Subjects Archives: Literature

Re-reading Guy Endore’s “forgotten masterpiece” it is striking how this novel from 1934, long-noted for its shocking and sophisticated account of slavery and resistance in the lead-up to the Haitian Revolution, is also a penetrating account of the ethical and political deformity and alienation perpetuated by the ideology of “whiteness.”

Anna Kornbluh joins Money on the Left to discuss the politics of form and literary realism as theorized in her provocative book, The Order of Forms: Realism, Formalism, and Social Space (University of Chicago Press, 2019). In The Order of Forms, Kornbluh lays bare the problematic “anarcho-vitalist” underpinnings of neoliberal discourse which, she argues, also inform much  critical theory and left critique.

I met Michael back in the 1980s. He had just been elected president of the National Lawyers Guild. We lived around the corner from each other in Greenwich Village. He walked over one evening and asked me if I’d serve on the board that edited the Guild magazine, Guild Notes. “Sure,” I said. That began a political collaboration and a dear friendship that lasted until he died five years ago. – Michael Steven Smith

‘The increased atomization of society and associated political economy of capitalism justifies the logic of reductionism’. – Richard Lewontin

On his 250th anniversary, Jenny Farrell writes about Walter Scott and his historical novels, uncovering themes of class conflict, ethnic and nationalist struggles, and how the personal experiences of his characters link with broader historical upheavals.

As the title reveals, Chukhrov is particularly interested in two aspects of Soviet socialism: desire and boredom. For a libidinally conditioned capitalist subject, socialism as a non-libidinal economy appears boring and unsexy.

Glen Ford spent more than four decades delivering the news from a Black perspective on a national scale.

Sebastian, in his writings in The Fight to Win Rights, is direct, and honest, unafraid to state unpalatable facts. Blunt and matter-of-fact, his words seem to be deliberately chosen to appeal to the conscience of people, his mode of expression reflecting his commitment to justice and the truth.

You cannot argue with mass hypnosis. You can keep a diary, write a chronicle that reveals the falseness of the spirit of the age to hopefully enlighten future readers, because, as we hear in another of the main points of Bulgakov’s novel Master and Margarita, “manuscripts do not burn.” That is what I do….

Driven and passionate about the significance of Marx’s contributions in politics, sociology, the critique of political economy and philosophy, Musto has delivered seven books within the last three years.

The New Left is generally seen globally as emerging from the aftermath of the “revelations” about Stalin in Khrushchev’s “secret speech”’ at the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union in early 1956, and the reaction to the Soviet invasion of Hungary later that same year.

Luke Charnley reports on the new publishing houses getting working-class writers onto the printed page.

More than 100 years after her murder by counterrevolutionary soldiers during the German Revolution of 1918-1919, Rosa Luxemburg continues to demand attention.

The author explores various social, political, and cultural sites that explore and highlight the Black pastoral experience.

His stance on free press stands in sharp contrast to the status of the press–being totally subservient to the state–in the communist countries of the 20th century.

As the global challenge of climate change mounts and the coronavirus pandemic magnifies economic inequalities, Karl Marx, who pointed to the contradictions and limitations of capitalism, is gaining new admirers in Japan, particularly among the young.

Freedman notes that Guardian editor, Kath Viner, promised that her newspaper would ‘challenge the economic assumptions of the last three decades’, ‘challenge the powerful’ and ‘use clarity and imagination to build hope’.

Scott McLemee reviews The Man Who Lived Underground: A Novel by Richard Wright.

Reviewing two recent books on care in the 21st century, Emily Kenway suggests the only solution to the current crisis lies in a full-scale reorganization of our political economy.

Katherine Angel’s intervention into post-feminist discourse fits the script of recent events and sits at what’s hopefully the tail end of post-feminist discourse, otherwise known as ‘the sex wars’.