Andreas Malm and Shora Esmailian, Iran on the Brink: Rising Workers and Threats of War (Pluto, 2007), £17.99 There are two predominant images of Iran in the West. One is a racist depiction of Iran as a backward country of… Continue Reading
Andrew Brown, J D Bernal: The Sage of Science (Oxford University Press, 2007), £12.99 As a young reader of psychology, I was made to believe, through constant cajoling and the occasional threat of lost marks, that the consummate scientist was… Continue Reading
Eric H Mielants, The Origins of Capitalism and the “Rise of the West” (Temple University Press, 2007), £30 Over the past 30 years two views have dominated debates on the rise of capitalism in Europe. “World systems theory”, associated with… Continue Reading
Duncan Thompson, Pessimism of the Intellect? A History of New Left Review (Merlin), £16.95 To produce uninterruptedly, every two to three months, a socialist theoretical journal with a consistently high standard of analysis and commentary from 1960 to the present… Continue Reading
Bryan D Palmer, James P Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left 1890–1928 (University of Illinois, 2007), £29 For me the decisive moment in James P Cannon’s life was when he gave up his swivel chair. In 1928… Continue Reading
Barry McLoughlin, Left to the Wolves: Irish Victims of Stalinist Terror (Irish Academic Press, 2007), £20 Since the collapse of the Soviet Union access to the Soviet archives has allowed historians to reconstruct the political and personal history of many… Continue Reading
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