Archive | Review

Éric Toussaint’s history of the World Bank shows powerfully how it and other international institutions have enforced imperialist exploitation, finds John Clarke

Historian Rashid Khalidi’s concise and at times personal take on a century of colonial conquest and resistance in Palestine is a highly accessible read that focuses on key events and themes.

Nicolas Graham’s book on forces of production and fossil-fuel capitalism gives an important analysis of why fundamental change is needed to solve the climate crisis, finds John Clarke

“Brigadistas: An American Anti-Fascist in the Spanish Civil War” is a page-turner of a graphic novel, illuminating the courage and commitment of young Americans in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, who put their lives on the line against fascism in Spain. The Brigadistas left behind a profound legacy of courage and international solidarity for the U.S. left that still resonates today.

The Class Matrix concisely and systematically argues the case for the continued importance of class for the radical left today. Vivek Chibber rigorously debunks various long held understandings that characterise radical left thought since the cultural turn.

The culture wars are back with a vengeance, if they ever actually left us.

The philosophical community knows by now that philosopher Martin Heidegger was fiercely antisemitic and personally drew connections between his philosophy and his support for Nazi ideology.

‘Left Feminisms’ offers an inspiring and accessible overview of feminism from a diverse array of left-wing thinkers, writes Marin Scarlett.

“Return to the Source”, a condensation of Amílcar Cabral’s developing ideas until his assassination by Portuguese agents in 1973, reveals an astounding intellectual sophistication expressed in formulations clear enough for even the less educated among his audience of fellow Africans.

The new documentary Kokomo City is a raw and unfiltered look into the lives of Black trans women sex workers. In a time when legislative persecution of those belonging to the LGBTQ community is running rampant in a number of states, the film arrives unapologetically, daring viewers to hear the truths of its subjects.

REVIEW OF ISABELLE GARO’S “COMMUNISM AND STRATEGY”

Liedman portrays Engels’ alternative picture of science as a ‘non-reductive materialism’ characterised by a deep confidence in the unity of knowledge and by an equally deep resistance to treating any level of reality as totally determined by another. Engels’ account of scientificity—of what shape a legitimate theory can take—was modelled both on Marx’s theory of capitalism and on Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Free-market Accountability Equals Failed Bankrupt Project

Marx diagnosed the oppression of the working class, the alienation of workers from their labor, as well as the alienation of all human beings living within capitalism from their own authentic selves, and proposed that it was objectively possible that emancipation, true liberation, would come one day.

A Deeply Misleading Narrative: Answering the Claims of Cedric Robinson’s ‘Black Marxism’.

Abba A. Solomon’s new book, “Miasma of Unity: Jews and Israel,” chronicles the search for a Jewish identity not inextricably tied to Israeli Apartheid.

Aaron Good, who received his PhD in political science at Temple University, has written an exceptional book: American Exception: Empire and the Deep State (Skyhorse, 2022). The title of the first chapter broadly lays out the thesis of the book: “Empire, Hegemony, and the State.”

In his latest book, Ian Angus answers a question that apologists for the capitalist system would like to pretend does not exist.

Joe Burns’ “Class Struggle Unionism” advocates militant, worker self-organising from a U.S. context, but its lessons are useful here too, finds Kevin Crane.

The characterization of landlords as struggling families is central to the prevailing depoliticized view of housing.