Scott McLemee reviews The Man Who Lived Underground: A Novel by Richard Wright.
Archive | Review
Reviews of books, films, etc.
Review – The Care Manifesto, The Care Crisis
Reviewing two recent books on care in the 21st century, Emily Kenway suggests the only solution to the current crisis lies in a full-scale reorganization of our political economy.
Katherine Angel, ‘Tomorrow Sex Will Be Good Again: Women and Desire in the Age of Consent’
Katherine Angel’s intervention into post-feminist discourse fits the script of recent events and sits at what’s hopefully the tail end of post-feminist discourse, otherwise known as ‘the sex wars’.
Review – Misbehaving
A new edited volume emphasises that the personal is political and highlights the power of spectacular direct action, says Alice Robson
BAR Book Forum: Catie Coe’s Book, “The New American Servitude”
Senior care puts care workers into racialized, gendered, and age hierarchies, making it difficult for them to achieve social and economic mobility.
Review – ‘Bank Job’
Jake Woodier reviews a new documentary film that brings heist aesthetics to a story of debt activism
Jason Hickel introduces Degrowth – book review
Degrowth has arrived. It makes appearances in mainstream newspapers, radio discussions and even the blog pieces of mainstream economists. In the last year several books have appeared, one of them published in the UK, by Penguin no less.
Catastrophe and Utopia: Kim Stanley Robinson’s ‘Ministry for the Future’
We need no longer speculate about whether we live in a climate emergency. The scientific verdict has been out for some time now, each year’s report grimmer than the last.
Marxism and Intersectionality: Race, Gender, Class and Sexuality under Contemporary Capitalism by Ashley J Bohrer reviewed by Christian Lotz
In Marxism and Intersectionality: Race, Gender, Class and Sexuality under Contemporary Capitalism its author, Ashley J. Bohrer, presents a tour de force, offering and contributing to a wide-ranging debate that has occupied left academic and activist audiences for some time now.
Blood and Money
Join us for this discussion with David McNally (author, editor of Spectre Journal, Professor of History at University of Houston), joined by Maia Pal (HM editorial board) & Tithi Bhattacharya.
Capitalism, romanticism, and nature
Robert Sayre and Michael Löwy’s Romantic Anti-capitalism and Nature is an extremely interesting book—enjoyable, informative, and intellectually stimulating.
![Capitalism as Civilisation: A History of International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020).]](https://mronline.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/01/capitalism-as-civilisation-200x200.png "Capitalism and the Telos of the Neoliberal Civilizing Mission")
Capitalism and the Telos of the Neoliberal Civilizing Mission
In 1931 the British Colonial Office submitted a special report to the Council of the League of Nations on the “Progress of Iraq” in the previous decade. Since the First World War had ended with the dismemberment of the Ottoman Empire and the confiscation of its territories, Iraq had been governed as a British mandate, […]
A renaissance fighter for freedom, justice, and peace
Released in 2019 on the 100th anniversary of Paul Robeson’s graduation from Rutgers University, Ballad of an American, brings Robeson’s creative and powerful historical presence to life through a striking graphic text and excellent afterword.
Caste does not explain race
The celebration of Isabel Wilkerson’s Caste reflects the continued priority of elite preferences over the needs and struggles of ordinary people.
Regicide or Revolution? What petitioners wanted, September 1648 – February 1649 by Nora Carlin
Norah Carlin’s analysis of the Levellers’ petitions reaffirms the radical nature of the English revolution, argues John Rees.
‘The Principal Contradiction’ by Torkil Lauesen
One of my frustrations with contemporary Marxist philosophy is the way in which the word ‘dialectical’ is often employed like a magical wand to sanctify various relational phenomena.
No Platform by Evan Smith
Smith’s book demonstrates that the far-right has always played the victim card when it comes to free-speech, writes Houman Barekat.
Eric Hobsbawm’s dialectical materialism in the postwar period 1946-56
Hobsbawm’s thinking was guided by dialectical materialism, which was a scientific outlook based on analysis. It always accounted for unpredictable human agency and, though economic factors played the principal role in the development of history, this study rejects the claim that Hobsbawm was a mechanical determinist.
A restless thinker
In the millions of pages written about Karl Marx, his final years have been somewhat neglected.
The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology
John Bellamy Foster’s brilliant recovery of a century of ecological and socialist thought will inform, enable, and inspire a new generation of reds and greens.
