Last summer the British Museum devoted a major retrospective to the printmaker and painter Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849). He is perhaps Japan’s most influential and internationally renowned artist, viewed by some as the father of modernism.1 These days most of us… Continue Reading
The failure of the October Revolution to spread throughout Europe, and beyond, in the years after 1917 is one of the great tragedies of the 20th century. Indeed, many of the catastrophes that subsequently beset humanity including both Stalinism and… Continue Reading
In its positive aims, however, this form of [petty-bourgeois] socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of… Continue Reading
Fifty years ago Russian tanks rolled across the Czechoslovakian border. They brought the upheavals of 1968, that year of global revolt against war, oppression and capitalism, into the heart of officially “socialist” Eastern Europe.1 Students took to the streets, fought… Continue Reading
In February to March 2018, tens of thousands of university workers in the University and College Union (UCU) at 65 institutions in higher education took 14 days of strike action, in what was the biggest universities strike ever. The strike… Continue Reading
“What’s the danger in turning a blind eye? Your son might die”.1 That was the chilling headline of the “Saturday Interview” with Metropolitan Police Commissioner Cressida Dick in The Times on 31 March this year. Elsewhere in the article, Dick… Continue Reading
Making sense of the continuing low level of strike activity in the UK takes on greater urgency with the publication of provisional figures for 2017. These show record lows—by some margin—for two of the three main indicators: number of strikes… Continue Reading
1968—a year, but also a mood, an expectation, a world bursting with a promise of revolutionary possibility: a shimmering slice of historical time that precedes 1968 and outlasts it. Commemorating its 50th anniversary properly this year, 2018, must itself be… Continue Reading
The pamphlet Education, Capitalism and the Student Revolt, chapters one and four of which are reproduced here, was written by Chris Harman, Richard Kuper, Dave Clark, Andrew Sayers and Martin Shaw, five student members of the International Socialism group (forerunner… Continue Reading
Women won the right to vote by waging a campaign of extraordinary ingenuity, determination and militancy. The issue of female suffrage touched every town, city and village, and every family in the years before the First World War. Deeply entrenched… Continue Reading