Archive | Review

While the framework of “vectoralism” proposed by McKenzie Wark in Capital is Dead: Is This Something Worse? proves inadequate for understanding contemporary political economy, the concept of value chains developed by Intan Suwandi (Value Chains: The New Economic Imperialism) offers a promising alternative.

This article discusses Susan Ferguson’s Women and Work and how it advances contemporary debates about social reproduction within and beyond Marxist feminism. In particular, I emphasise its call for avoiding hierarchising struggles against oppression and those against exploitation, and for centring a dual-terrains approach. – Maud Perrier

‘The increased atomization of society and associated political economy of capitalism justifies the logic of reductionism’. – Richard Lewontin

“Except for Palestine” is a remarkable little book. Within it, the authors Hill and Plitnick present the larger picture that the self-proclaimed progressive “universal” values of the United States are argued for in many troubled spots of the world, except for Palestine.

A new book from UT Austin research professor Raj Patel and UC San Francisco physician Rupa Marya argues that our bodies, our society, and our planet are inflamed.

Helen Keller (1880-1968) was one of the most inspirational figures of the 20th century. But most people know the writer and activist for her determination to overcome the barriers facing people with physical disabilities in her lifetime, not for her equally fierce determination to replace American capitalism with a system in which the workers control the means of production.

When the big shutdown finally takes hold in the Bakken, the frackers will have gone and most wells abandoned, and people in the region will still have to deal with the illegal trash dumps, polluted streams, health problems, and other unfortunate effects of the boom.

Two new books trace anti-police uprisings to the urban riots of the Civil Rights era. But as twenty million people took to the streets in 2020, why did so few pick up a brick? And would the movement to which they belong be better off if they had?

As the title reveals, Chukhrov is particularly interested in two aspects of Soviet socialism: desire and boredom. For a libidinally conditioned capitalist subject, socialism as a non-libidinal economy appears boring and unsexy.

Is fundamental, revolutionary change possible from within a social and economic system so shaken that questions of dual power are not likely to be raised?

Released last year but receiving as yet very little English-language press coverage, Der Junge Karl Marx is a nuanced and surprisingly accurate portrait of the revolutionary as a young man. That said, I cannot vouch for the chase scene. Regarding which, more anon.

Writing his 1974 book Labour and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, U.S. Marxist and political economist Harry Braverman noted that Karl Marx had demonstrated that processes of production are constantly transformed by the driving force of capital accumulation.

Property violence kills no one. And yet, to say it again, I’m not today advocating property violence. I am, on the other hand, advocating a discussion of it. – Thomas Neuburger

A Review of Hannah Holleman’s ‘Dust Bowls of Empire: Imperialism, Environmental Politics, and the Injustice of “Green” Capitalism’.

The last year has witnessed an extensive public conversation, from the 1619 Project in the New York Times to protests in the streets, about American historical memory.

The idea that there was anything remotely worthy about Britain’s imperial past has been steadily losing credibility, despite the Johnson government’s disgraceful and offensive insistence to the contrary.

Upon reading Sohn-Rethel it becomes clear that his work is important for contemporary debates on ecology, the Marxist critique of science and debates on post-revolutionary societies such as the former Soviet Union.

Socialism with Chinese Characteristics challenges the simplistic mutually exclusive dualistic lens through which socialism in China is often viewed and judged.

In this timely book, Matthew Brown and Rhian E. Jones explore new forms of democratic collectivism across the UK, writes Hilary Wainwright.

The book suggests a number of important modifications to the critique of global capitalism and the debates about how to solve the ecological crisis: First, it links production to consumption.