Archive | Review

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.

The “Reign of Terror,” which lasted from the end of World War I to 1931, involved the murder of at least 60 wealthy, full-blood Osage Natives, but Grann argues that the actual total of suspicious deaths may number in the hundreds.

Review of ‘Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food … and Why Can’t We Stop?’ By Chris van Tulleken.

The basic aim of ‘Tipping Point for Advanced Capitalism: Class, Class Consciousness and Activism in the “Knowledge Economy”’ is to bring class back into thinking about capitalism and alternatives.

‘Black Crown’ is a gripping biography of one of the most important leaders of the Haitian Revolution, and it illuminates the history of the revolution, finds John Westmoreland.

A new book exploring the theory, practice and history of socialist commune building in Venezuela.

A review of ‘Marx in the Anthropocene: Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism’, Kohei Saito (Cambridge University Press, 2022)

The debates between socialists in the Congresses of the Second International raised issues which remain of central importance to the left today, argues Chris Bambery.

Éric Toussaint’s history of the World Bank shows powerfully how it and other international institutions have enforced imperialist exploitation, finds John Clarke

Historian Rashid Khalidi’s concise and at times personal take on a century of colonial conquest and resistance in Palestine is a highly accessible read that focuses on key events and themes.

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

“Brigadistas: An American Anti-Fascist in the Spanish Civil War” is a page-turner of a graphic novel, illuminating the courage and commitment of young Americans in the Abraham Lincoln Brigade, who put their lives on the line against fascism in Spain. The Brigadistas left behind a profound legacy of courage and international solidarity for the U.S. left that still resonates today.

The Class Matrix concisely and systematically argues the case for the continued importance of class for the radical left today. Vivek Chibber rigorously debunks various long held understandings that characterise radical left thought since the cultural turn.