Norah Carlin’s analysis of the Levellers’ petitions reaffirms the radical nature of the English revolution, argues John Rees.
Geography Archives: England
No Platform by Evan Smith
Smith’s book demonstrates that the far-right has always played the victim card when it comes to free-speech, writes Houman Barekat.
Tear down the racist statues, end racist debt and pay for reparations
Bring down the statues, surely. But more than that: cancel the debt and provide reparations to the formerly colonized for the centuries of theft and brutality.
Engels’ pause and the condition of the working class in England
Engels was just 24 years old when he wrote the Condition. He had already developed left-wing ideas when he was despatched to England at the end of 1842 to work in the family firm of Ermen and Engels, manufacturers of sewing thread in Manchester.
World First: Bank of England unveils climate stress test to banks and insurance companies
Tackling climate change isn’t just about replacing fossil fuels with renewables, or planting more trees. It’s about confronting climate stress across society.
Meet the far-right conspiracy idiots who stormed Bookmarks
THE halfwits who went berserk in the central London socialist bookshop Bookmarks on Saturday afternoon are supporters of a oddball far-right group called Make Britain Great Again (MBGA), which is also inconsistently called the People’s Charter Foundation.
Poulantzas and the juridical constitution of the subject
Although Nicos Poulantzas is rightly regarded as one of the most innovative Marxist theoreticians of the state, most analyses tend to focus on his account of the relative autonomy of the capitalist state in the organization of the hegemonic bloc of the capitalist class.
Balfour at 100: A legacy of racism and propaganda
The coming months mark the centennial of Palestine’s forcible incorporation into the British Empire. In November 1917, British foreign secretary Lord Arthur Balfour declared his government’s support for “the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people”; in December, Jerusalem fell to British troops.
In retrospect: Das Kapital
The book’s impact on economics, politics and current affairs has been formidable, and aspects of Marx’s thinking have permeated areas of scientific research as disparate as robotics and evolutionary theory.
Phil Collins: why I took a Soviet statue of Engels across Europe to Manchester
Friedrich Engels spent two decades in Manchester. The horrific conditions he saw in the cradle of industrialism forged his great works. But the city has never commemorated him – until now.
Roaul Peck’s newest film: “The Young Karl Marx”
Haitian writer, producer, and director, Roal Peck—whose blockbuster documentary I Am Not Your Negro has become the highest-grossing non-fiction release from Magnolia Pictures—has chosen the Young Karl Marx as the topic of his next film.
Migration as Revolt against Capital
The fact that a large number of refugees, especially from countries which have been subjected of late to the ravages of imperialist aggression and wars, are desperately trying to enter Europe is seen almost exclusively in humanitarian terms. While this perception no doubt has validity, there is another aspect of the issue which has escaped […]
Randhir Singh: Farewell Teacher, Comrade, and Friend
When my brother called to tell me that that Professor Randhir Singh was no more I wanted, more than anything else, to be in Delhi. I wanted to see him one last time with my own eyes and to hug him. And, I wanted to be there with the crowd of people — of students, […]
Glory to the Lucid Courage of the Greek People, Facing the European Crisis
The Greek People are an example to Europe and the world. With courage and lucidity the Greek people have rejected the ignoble diktat of European and international finance. They have won a first victory by affirming that democracy cannot exist unless it knows how to put itself at the service of social progress. They have […]
Marxism, Ecological Civilization, and China
China’s leadership has called in recent years for the creation of a new “ecological civilization.” Some have viewed this as a departure from Marxism and a concession to Western-style “ecological modernization.” However, embedded in classical Marxism, as represented by the work of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, was a powerful ecological critique. Marx explicitly defined […]
Misconceptions about Neo-Liberalism
Neo-Liberalism is often seen only as an economic policy. This per se might not matter, since a specific set of economic measures do, no doubt, fall under the rubric of neo-liberalism. But by reducing neo-liberalism only to a set of economic measures, a misleading impression is often conveyed that this set of measures are a […]
Scotland’s Democratic Revolution Challenges Both Austerity and the UK State
The May 7th UK general election, which saw the Conservatives win a slim majority, witnessed a democratic revolution of unprecedented scale in Scotland. England backed continued austerity, neo-liberal economics and £12 billion welfare spending cuts; the Scots overwhelmingly rejected that approach. In the UK parliament Scotland is represented by 59 MPs, of whom, before May, […]
A History of a Counter-Revolution
Gerald Horne. The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America. NYU Press, 2014. In the conventional, celebratory liberal historical narrative about the Founding Fathers, the post-revolutionary persistence of slavery in the United States, along with women’s lack of essential political and legal rights, has long been regarded as […]
Are Scotland’s Post-Referendum Politics Set to Challenge Austerity Britain?
First a bit of context on how we got here. Scotland was united with England to form Great Britain by the 1707 Treaty of Union, which was signed by a political elite with no democratic mandate who were largely bribed into agreement or, as Scotland’s national poet Robert Burns put it, “bought and sold for […]
Shummy’s Surrender: Dem Governor of Vermont Goes South on Single Payer
“Vermont . . . is the only state with universal single-payer health coverage for its residents.” — James Fallows in The Atlantic, April 2014 For nearly four years, Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin has been basking in the glow of press accolades like the one above. Unfortunately, what was often misreported nationally as a done deal […]
