Archive | Review

Following the publication of Tariq Ali’s latest memoirs, he spoke to Michael Lavalette about the contrasting periods covered in his autobiographies and the prospects for the left today.

We are all familiar with the charge that some policy or decision is a case of ‘political correctness gone mad’, part of the rhetoric of the ‘culture wars’, but we may not have thought a great deal more about it.

In his new book, Alvin Finkel tells the story of the 99% who have constantly sought to live in a society of equals

How can we transcend the alienation of humanity and nature, and create a world of substantive equality and ecological sustainability?

There is much to say on behalf of Vanessa Christina Wills’ Marx’s Ethical Vision, which not only advances Marxist scholarship but takes a strong, well-founded position regarding some of the most vexing and significant questions confronting anyone who would grasp his philosophical thought.

Composing a history of Detroit is an exercise in tying together many economic and social trends within a microcosm of class, race, and fraught politics. Mark Jay and Philip Conklin’s work discusses the 20th-century history of the city to offer a documentation of class struggle seen through the industrialization of the city in the early 20th century, the racial tensions of the post-World War II period, and, finally, the simultaneous processes of decay and development in the last three decades.

Many people now live in homes and rely on infrastructure that are owned by pension funds, insurance companies, and banks.

My engagement with Marx in this book is ultimately an act of critical dialogue–of thinking with as well as across and through his texts toward multiple unforeseen destinations.

George Lipsitz: The Danger Zone is Everywhere focuses on how unjust access to housing and health skews opportunities and life chances along racial lines. It argues that housing insecurity and poor health are key components of an unjust, destructive and deadly racial order. The book shows how the tort model of injury in law and the biomedical model of health work to occlude structural racism by treating socially produced injuries as personal problems.

Adam Raz has made an important addition to the study of the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in this detailed volume containing original research.

Toby Manning’s history of popular music in its historical context is a rich and rewarding exploration of the politics of music, finds Charles Marriott.

The former Labour Party leader’s new foreword to Claire Provost and Matt Kennard’s book ‘Silent Coup’ outlines his thoughts on the growing power of the private sector over society.

Critical cultural historical perspective is not easy to obtain.

Soon after Israel launched its genocidal war in Gaza with the full support of the U.S. government, opposition emerged to the Biden administration in a place that many professional political commentators found confounding: within U.S. trade unions.

Belle and Beauvoir proves to be a much needed contribution on a neglected topic. Importantly, it comes at a time when theorists are calling for both greater conceptual clarity on how systems like capitalism and racism interact as well a return to the thought of Black women Marxists and communists.

In this week in 2019, India enforced a communications blackout in Jammu and Kashmir. A new writing project chronicles the crackdown which followed and how its techniques of oppression were borrowed from Israel’s occupation of Palestine.

Few are better qualified to challenge the official orthodoxy that stifles any discussion of this topic.

In his opus ‘The Wealth of Nations’ published in 1776 Adam Smith drew a distinction between the progressive state, the stationary state and the declining state.

In 1974, 50 years ago, the newly launched Review of African Political Economy (ROAPE) journal boldly announced its intentions in the first editorial, “Appropriate analysis and the devising of a strategy for Africa’s revolution must be encouraged and we hope that the provision of this platform for discussion will assist that process”.

PAUL DONOVAN enjoys a valuable contribution to a wider understanding of the remarkable human rights activist turned Irish freedom fighter.