Archive | Review

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.

Andy Beckett’s The Searchers provides a thoughtful consideration of five leaders of the Labour left, their relation to mass movements, and political impact, finds Kevin Crane.

“Revolutionary Spring” challenges the persistent and powerful historical view of the revolutions of 1848—49 as failures.

Capitalist crises cannot only be measured by its catastrophic effects on society, but also by the reception of their most staunchest critique: Karl Marx’s Capital.

ROGER McKENZIE discusses the different Marxist traditions of thought about race and racism in the first in a four-part serialisation of his new book, African Uhuru.

An excellent history of the sixteenth-century radical Thomas Müntzer brings the radical Reformation and the dawn of the modern era into focus, finds Dominic Alexander.

An establishment friendly history of the first Labour government, in 1924, shows how willingly a Labour leadership can be captured by the ruling class, finds John Westmoreland.

After his brief space journey in July 2021, Amazon owner Jeff Bezos said, with disarming frankness, “I want to thank every Amazon employee and every Amazon customer, because you guys paid for all of this.”

Archeology has always been a political science. Since its inception the field has attempted to trace our lineage as a species along the lines of identity, territory and culture. Though often portrayed as a discipline slightly closer to the hard sciences than historiography, it is much closer to its distant cousin in the social sciences than towards anything resembling an empirical practice.

Primitive accumulation is the historical process through which capitalists stole their wealth or took it by force. Canadian ecosocialist Ian Angus has contributed an excellent new book on this history, covering the violent transition from feudalism to capitalism in depth while demonstrating its continuing relevance to the modern world..

Grace Blakeley is a media star of the radical left-wing of the British labour movement. She is a columnist for the left-wing journal, Tribune, and a regular panellist on political debates in broadcasting—often the only spokesperson on the left advocating socialist alternatives.

Since the global financial crisis, big banks have taken a backseat, and asset managers have become the—often self-appointed—new experts and administrators of capitalism.