Keith Flett (ed), 1956 and all that (Cambridge Scholars, 2007), £34.99 The year 1956 shook the post-war consensus. Riots in Poland were followed by a workers’ uprising in Hungary, which was crushed by Russian tanks. The Suez War led to… Continue Reading
Joel Kovel, The Enemy of Nature: The End of Capitalism or the End of the World? (Zed, 2007), £14.99 The extent to which capitalism can save the planet from ecological disaster is a hot topic. Discussions rarely examine the limits… Continue Reading
Lindsey German, Material Girls: Women, Men and Work (Bookmarks, 2007), £12.99 This is a very timely book. Abortion rights are once again under attack. The conviction rate for rape is at a historic low. The use of women’s bodies to… Continue Reading
Will Hutton, in his book on China, The Writing on the Wall, writes, “To understand today’s China we need to understand how and why Imperial China succeeded and failed and how it illuminates economic development in the past and present.”… Continue Reading
The French historian, activist and intellectual Michel Foucault remains politically significant some 20 years after his death. Antonio Hardt and Michael Negri’s book Empire, one of most influential works of the anti-capitalism movement, argues that “the work of Michel Foucault… Continue Reading
This year will see the thirtieth anniversary of Deng Xiaoping’s announcement of China’s “Four Modernisations”, the economic reform programme that laid the basis for China’s economic boom. This summer’s Olympic Games, planned to be among the most spectacular ever, will… Continue Reading
The beginning of the 1990s saw Hosni Mubarak start to implement World Bank and IMF policies, including a “structural adjustment programme”, privatisation and attacks on workers’ rights.1 The old centres of the working class, such as Mahalla, Kafr al-Dawwar and… Continue Reading
Egyptian workers’ dramatic revival of strikes is a direct challenge to those who argue that the working class in the Middle East—or in the Third World more generally—has been economically and politically marginalised. The strikes have often been very successful… Continue Reading
A review of Mark Phythian, The Labour Party, War and International Relations 1945–2006 (Routledge, 2007), £19.99 One response to the Iraq war has been an attempt to blame it on Tony Blair personally and to somehow exonerate the Labour Party.… Continue Reading
Revolutionaries do not determine events, nor do they predict them.1 Lenin was surprised by both 1905 and 1917. What revolutionaries can do is understand events and develop a strategy to take advantage of them. “All revolutions in history have begun… Continue Reading