John Molyneux, Anarchism: A Marxist Criticism (Bookmarks, 2011), £4 John Molyneux’s book is timely for two reasons. Firstly, we are living in the time of mass revolt in Europe and revolutionary change in the Middle East. What activists do, be… Continue Reading
Marcel van der Linden, Workers of the World: Essays Towards a Global Labor History (Brill, 2010), €137 Marcel van der Linden embarks on an ambitious project with Workers of the World. The book collects essays that aim towards the creation… Continue Reading
Sean Sayers, Marx and Alienation: Essays on Hegelian Themes (Palgrave, 2011), £50 Marx’s theory of alienation has been somewhat out of fashion in the past few decades. This is, in part, because of the degree to which his theory is… Continue Reading
Gail Hershatter, The Gender of Memory: Rural Women and China’s Collective Past (University of California Press, 2011), £34.95 Everyone has a regret that they didn’t ask elderly relatives to tell their story before they died. Hershatter had the same realisation… Continue Reading
István Mészáros, Social Structure and Forms of Consciousness, volume 1: The Social Determination of Method (Monthly Review Press, 2010), £20, and Social Structure and Forms of Consciousness, volume 2: The Dialectic of Structure and History (Monthly Review Press, 2011), £20… Continue Reading
David Stubbs, Fear of Music: Why People Get Rothko But Don’t Get Stockhausen (Zero, 2010), £9.99_ The Tate Modern is one of the biggest cultural attractions in the UK, welcoming over five million visitors a year.1 Thousands flocked to see… Continue Reading
David Horspool, The English Rebel: One Thousand Years of Troublemaking, from the Normans to the Nineties (Penguin, 2010), £12.99 Edward Vallance, A Radical History of Britain (Abacus, 2010), £12.99 Both these books provide extensive evidence to counter the historically illiterate… Continue Reading
Robin Derricourt, Inventing Africa: History, Archaeology and Ideas (Pluto, 2011), £17.99 This book questions the assumptions and prejudices that appear as soon as Africa is considered. It opens with three geographical ways of defining Africa, then critiques assumptions made by… Continue Reading
Antony Polonsky, The Jews in Poland and Russia, Volume 1: 1350–1881 (The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2010), £39.50 It was Abram Leon who pioneered Marxist writing about the economic role of Jewish communities in medieval Europe. (He wrote the… Continue Reading
Jairus Banaji, Theory as History: Essays on Modes of Production and Exploitation (Brill, 2010), €99 The concept of “modes of production” plays an important but problematic role in Marxist historiography. For mainstream historians, the concept (wilfully presented in its most… Continue Reading