Gopal Balakrishnan, Antagonistics: Capitalism and Power in an Age of War (Verso, 2009) £14.99 Reading Antagonistics is a contradictory experience. Written by US academic Gopal Balakrishnan, currently on the editorial board of New Left Review, the book is on one… Continue Reading
Hamid Dabashi, Brown Skin, White Masks (Pluto Press, 2011), £14.99 Hamid Dabashi is a prolific writer and an engaged scholar. He has written extensively on Iran, Islam and cinema. Recently, many have come to know Dabashi through his relentless support… Continue Reading
Joseph Choonara spoke to Ian Birchall, author of Tony Cliff: A Marxist for his Time (Bookmarks, 2011), which looks at the life of the founder of the International Socialist tradition You have made your biography of Tony Cliff as objective… Continue Reading
Lucien van der Walt’s reply to my “Marxism and Anarchism” marks a welcome step forward beyond the all too familiar “non-debate” between Marxist and anarchist tendencies on the revolutionary left.1 Essentially, his argument is that while International Socialism and anarchism… Continue Reading
Leon Trotsky’s theory of permanent revolution formed in its author’s mind during Russia’s 1905 Revolution—between 9 January, when workers marched to the Winter Palace to petition the Tsar, and the mass strikes of October that gave birth to the Petrograd… Continue Reading
The trade union leaders, almost to a man, deplored it, the government viewed it with alarm, the Independent Labour Party regretted this untoward disregard for the universal panacea of the ballot box, the Social Democratic Federation asked, “Can anything be… Continue Reading
If someone in England stands up and establishes a party which positions itself between the racist BNP and the conservatives, it would also get 20 percent of the vote. I would very much like to establish parties in other countries.… Continue Reading
Multiculturalism is once more under attack. David Cameron’s speech, delivered in Germany on 5 February 2011 at a European governmental conference on security, repeated many familiar criticisms of multiculturalism. It was delivered on the same day as the viciously anti-Muslim… Continue Reading
This article is a preliminary and incomplete account of an unfinished revolution.1 It represents a first attempt to explore the implications of the great wave of strikes and social protests which preceded Mubarak’s fall from power and dominated the first… Continue Reading
After 13 years of exile the Conservative Party has returned to office, but weaker than ever and dependent on a coalition with the Liberals. Amid a global crisis, with a weak incumbent and against a widely disliked government, the Tories… Continue Reading