A review of Steve Cushion, A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution: How the Working Class Shaped the Guerrillas’ Victory (Monthly Review Press, 2016), £20.42 and Jane Franklin, Cuba and the US Empire: A Chronological History (Monthly Review Press, 2016),… Continue Reading
A review of Michael Helquist, Marie Equi: Radical Politics and Outlaw Passions (Oregon State University Press, 2015), £19 On May Day 1950 the dockers’ union in Portland, Oregon, presented a bouquet of 13 red roses and a poem to 78-year-old… Continue Reading
A review of Gareth Stedman Jones, Karl Marx: Greatness and Illusion (Penguin, 2016), £35 In 1972 the Cambridge historian Gareth Stedman Jones wrote a foreword to the English edition of Werner Blumenberg’s useful biography of Karl Marx. Here he criticised… Continue Reading
A review of Anwar Shaikh, Capitalism: Competition, Conflict, Crises (Oxford University Press, 2016), £35.99 Anwar Shaikh is one of the world’s leading economists who draws on Karl Marx and the classical economists (“political economy”, if you like). He has taught… Continue Reading
A review of Grant Banfield, Critical Realism for Marxist Sociology of Education (Routledge, 2016), £95 Marxists are interested in the role education and schooling play in history and revolution. But classical Marxist studies in the sociology of education have remained… Continue Reading
A review of George Hoare and Nathan Sperber, An Introduction to Antonio Gramsci: His Life, Thought and Legacy (Bloomsbury, 2015), £16.99 A central question confronted by the authors of this book is, what is Antonio Gramsci’s relevance today? It seems… Continue Reading
A review of Evan Smith and Matthew Worley (eds), Against the Grain: The British far left from 1956 (Manchester University Press, 2014), £75 The need for a genuine left alternative to cuts, privatisation, racism, war and climate change is urgent.… Continue Reading
A review of Charles Ferrall and Dougal McNeill, Writing the 1926 General Strike: Literature, Culture, Politics (Cambridge University Press, 2015), £55 This is an exemplary book which does exactly what it says on the tin, examining how the 1926 General… Continue Reading
A review of Sharon Smith, Women and Socialism: Class, Race and Capital (Haymarket, 2015), £11.99 Neoliberal austerity is impacting particularly hard on women. Capitalism relies on women not just directly as workers who generate surplus value but also to provide… Continue Reading
A review of Alex Callinicos, Deciphering Capital: Marx’s Capital and its Destiny (Bookmarks, 2014), £14.99 Deciphering Capital by Alex Callinicos is the impressive balance sheet of some 30 years of research. Its starting point is a thesis completed at Oxford… Continue Reading