The past has been A mint of blood and sorrow – That must not be True of tomorrow. 1 From appeasement to coordinated strike action Langston Hughes wrote the short poem “History” ,just as the US labour movement rose like… Continue Reading
For a while the high priests of capitalism congratulated themselves on the robustness of the economic recovery. Financial markets soared and there was euphoria about the robust expansion of the “emerging market” economies of the Global South. But in the… Continue Reading
The accidents of publishing schedules mean that two issues of both New Left Review and Historical Materialism have appeared since International Socialism 129 came out. They also mean that Historical Materialism 18.3 posthumously publishes an article by Chris Harman. Chris… Continue Reading
Issa G Shivji, Accumulation in an African Periphery: a Theoretical Framework (Mkuki na Nyoto Publishers), £15.95 Professor Shivji of the University of Dar es Salaam has been writing in the Marxist tradition since the 1970s when, for example, he wrote… Continue Reading
Madhusree Mukerjee, Churchill’s Secret War: the British Empire and the Ravaging of India during the Second World War (Basic Books, 2010), £18.99 The Bengal Famine of 1943-44 is one of the most terrible episodes of the Second World War. According… Continue Reading
Perry Anderson, The New Old World (Verso, 2009), £24.99 Given the crisis that has gripped Europe over the last year, exposing deep faultlines within the EU, there is no better time for a Marxist examination of the union to appear.… Continue Reading
John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark and Richard York, The Ecological Rift: Capitalism’s War on the Earth, (Monthly Review Press, 2010), £14.95 The failure of the world powers to reach a substantial agreement on carbon emissions at the Cancún summit in… Continue Reading
Ian Goodyer, Crisis Music: The Cultural Politics of Rock Against Racism (Manchester University Press, 2009), £60 Love Music Hate Racism (LMHR)—in tandem with Unite Against Fascism (UAF)—has played a key role in the movement to take on the British National… Continue Reading
There was a lovely piece on capitalism and disability from Roddy Slorach in the last issue of International Socialism, with a very well balanced account of the social model of disability which, as Roddy says, “turned received wisdom on its… Continue Reading
This article responds to criticisms of the broad anarchist tradition in International Socialism, an International Socialist Tendency (IST) journal.1 I will discuss topics such as the use of sources, defending revolutions and freedom, the Spanish anarchists, anarchism and democracy, the… Continue Reading