Archive | Review

Review of Matt Huber’s ‘Climate Change as Class War: Building Socialism on a Warming Planet’

Arun Kundnani details the histories of liberal and radical anti-racism and argues that anti-racism ultimately means anti-capitalism.

For many continental philosophers, the first two decades of the new millennium were a time of vibrant matter, hyperobjects, and a weird fixation with intestinal microbes. The late Bruno Latour saw this ‘new materialist’ doctrine–which decentred the human subject in favour of the world of ‘things’, believed to have agency of their own–as a useful resource in his career-long polemic against Marxism.

Grounded in people and places at the heart of the climate crisis, ‘Oil, Water and Climate Resistance’ traces the fight in Minnesota against the expansion of pipelines carrying toxic tar sands oil through North America.

“Should one claim that, unless they have studied the Science of Logic, these scientists don’t know what they are doing? Doubtless, they know what they are doing but, philosophically speaking, they often do not know what they know and beyond a certain point this limitation cannot but have a regrettable influence on their work.” (Sève 2008: 91)

Anthropology, since its inception, has been an ideologically contested–discipline, and the same is true of both primatology and zoology when they have been used to explain human evolution.

Too many U.S. workers still suffer and die from exposure to well-known toxic substances, a Texas investigative reporter’s new book says.

Some of Ernest Mandel’s finest work on Marxist theory and revolutionary politics appeared in the form of short articles. “Hope and Marxism” collects eleven of Mandel’s most significant articles and provides an excellent introduction to his thought.

Arun Kudnani traces its roots to the campaigns of 1930s’ cultural thinkers such as anthropologist Ruth Benedict and gay rights activist Magnus Hirschfield, who were theorising the rise of Nazism in Germany and urged the U.S. political elite to educate the working class, believing that without this, economic hardship would make racism more likely.

Written by Marxist philosopher George Novack (1905-1992) and published in 1975 by Pathfinder Press, “Pragmatism versus Marxism: An appraisal of John Dewey’s Philosophy” sought to explain the origins, emergence, class basis, and norms of pragmatism, which has been the predominant mode of thought in U.S. intellectual and political life.

Brazilian informant says, “A lot of my generation were inspired by the Zapatistas… but how did we find out about them? From Rage Against the Machine.”

Siddarth Kara’s book exposes the exploitation behind the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

As in Lenin’s time, the conclusion is that socialist revolution will end imperialist war, enabling workers to meet their own needs.

In exploring the notion of critical media literacy, the Marxist concepts of base and superstructure and Antonio Gramsci’s theory of cultural hegemony provide an essential framework for understanding the complex dynamics of media, power, and ideology.

Pasquinelli’s “Eye of the Master” provides a materialist analysis of AI and technology, which Kevin Crane finds to be an excellent antidote to all the nonsense and hype spouted about AI.

The modern food system is being shaped by the capitalist imperative for profit.

This valuable collection of pieces explores the role of women in twentieth-century revolutionary and national-liberation movements throughout the world, finds Ellen Graubart.

Pharmanomics is an important book that shows how Big Pharma’s profit seeking damages health care globally, but the solution lies outside the current system, argues John Clarke

A review of Robert Cherny’s “Harry Bridges Labor Radical, Labor Legend”, University of Illinois Press 2023.

China Miéville is the most important UK author of the early twenty-first century; his Bas Lag fantasy trilogy brought a new kind of socially-conscious weird fiction into the mainstream of British literature.