The politics of greed
The New Right is changing the world. Chris Brazier calls up the ghost of Charles Dickens and plots its downfall.

The bitter death of the welfare state
Britain is the New Right's pride and joy. But the Left has a lot to learn from Margaret Thatcher, according to Stuart Hall.

Exporting greed to the world
How could Labor governments be converted to the New Right's economic ideas? Bruce Jesson reports from Aotearoa (NZ) and Ross Poole from Australia.

How right-wing have you become?
This NI quiz probes your probity.

The opium habit
Jesus would have had little patience with some modern church leaders, argues Debbie Taylor. But does the Left need to get religion?

Democracy bites back
The campaign to reclaim the word 'democracy' starts here. Jan Simon sets the ball rolling.

THE POLITICS OF GREED - THE FACTS

Worth reading on... Greed

This issue had its origins in the despair and depression caused in our British office by Margaret Thatcher's third consecutive election victory. Suddenly the New Right seemed unstoppable. It was as if the very ground had been washed away from under our feet, as if those of us still opposed to a society based on self-interest and the pursuit of profit had been left waving our placards vainly as the tide of history swept by.

Some of us felt we were denying our reader an essential service. Here we were, a magazine which rants on about changing the world, yet month after month we were never really confronting head on the urgent political questions which beset us all every day. What are we to make of the new forces tearing a swathe through the society around us? How can the New Right be overcome? Is socialism really dead?

So we decided to devote an issue entirely to the politics of our readers' countries. At the planning meeting where this was decided there was some dissension from one of our Canadian editors, since in his country the New Right has never got off the ground in quite the same way as elsewhere. But there was eager support from Australia and Aotearoa (NZ), where New Right economic policies have, to everyone's confusion, been championed by Labor governments.

There were a few difficulties to be overcome in planning the issue. In general we are proud that we offer the same magazine (give or take a few ads) to all five of our readers' countries. But to produce one standard issue this time around would have been more of a hindrance than a help. We needed to offer every reader our view of their own political situation. Yet to have major articles on every country would have taken up all the space and stopped us drawing out the internationalist threads which are common to us all. So, rightly or wrongly, what we have done is to put together different versions of Pages 8 to 11 for each continent. This is not something we plan to make a habit of. Apart from undermining the sense of the NI as a global village, it also entails a lot more work.

The second problem was my own fault. The first magazine proposal I put to the other editors had a preamble saying I was tired of reading endless analyses of the New Right problem - that it was time someone was prepared to stick their neck out and offer a practical solution. Naturally they took me at my word and demanded that I go away and work out a detailed outline of how a fairer society might operate.

There were times when I thought this task was going to drive me bananas - it certainly made me realize how little I had thought about the nitty-gritty of economic detail. In the end I felt I had to choose a writing format which allowed me to ask myself questions and point out contradictions - and the 'reader representative' in the second half of this issue is at least as much a part of me as the apparently confident conjuror who narrates it.

As it happens, more by luck than careful planning, this issue could be seen as the first of a three-part series. While I've concentrated solely on politics in the rich world, November's issue will be looking at the Debt Crisis, which you might say is how the Politics of Greed impacts upon the Third World. And December's issue also develops one of the themes touched on in these pages by taking an in-depth look at the great political adventure embarked upon by Mikhail Gorbachev's Soviet Union.

The last time the NI looked at the New Right phenomenon was in 1984. I think we would have found it hard to credit how much more ground it would have gained by 1988. Let's hope that in 1992 someone else doesn't have to occupy this hot seat and ponder the significance of yet more of its advances.

Letters
Letter from China
Update
Briefly
Endpiece: by Margaret St Clare
Reviews: including André Malraux classic
Country profile: Burundi

COVER ILLUSTRATION: Hector Cattolica
ONLINE MAG MAINTAINED BY SIMON LOFFLER