Looming over the quarter is a chunky special issue of New Left Review (II/83). This is entirely devoted to two articles by Perry Anderson on “American Foreign Policy and Its Thinkers”. Anderson is renowned for his intelligence and erudition—and for… Continue Reading
Tim Pringle, Trade Unions in China: The Challenge of Labour Unrest (Routledge, 2013), £26.99 When workers at the Nanhai Honda car plant in China’s Pearl River Delta went on strike in 2010, they first had to fight off a gang… Continue Reading
Ethan Watters, Crazy Like Us: The Globalization of the American Psyche (Free Press, 2010), £9.99, and Gary Greenberg, Manufacturing Depression: The Secret History of a Modern Disease (Bloomsbury, 2010), £9.99 In May last year the American Psychiatric Association (APA) launched… Continue Reading
Erik S McDuffie, Sojourning for Freedom: Black Women, American Communism and the Making of Black Left Feminism (Duke University Press, 2011), £15.99 The radical and significant work of early Communist Party members is written out of mainstream history. Erik S… Continue Reading
Claudio Sopranzetti, Red Journeys (Silkworm Books, 2012), £11.99 In September 2006 the Thai military staged a coup d’etat and overthrew the democratically elected and popular government of Taksin Shinawat. By winning successive elections on the basis of modernising and pro-poor… Continue Reading
Alan Wieder, Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War Against Apartheid (Jacana Media, 2013), £20 Joe Slovo and Ruth First were South Africans who spent their lives (and in Ruth’s case gave her life) in the struggle against apartheid.… Continue Reading
Neil Faulkner, A Marxist History of the World: From Neanderthals to Neoliberals (Pluto Press, 2013), £18 This is the kind of book that the now thankfully lesser-spotted postmodernists warned you about—an unashamed grand narrative of humanity’s global history; an attempt… Continue Reading
Ed Rooksby’s response to the Socialist Workers Party’s criticisms of left reformism is exemplary both in its aim and its tone.1 I hope that my reply matches the standards he set. In essence, Ed suggests that the SWP’s conception of… Continue Reading
Seven years ago Britain’s main nationalist parties were making tangible gains. In 2007 the Scottish National Party (SNP), Sinn Fein and Plaid Cymru all took some degree of control in their respective devolved institutions. Sinn Fein entered into a new… Continue Reading
There have been heated debates on the left over the last few years on the role of the internet and social media through web based communication (WBC). In an article in International Socialism two years ago Jonny Jones reviewed these… Continue Reading