There are rich pickings in the two issues of Historical Materialism published since we last appeared. In the first (number 20.1) we have the Marxist classical scholar Richard Seaford exploring the parallels between the structure of ancient Greek philosophy and… Continue Reading
Sam Farber, Cuba Since the Revolution of 1959: A Critical Assessment (Haymarket, 2011), $24 Discussions around Cuba have an unfortunate tendency to generate more heat than light, particularly on the left. Sam Farber’s new book, in the same spirit as… Continue Reading
Paul Blackledge, Marxism and Ethics: Freedom, Desire and Revolution (SUNY, 2012), $80 Ethics has been a problematic area for Marxism ever since its beginnings. Marx himself wrote very little on the topic, and what he did write seems paradoxical. On… Continue Reading
David Renton, Struck Out:Why Employment Tribunals Fail Workers and What Can be Done (Pluto, 2012), £19.99 In this new book developed from his earlier article in International Socialism,1 socialist barrister David Renton examines the disparity between the ambitions of workers… Continue Reading
In his response to my recent article on the TIPNIS conflict in Bolivia, Federico Fuentes characteristically positions himself well to the right of Uruguayan social democrat and prominent political ecologist Eduardo Gudynas.1 For if Gudynas never offers a satisfying critique… Continue Reading
Chris Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 (Penguin, 2009), £14.99; Peter Sarris, Empires of Faith: The Fall of Rome to the Rise of Islam, 500–700 (Oxford University Press, 2011), £35 When Chris Wickham’s… Continue Reading
Less than three months into its term, the new Greek government is faced with a “hot autumn” of resistance. Helena Smith predicted this in the Guardian in early August and by the end of the month it was more of… Continue Reading
The “strategic perplexity” of the left confronted with the gravest crisis of capitalism in generations has been hard to miss.1 Social democracy continues down the road of social liberalism. The far left has struggled to take advantage of ruling class… Continue Reading
The global capitalist crisis has now reached its half-decade point, and the months leading up to this unhappy anniversary saw the publication of a number of interesting papers on Marxist political economy. Here I will briefly survey some of them,… Continue Reading
Throughout the crisis sensationalist claims have emerged on both the right and the left that the crisis would lead to a catastrophic and immediate rise in joblessness or, conversely, that it is really not that bad. This article examines exactly… Continue Reading