Archive | Review

The film Civil War addresses the paradox that the only way to stop polarisation is to take a side.

Vulture Capitalism demolishes the idea of the ‘free market’ in the corporate age, but has limitations in its analysis of capitalism and how to challenge it, argues Dominic Alexander.

Veteran Cleveland writer and photographer Scott MacGregor recovered a manuscript written by his uncle Hugh O’Neill, which turned into Captured! A World War II Memoir. In it, O’Neill weaves a real-life tale of his life as a prisoner of the Germans in the last year of the Second World War and Cleveland comic artist Gary Dumm, who has worked with the best of the genre, Harvey Pekar in particular, provides vivid illustrations.

This is an amazing history, one that should be on the list of every history class dealing with modern history, history of the British Empire, and further on to those studying economics, politics, and geopolitical strategies.

In this first of two extracts from Terina Hine’s new book, “A People’s History of Covid”, the impact of inequality and neoliberalism in the UK on the spread of Covid is outlined

The Reckoning is a magnificent conclusion to a quartet of books on New World slavery, explaining the role of slavery and its abolition in the rise of American power, finds Chris Bambery.

Naomi Klein’s exploration of the spread of conspiracy theory and the ‘other Naomi’ is baggy but contains useful insights, argues Lindsey German.

RON JACOBS points out that it wasn’t until anti-imperialist and anti-racist movements formed women’s liberation groups that the fundamental roots of oppression could be addressed.

Paul Buhle reviews “The Communist Women’s Movement,” a collection of documents of a global women’s communist movement.

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.”