, but none by Yigael or Yg'al Gluckstein.

His group was renamed the International Socialists in 1962, and was to grow from fewer than 100 members in 1960 until it claimed in the region of 3,000 in 1977, at which point it was renamed the Socialist Workers Party (SWP). Cliff remained a leading member until his death in 2000. He was central to the various reorientations carried out in the SWP from time to time to react to changes in the situation of the working class. In particular, after the high level of strike activity in the early seventies, he argued in the late seventies that the working class movement was entering a "downturn" and that the party's activity should be radically changed as a result. A fierce debate ensued, which Cliff's side eventually won. Trotskyist writer Samuel Farber, a long-time supporter of the International Socialist Organization in the US, has argued that the internal party regime established by Cliff during this period is "reminiscent of the one established by Zinoviev in the mid-twenties in the USSR" consequently leading to the various crises and splits in the group later on.[3]

Cliff's biography is, as he himself remarked, inseparable from that of the groups of which he was a leading member.

Shortly before his death he underwent a major surgical operation on his heart.[4]

Ideology

Cliff was a revolutionary socialist in the Trotskyist tradition attempting to make Lenin's theory of the party effective in the present day. Much of his theoretical writing was aimed at immediate tasks of the Party at the time.

Since then the consensus in most Trotskyist groups has been that all the states dominated by Stalinist parties and characterised by state planning and state ownership of property are to be seen as 'degenerated workers' states' (The Soviet Union) or 'deformed workers' states' (other Stalinist states, including much of Eastern Europe). In many ways Cliff was the main dissident from this idea although some of his opponents have sought to associate his state capitalist view with other ideas, for example the theory of 'bureaucratic collectivism' associated with Shachtmanite Workers Party in the United States. However Cliff himself was insistent that his ideas owed nothing to those of Max Shachtman, or earlier proponents of the theory such as Bruno Rizzi, and made this clear in his Bureaucratic Collectivism – A Critique. Nevertheless, in the 1950s his group distributed literature published by Shachtman's group and the theory of the 'permanent arms economy' which was considered one of the pillars of what became the International Socialist Tendency originated with Shachtman's group though it is sometimes alleged that Cliff refused to acknowledge this publicly.[5]

Selected works

  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1946/probme/index.html The Problem of the Middle East] (1946)
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1948/stalruss/index.htm The Nature of Stalinist Russia] (1948)
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1952/stalsats/index.htm Stalin's Satallites in Europe] (1952)
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1955/statecap/index.htm Stalinist Russia: A Marxist Analysis] (1955)
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1957/05/permwar.htm Perspectives of the Permanent War Economy] (1957)
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1957/06/rootsref.htm Economic Roots of Reformism] (1957)
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1959/rosalux/index.htm Rosa Luxemburg: A Study](1959)
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1960/xx/trotsub.htm Trotsky on Substitionism] (1960)
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1963/xx/permrev.htm Deflected Permanent Revolution] (1963)
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1966/incomespol/index.htm Incomes Policy, Legislation and Shop Stewards] (with Colin Barker) (1966)
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1968/france/index.htm France: The Struggle Goes On] (with Ian Birchall) (1968)
  • The Employers’ Offensive, Productivity Deals and how to fight them (1970)
  • The Crisis: Social Contract or Socialism (1975)
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1975/lenin1/index.htm Lenin Vol. 1: Building the Party] (1975)
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1975/portugal/index.htm Portugal at the Crossroads] (1975)
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1976/lenin2/index.htm Lenin Vol. 2: All Power to the Soviets] (1976)
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1978/lenin3/index.html Lenin Vol. 3: Revolution Besieged] (1978)
  • Lenin Vol. 4: The Bolsheviks and World Communism (1979)
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1984/women/index.htm Class Struggle and Women’s Liberation, 1640 to today] (1984)
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1986/tradeunion/index.htm Marxism and trade union struggle, the general strike of 1926] (with Donny Gluckstein) (1986)
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1988/labour/index.html The Labour Party, A Marxist History] (with Donny Gluckstein) (1986)
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1989/trotsky1/index.html Trotsky Vol. 1: Towards October 1879-1917] (1989)
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1990/trotsky2/index.html Trotsky Vol. 2: The Sword of the Revolution 1917-1923] (1990)
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1991/trotsky3/index.html Trotsky Vol. 3: Fighting the Rising Stalinist Bureaucracy 1923-1927] (1991)
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1993/trotsky4/index.html Trotsky Vol. 4: The darker the Night, the Brighter the Star 1927-1940] (1993)
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/1999/trotism/index.htm Trotskyism after Trotsky, the origins of the International Socialists] (1999)
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/2000/wtw/index.htm A World to Win: Life of a Revolutionary] (2000)
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/cliff/works/2000/millennium/index.htm Marxism at the Millennium] (2000)

Personal life

Cliff had little or no time for any activities not directly linked to the needs of building his party (with the exception of caring for his family). He did not drink or smoke, or socialise very much. Cliff's wife, Chanie Rosenberg, was herself an active member successively of the SRG, IS and SWP, in which she remains active. As well as authoring many articles on social questions for the group's publications, she was an activist in the National Union of Teachers until her retirement. In addition, three of the couple's four children became members of the SWP, with one son, Donny Gluckstein, co-authoring two books with his father.

Cliff is depicted as Jimmy Rock of the Rockers in Tariq Ali's satire Redemption.

Archives

  • A Summary Description of the Tony Cliff papers held at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick Library. Online abstract available. Retrieved 16 June 2006.

See also

  • Bureaucratic collectivism
  • Deflected permanent revolution
  • New class
  • Permanent revolution
  • State capitalism

Notes

1. ^Andrée Sheehy-Skeffington, Skeff: The Life of Owen Sheehy-Skeffington, 1909-1970 (Lilliput Press, 1991), p. 101.
2. ^The War and the International: A History of the British Trotskyist Movement, 1937–1949 (with Al Richardson), Socialist Platform, London 1986.
3. ^{{cite web|last=Farber|first=Samuel|title=Tony Cliff as a Socialist Leader|url=http://www.solidarity-us.org/node/3989|publisher=Solidarity|accessdate=31 January 2014|date=8 August 2013}}
4. ^Birchall 2010.
5. ^This allegation seems to have originated from Jim Higgins in his booklet More Years for the Locusts, but it would seem to be contradicted by the fact that International Socialism, Nos. 47 and 49 carried prominent ads for the book The Permanent War Economy by T.N. Vance, who is now acknowledged to be the originator of the theory. Both Higgins and Cliff are listed in No. 49 as editors of that issue.

References

Articles
{{refbegin}}
  • {{cite news|title= Tony Cliff remembered |url=http://www.socialistreview.org.uk/article.php?articlenumber=11223 |last= Birchall |first=Ian |year= April 2010 |journal= Socialist Review |location= London |ref=Bir10}}
{{refend}}
Biographies
{{refbegin}}
  • Ian Birchall, Tony Cliff: A Marxist for His Time (London: Bookmarks, 2011)
{{refend}}

External links

  • Tony Cliff Internet Archive, biography and collection of his writings from 1938–2000 on Marxists.org.
  • "50 Years of the International Socialist Tradition: Ahmed Shawki interviews Tony Cliff in 1997, 50 years after the publication of State Capitalism in Russia." International Socialist Review, No.1, Summer 1997, pp. 27–31.
  • Obituary by Paul Foot, The Guardian (2000).
  • [https://www.marxists.org/archive/hallas/works/2000/05/cliff.htm Obituary] by Duncan Hallas, Socialist Review (2000).
  • Talkin' 'bout a revolutionary Interview with Ian Birchall about Cliff, International Socialism 131 (2011).
  • [https://socialistworker.co.uk/art/44652/Tony+Cliff+matters+for+socialists+today Tony Cliff matters for socialists today] by Alex Callinicos, Socialist Worker (2017)
  • Tony Cliff by Ian Taylor, Socialist Review, 360 (2011)
  • Tony Cliff rediscovered, International Socialism, 132 (2011).
  • More Years for the Locust: The Origins of the SWP Criticism of Cliff and the SWP by Jim Higgins, a former colleague.
  • [https://web.archive.org/web/20050907130324/http://mp3.lpi.org.uk/ Talks by Tony Cliff on Lenin and State Capitalism] in MP3
  • Tony Cliff (1917–2000) : Links to biographies, obituaries and websites, compiled by Modkraft Biblioteket - Progressive online library.
  • Bibliography - the writings and works of Tony Cliff by Ian Birchall on Modkraft Biblioteket.
  • [https://mrc.epexio.com/records/CLI Catalogue of Cliff's papers], held at the Modern Records Centre, University of Warwick
{{SWP}}{{Authority control}}{{DEFAULTSORT:Cliff, Tony}}

21 : 1917 births|2000 deaths|Anti-Stalinist left|Ashkenazi Jews|British Jewish writers|British political writers|British Trotskyists|British people of Polish-Jewish descent|International Socialist Tendency|Jewish atheists|Jewish socialists|Jews in Mandatory Palestine|Marxist theorists|Palestinian political writers|Prisoners and detainees of the United Kingdom|Pseudonymous writers|Revolutionary Communist Party (UK, 1944) members|Socialist Workers Party (UK) members|Stateless people|British revolutionaries|People from Zikhron Ya'akov

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