It is now a full decade since the financial turmoil that heralded the beginning of the “long depression”.1 On a global scale, the recession that developed in the wake of the collapse of the Wall Street bank Lehman Brothers in… Continue Reading
In the Communist Manifesto, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels sketched what has come to be known as the gravedigger thesis, widely believed to propose that the objective conditions of capitalism would inevitably produce a revolutionary working class which would overthrow… Continue Reading
Marx’s return Karl Marx’s reputation has changed significantly in the 35 years since the centenary of his death in 1983. I wrote The Revolutionary Ideas of Karl Marx to mark that anniversary against the background of the huge explosion of… Continue Reading
On 20 April 1968 Enoch Powell gave a talk in a small upstairs room to 85 Tories in Birmingham’s Midland Hotel. The words of this Conservative shadow minister and MP for nearby Wolverhampton South West were not directed towards these… Continue Reading
The peace process between the Turkish state and the Kurdish movement reached what everyone thought was its peak in January 2015. It was to die a painful death within two months. At the time the peace negotiations had been going… Continue Reading
For much of Donald Trump’s presidency, a lot of the smart money has been on it being, despite the histrionics in the West Wing, a more erratic version of the standard pro-business right-wing Republican administration à la Ronald Reagan or… Continue Reading
The autumn issue of the MENA Solidarity Campaign’s quarterly magazine, Middle East Solidarity features reports from Anne Alexander and Tom Kay on the workers in Mahalla al-Kubra in Egypt who took strike action in August last year, and from Gianni… Continue Reading
A review of Harold Rosen, Writings on Life, Language and Learning, 1958-2008 (edited and with an introduction by John Richmond) (UCL Institute of Education Press, 2017), £24.99. To begin on a personal note, I met Harold Rosen for the first… Continue Reading
A review of Krishna Dronamraju, Popularizing Science: The Life and Work of JBS Haldane (Oxford University Press, 2017), £22.99. On 22 April 2017 thousands of people around the world joined demonstrations in defence of science. Many of them were, and… Continue Reading
A review of Gregor Gall, Bob Crow: Socialist, Leader, Fighter: A Political Biography (Manchester University Press, 2017), £20. In a period of retreat and demoralisation for the trade union movement, Bob Crow and the RMT union he led have been… Continue Reading