Correction (2011)

From the February 2011 issue of the Socialist Standard 

In our review of Michael Lebowitz’s book, The Path to Human Development: capitalism or socialism?, in last month’s Socialist Standard, we attributed to him the passage “it is important that we live the revolutionary process as a great organism and not as a vanguard atop a complacent mass”. In drawing our attention to the fact that he did not write this, Michael Lebowitz said that “the phrase itself doesn’t embarrass me as I reject the vanguard party (but not leadership as such) as it is understood”. He added: “Incidentally, let me recommend to you and your comrades my new book, The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development (Monthly Review, 2010), which explores much more deeply the themes posed in The Path. As for the vanguard question, I’m taking that up right now in the book I’m working on (The Conductor and the Conducted), which explores what I call ‘vanguard relations of production.’”

In fact the passage was a quote from a review of his book by Ivan Drury in the Canadian Trotskyist paper Socialist Voice. We apologise to him and are pleased to make this correction.