-
“The Conformist Rebellion: Marxist Critiques of the Contemporary Left”
Already a century ago, political thinkers and philosophers were confronted with an apparent paradox: the failure of revolution.
-
Southern Girls: Theater Review
Would Florida’s Fascistic Governor Ban This Play and Burn the Script?
-
Book Review: ‘No Equal Justice: The Legacy of Civil Rights Icon George W. Crockett’
David Gespass has been on the editorial board of the National Lawyers Guild Review for over twenty-years including several years as Editor in Chief. He is a past president of the National Lawyers Guild. David is doing his best to retire from the active practice of law with only moderate success.
-
Dismantling the cult of Churchill
Tariq Ali’s new book examines the disconnect between Churchill’s popular image and the larger context of his life and times.
-
Netflix’s ‘Descendant’ shows capitalism continues to oppress African descendants
In the spring of 1860, wealthy businessman Timothy Meaher made a bet that he could illegally kidnap and ship Africans from Africa to Mobile, Alabama, without being detected by federal officials.
-
A Review of Derek R. Ford’s ‘Teaching the Actuality of Revolution: Aesthetics, Unlearning, and the Sensations of Struggle’
History doesn’t happen because a small group of people share a complete political identity; it happens because masses of people shed their timidity, risk their reputations, livings, freedom, and lives, and let the actuality of revolution guide their every move.
-
“If there is to be a livable future, it will be a future offline”
Jonathan Crary’s new book excoriates the digital world of late capitalism.
-
‘Capitalism as Civilisation: A History of International Law’ review
Readers of the first volume of Capital sometimes mistakenly conceptualize capitalism in terms of a relationship between workers and a single capitalist. In doing so they fail to notice that for Marx capitalist society is not one big capitalist enterprise.
-
Ian H Angus – “Groundwork of Phenomenological Marxism: Crisis, Body, World”
There is much more here than can be covered in a brief review, including interesting discussions of language, laughter, neo-mercantile capitalism, digital information and abstract nature, a correlate to abstract labor.
-
Book Review: ‘Before Crips’ dismantles dominant narrative on gangs
For the past several decades, the media has severely manipulated the question of gangs and their socio-economic origins. John C. Quicker and Akil S. Batani-Khalfani’s new book, “Before Crips: Fussin’, Cussin’, and Discussin’” among South Los Angeles Juvenile Gangs, exposes the mainstream stigmas and half-truths surrounding gangs.
-
‘Red Valkyries: Feminist Lessons from Five Revolutionary Women’ by Kristen Ghodsee – Review
In exploring the lives of the revolutionary socialist feminists of the past, Red Valkyries demonstrates the value and importance of feminism in the 21st century, argues Rachel Collett
-
A Wisconsin story
Jon Melrod brings back to us a vital moment in the history of the U.S. labor movement, a moment in which the demographic transformation the workforce but also the lingering memory of 1960s social movements and unrest, raised the possibility of radicals racing to the front of class conflicts.
-
“Marx and the Robots. Networked Production, AI and Human Labour” – book review
A new collection of essays provides important sceptical discussions of the impact of robotics and AI on the economy, finds Elaine Graham-Leigh
-
Class struggle against growth
The Future is Degrowth: A Guide To a World Beyond Capitalism by Matthias Schmelzer, Andrea Vetter, and Aaron Vansintjan (Verso 2022) and Climate Change is Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet (Verso 2022) are Verso’s two most recent “guides” to combating the climate crisis.
-
BAR Book Forum: Maano Ramutsindela, Frank Matose, and Tafadzwa Mushonga’s Book, “The Violence of Conservation in Africa”
Maano Ramutsindela, Frank Matose, and Tafadzwa Mushonga: “The book places African states and their behaviors towards African people in conservation spaces within the global environmental agendas of powerful states and well-funded conservation organizations. It interprets conservation as an ideology referencing African landscapes without people. Such an ideology separates people from their biophysical and cultural milieus, leading to conservation violence authorized by states against their citizens.”
-
With fire and courage
Vibiana Aparicio-Chamberlin’s poetry in Chicana on Fire (2022) is testimonial and collective.
-
Forces of Production, Climate Change and Canadian Fossil Fuel Capitalism
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
-
Class struggle or degrowth?
Without class struggle the emancipatory potential of degrowth will fail to be realized. A revolutionary pedagogy can help to unify them.
-
Climate crisis poses stark choice: Socialism or Extinction
In his latest book, Socialism or Extinction: The Meaning of Revolution in a Time of Ecological Disaster, Martin Empson neatly lays out his argument as to why the climate crisis cannot be solved under capitalism.
-
Review: ‘COVID-19 and the Structural Crises of our Time’
Covid-19 and the Structural Crises of our Time (CSCT) is a very timely and important book, written by Mah-Hui Lim, a one-time sociology professor who went on to work in international banking, and Michael Heng Siam-Hang, a former professor of management studies.