David Laibman, Deep History: A Study in Social Evolution and Human Potential (SUNY, 2006), £42 A strange title and ugly cover design would probably put off most casual readers interested in the Marxist view of history, so there is probably… Continue Reading
Steve Edwards, The Making of English Photography: Allegories (Penn State University Press, 2006), £56.50 The invention of photography was announced in 1839 and its commercial expansion began in earnest in the 1850s. By the time Karl Marx wrote Capital in… Continue Reading
During the late 1950s and early 1960s a wave of new literature emerged from a defiant Global South. Some of the best came from Africa, then caught up in a range of anti-colonial struggles and the promise of independence. The… Continue Reading
This year marks the centenary of the painting of Les Demoiselles d’Avignon by Pablo Picasso. There cannot be many paintings whose anniversary would occasion an analysis in a journal of socialist theory—an honour usually reserved for revolutions and other great… Continue Reading
Kim Moody is the author of a new book on the American working class: US Labor in Trouble and Transition. He spoke to Martin Smith and Chris Harman about his research Martin Smith: Can you give us an overview of… Continue Reading
The “tendency of the rate of profit to fall” is one of the most contentious elements in Karl Marx’s intellectual legacy.1 He regarded it as one of his most important contributions to the analysis of the capitalist system, calling it,… Continue Reading
Prior to the presidential election of April/May 2007 France seemed to epitomise both the crisis facing mainstream politics in Europe and the potential of the developing movement against neoliberalism, which had scored a number of important victories. However, the election,… Continue Reading
The international movement against capitalist globalisation has been globally visible for nearly a decade now. It started with the Chiapas rising of January 1994 and the French public sector strikes of November_December 1995, and exploded onto the global stage at… Continue Reading
José Carlos Mariátegui was born into a society in crisis, a Peru deeply divided between a coastal sector where most of Peru’s capitalist class was concentrated, an emerging mining industry in the central valley between Lima and Huancavelica, and a… Continue Reading
As Tony Blair departed and Gordon Brown prepared to take over as prime minister one great myth was boomed out by New Labour’s propaganda machine—that Brown had achieved a “miracle” for the British economy. He achieved no less than the… Continue Reading