Later Work
Kidron's last major articles in the International Socialism journal cast doubt on his own earlier work, but without renouncing Marxism as so many former revolutionaries would during the downturn of class struggle that marked the eighties. Yet following a debate in the pages of the International Socialism Journal with Chris Harman, who defended what is now the traditional IS position, he was to leave active revolutionary politics.
Closely associated with Pluto Press since the early 1970s (the IS had helped set up the company in its first period), his talents were expended on works like State of the World Atlas, and The War Atlas (with Dan Smith). Kidron remained a Marxist committed to changing the world and therefore understood the necessity of developing a theoretical understanding of how the world works precisely in order to change it. His final article appeared in the Autumn 2002 issue of the International Socialism Journal on The Decline of Capitalism, and spoke of a sure and certain knowledge that another world is not just possible but demanded. As ever, the revolutionary role of the working class in the core countries of capitalism was reasserted and the goal of a communist society reaffirmed.
Kidron died on 25 March 2003.
Read more about this topic: Michael Kidron
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“As a man has no right to kill one of his children if it is diseased or insane, so a man who has made the gradual and conscious expression of his personality in literature the aim of his life, has no right to suppress himself any carefully considered work which seemed good enough when it was written. Suppression, if it is deserved, will come rapidly enough from the same causes that suppress the unworthy members of a man’s family.”
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