In a recent and reasonably popular biography, Tristram Hunt charges Friedrich Engels with a series of class and gender contradictions: he condemned prostitution but enjoyed it himself; he looked askance at marriage and yet married Lizzy Burns on her deathbed;… Continue Reading
The tag “Beat Generation” mostly refers to a generation of authors and poets, although it is a very flexible epithet. You could easily include various contemporary painters, musicians and so on.1 They were a pioneering example of a shift in… Continue Reading
Marx says that revolutions are the locomotive of world history. But perhaps it is quite otherwise. Perhaps revolutions are an attempt by the passengers on this train—namely, the human race—to activate the emergency brake.1 In the two and a half… Continue Reading
The revolutions in the Middle East burst like thunder across a region long considered beyond change and are being undertaken by people long considered incapable of acting in their own interests. The idea that revolutions are the stuff of history… Continue Reading
“It is midnight in Cairo”, intoned the BBC reporter on the Ten O’ Clock News bulletin, “and still tens of thousands are in Tahrir Square. One chant echoes again and again: ‘Go, go, go’. But this time it is not… Continue Reading
Major wars and economic crises force the pace of change within and between capitalist states, giving rise to new alignments and shifts in the geopolitics of world capitalism.1 At the time of writing this article, turmoil in financial markets triggered… Continue Reading
Costas Lapavitsas, Professor of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, spoke to Stefan Bornost about the crisis in the eurozone For starters the crystal ball: Will we still pay with euro in 2015? Some… Continue Reading
The Occupy movement that began in New York in September 2011 and has spread with remarkable speed across the country represents a massive shift in the politics of the United States.1 A year ago the seemingly inexorable rise of the… Continue Reading
The mass strike of 30 November 2011 has opened a new chapter in British working class history. Around 2.5 million people joined what was the biggest strike in Britain since 1926.1 In every town and city large parts of the… Continue Reading
The world enters 2012 still in the grip of an economic crisis that, by increasingly common consent, is without precedent since the 1930s. Its basic contours haven’t changed since we delineated them in our last issue. On the one hand,… Continue Reading