A review of Henry Heller, The Bourgeois Revolution in France, 1789-1815 (Berghahn Books, 2006), £36.50 Marx and Engels were born into a world shaped by the French Revolution—literally so in the case of Marx, who grew up in the Rhineland… Continue Reading
A review of Ali Rahnema (ed), Pioneers of the Islamic Revival (Zed books, 2006), £18.95 The great threat to civilisation is, according to George W Bush, ‘Islamofascism’. Many liberals who do not agree with Bush on much else and even… Continue Reading
A review of Matthew Beaumont, Utopia Ltd: Ideologies of Social Dreaming in England 1870-1900 (Brill, 2005), €58 This book is a remarkable contribution to a materialist history of utopias in the form of a study of English utopian novels of… Continue Reading
A review of Dave Renton, When We Touched the Sky: the Anti-Nazi League, 1977-1981 (New Clarion Press, 2006), £13.95 Over three years one organisation distributed 9 million leaflets, sold 750,000 badges, had 250 branches with 50,000 members, held a conference… Continue Reading
A review of Alvin O Thompson, Flight To Freedom: African Runaways and Maroons in the Americas (University of the West Indies Press, 2006), £27.95 Black resistance to slavery in the Americas was continuous. It began even before the enslaved were… Continue Reading
A review of Mike Wayne (ed), Understanding Film: Marxist Perspectives (Pluto, 2005), £16.99 At various times over the last century Marxists have been central in debates about culture in academia and beyond. Marxist perspectives were key to discussions about realism… Continue Reading
A review of Geoffrey Swain, Trotsky (Pearson Longman, 2006), £14.99 ‘Readers of this biography’, writes Geoffrey Swain, Professor in Russian and East European Studies at Glasgow University, ‘will not find their way to Trotskyism.’ Well, some might despite the author’s… Continue Reading
A review of Jill Liddington, Rebel Girls: Their Fight for the Vote (Virago Press, 2006), £14.99 The front cover of this book shows a picture of a furious 16 year old Dora Thewlis being arrested by two huge policemen after… Continue Reading
A review of Paul Blackledge, Reflections on the Marxist Theory of History (Manchester University Press, 2006), £14.99, and Matt Perry, Marxism and History (Palgrave, 2002), £13.99 Why does history matter? Two interconnected reasons present themselves for the serious study of… Continue Reading
A review of Michael Mann, Fascists (Cambridge University Press, 2004), £15.99, and Robert Paxton, The Anatomy of Fascism (Penguin, 2004), £8.99 Fascism has always been the hardest of political movements to understand. This is largely because of its complex relationship… Continue Reading