As 2012 nears its end a pattern is emerging in the political and economic picture of Latin America. It is surprising and contradictory, a dramatic example of the gulf that can open up between rhetoric and reality. After a decade… Continue Reading
For 35 years Egypt was a laboratory for neoliberalism—a local state in which hegemonic world powers and financial institutions played out their strategies for the global economy. It was also a stage on which the United States and its allies… Continue Reading
The massacre of 34 striking miners at Marikana, near Rustenburg in North West Province, on 16 August 2012 marked a watershed in the history of South Africa, ruled by the African National Congress (ANC) since the end of apartheid in… Continue Reading
“The people who delivered [Obama] a second term…are those who were least likely to have benefited from his first”.1 Journalist Gary Younge’s comment on the re-election of Barack Obama in the United States sums up the contradiction at the heart… Continue Reading
The dominant fact about British politics is the slow decomposition of the Conservative-Liberal coalition government. The fundamental reason for this is the failure of chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne’s deficit-cutting strategy. In advance of his Autumn Statement on 5… Continue Reading
There are rich pickings in the two issues of Historical Materialism published since we last appeared. In the first (number 20.1) we have the Marxist classical scholar Richard Seaford exploring the parallels between the structure of ancient Greek philosophy and… Continue Reading
Sam Farber, Cuba Since the Revolution of 1959: A Critical Assessment (Haymarket, 2011), $24 Discussions around Cuba have an unfortunate tendency to generate more heat than light, particularly on the left. Sam Farber’s new book, in the same spirit as… Continue Reading
Paul Blackledge, Marxism and Ethics: Freedom, Desire and Revolution (SUNY, 2012), $80 Ethics has been a problematic area for Marxism ever since its beginnings. Marx himself wrote very little on the topic, and what he did write seems paradoxical. On… Continue Reading
David Renton, Struck Out:Why Employment Tribunals Fail Workers and What Can be Done (Pluto, 2012), £19.99 In this new book developed from his earlier article in International Socialism,1 socialist barrister David Renton examines the disparity between the ambitions of workers… Continue Reading
Chris Wickham, The Inheritance of Rome: A History of Europe from 400 to 1000 (Penguin, 2009), £14.99; Peter Sarris, Empires of Faith: The Fall of Rome to the Rise of Islam, 500–700 (Oxford University Press, 2011), £35 When Chris Wickham’s… Continue Reading