Lindsey German on unfolding economic and environmental crises, and how we should respond.

Barack Obama recounts in his memoir ‘Dreams from my Father’ reading a book about Africa as a young man. He remembered how he was filled with ‘an anger all the more maddening for its lack of a clear target’ at the way that the dominant images of the book shifted from the independence struggles of leaders like Jomo Kenyatta and Kwame Nkrumah to ‘famine, disease, the coups and counter-coups led by illiterate young men wielding AK-47s like shepherd sticks’ (p.515).

Olivier van Beemen’s meticulous exposure of Heineken’s activities in Africa show the damage done by neo-colonial capitalism, argues Ellen Graubart

Paul le Blanc’s history of the Russian Revolution shows that the tragic outcome was not inevitable, and there is much to learn from it, argues Lindsey German.

Mainstream conceptions of human nature are rooted in the historical development of capitalism. Elaine Graham-Leigh argues that we can only understand nature through the dialectic method.

Just fifty years ago on March 22^nd we saw the beginning of the events in France which terrified the ruling class, led to one of the biggest general strikes ever, along with a wave of factory occupations, and could only be calmed by important concessions from the bosses (minimum wage raised by 35% and new workplace organising rights guaranteed for trade unions). For the first time for decades, the spectre of revolution in the West seemed real.