7/30/2019 Goodbye and Thanks_ Jacques

1/1

Martin Jacques presents the last issue ever

G o o d b y e , A n d T h a n k s

or a shade over 14 years, Marxism Today hasbeen an extraordinary spirit. The magazine

came from an unlikely background, the Com-munist Party, and had an equally unlikely title.Yet who can deny that it has had a profoundimpact on the political scene, way beyond the

number of copies it sold? The magazine used the termThatcherism before anyone else. More importantly, it was thefirst to grasp what the term actually meant.It sensed the profound crisis of the Left before virtually

anyone on the Left had any real clue it existed. And in NewTimes, perhaps our most creative moment, it peered into thefuture with great insight. Marxism Today, more than anyoneelse, understood what our era was about. That has been thesource of its power, the nature of its intelligence.Marxism Today was a free spirit. We may have come from

the CP, but we were never of it. We may have been on the Left,but we were never imprisoned by it. We were dissidents,living on the edge, occupying an intellectual diaspora. It gavethe magazine enormous energy, intellectual freedom and acapacity for lateral thinking. For us, politics was an adven-ture, with no certainties and no guarantees. Good ideas andinteresting people have no necessary political belonging. Youcan find them on the Right, on the Centre and on the Left. Thatis why the magazine was always a square peg in a round hole.It didn't do what conventional wisdom expected it to do.That's obviously true in the context of its title. But I mean

something much more than that. You know the arguments.What's this magazine of the Left doing, propounding hownovel and innovative Thatcherism is? Why does it keep tellingus about the shortcomings of the Left? Why does it interview

Tory leaders? The answer is obvious. Our concept of politicshas never been that of a football match between two teamswhere we were cast in the role of supporters' club. The reasonwhy so many leading figures in the Labour Party (even those

that at times have relished us) found us awkward is preciselythat. Too bad. We were on a different wavelength.Marxism Today was, at the end of the day, a band of writerswho were broadly on the Left but who, in their wisdom, weremore concerned about what they didn't know than what theydid know. That's why Marxism Today was so open, so unpre-dictable, so exciting, so dangerous. It's also why MarxismToday was ahead of its time. It prefigured the fracturing ofpolitics and the world that has proceeded apace over the lastfew years. Compared with a decade ago, the football ment-ality may be alive and well, but it is nothing like as strong as itwas. I would like to think that MTs lasting contribution to ourenfeebled political culture might be twofold: that it hashelped to make ideas central to the way we think about poli-tics, and it has put a nail in the coffin of blinkered partisan-ship, otherwise known as pig ignorance.

And so to the end. The last issue ofMarxism Today. I don'twant to explain here why we are closing, I have done thatelsewhere in the issue. I would like to thank everyone for alltheir support over the years: the writers (never paid a penny),the readers (never got anything for nothing), and the staff(paid a miserly penny). You were marvellous. You made it allpossible. Thanks a million.Marxism Today lived gloriously. And now it dies gloriously.We close with one of our greatest issues ever. We asked someof your favourite authors to write their best for the last. Andthey have not let you down. This is an issue to savour andtreasure. We die as we lived - with enormous energy andintelligence, a little wit, lots of uncertainty ... destinationunknown. Now it's time to move on. Goodbye and thanksagain.

MARXISM TODAY DECEMBER 19913