Reviews of books, films, etc.
Peter Linebaugh’s book comes with a long subtitle, a pithy summary of its contents: A Tale at the Crossroads of Commons and Closure, of Love and Terror, of Race and Class, of Kate and Ned Despard. His timeframe is the period between 1789 and 1804 when, in his view, a series of connected events took […]
When I was ten years old, I read and re-read a stack of decades-old Modern Mechanix magazines that I found in my grandfather’s basement. Throughout the Great Depression, MM regaled its readers with breathless accounts of technological marvels that were going to change the world, very soon.
Carbon Markets in a Climate-Changing Capitalism offers an account of why these earlier expectations were not matched by experience. While the contradictions of market solutions have not gone away, the difference this time is that we are just over a decade away from the IPCC’s 2030 benchmark for 1.5°C. The concentration and centralisation of emissions […]
Olivier van Beemen’s meticulous exposure of Heineken’s activities in Africa show the damage done by neo-colonial capitalism, argues Ellen Graubart
In order to really see these boys and their families white people have to see themselves as participatory in racism. So to see their innocence “we” must see our own part, our guilt, our responsibility in the newest forms of slavery, no longer chattel, but carceral.
Alan Nasser has written a masterful book, one that belongs in every serious leftist and socialist library, and one that certainly deserves to be widely and extensively read.
Beyond its analytical value, Robinson’s account holds great potential as a tool of political praxis. For what Anthropology confronts is the question of how exactly are we to make sense of the cultural and political significance of Europe’s medieval period in our current global moment?
In the final stage of fascism, the fascist state has consolidated power and freed itself of its petty-bourgeois class origins. Poulantzas says that this is the most brutal stage, for it involves violent purges at the state level to remove the petty-bourgeoisie, and terroristic repression over the masses.
Undoubtedly we live in the age of neoliberalism. There might also be a link between Neoliberalism and fascism. If one agrees with the rather enticing idea that Hayek’s ideology pamphlet The Road to Serfdom is the ur-texts of neoliberalism, then neoliberalism was indeed invented during the dying days of German Nazism and Italian fascism.
Andrea Gibbons’ history of the battle for equal housing in LA uncovers the intensity and injustice of segregation, which remains a highly visible aspect of US cities, finds Adam Tomes
Clearly there will be ecological issues to resolve once capitalism has been defeated, but that will require a system being put in place that is capable of dealing with the disaster. In other words a society that is not based on the competitive accumulation of capital.
ROAR published an article Can the Bolivarian revolution survive the Venezuelan crisis? containing the views of different professors, but with only two worth reading: Dario Azzellini’s and George Ciccariello-Maher’s. Of the others, Raul Zibechi appears to be the chosen faux left commentator committed to repeating U.S. ruling class propaganda against Venezuela.
The National Front (NF) was on the rise in the UK in the mid-1970s. It was the envy of other far right organisations, in particular its ideological cousin, France’s Front National (FN). A decade later the NF was broken and the FN’s star was rising. Why was the NF defeated while the FN went from […]
With their wide range of styles and perspectives, these little memoirs give a good sense of the period and the issues, but their value is more than historic. As a new generation is being drawn to radical politics, today’s activists may be able to gain useful insights from the experiences of their predecessors.
The next phase of rebellious art, I have thought all this time, belonged to the rise of the Underground Comix of the later 1960s, with one tip of the hat to the campus satire magazines that in some places gave artists like Austin’s Gilbert Shelton a start, and another to Harvey Kurtzman’s failed magazines after […]
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