A review of Capitalism and the Sea: The Maritime Factor in the Making of the Modern World by Liam Campling and Alejandro Colás (Verso, 2021), £20 Capitalism and the Sea is an engaging new study of capitalism’s transformation of the… Continue Reading
Writing his 1974 book Labour and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century, US Marxist and political economist Harry Braverman noted that Karl Marx had demonstrated that processes of production are constantly transformed by the driving force… Continue Reading
The Miners’ Next Step and the movement it created throughout the coalfield gave me the inspiration I had been looking for… The conception of working-class power was far more realistic to me than the idea of merely fighting for seats… Continue Reading
Marxist political economy has a two-fold interest in the economics of defence.1 On the one hand, Marxism has proposed explanations for the extent and scope of defence spending in contemporary capitalism, drawing on theories of imperialism.2 On the other hand,… Continue Reading
Despite emergency appeals to social solidarity during the Covid-19 pandemic and the rediscovery of society by Prime Minister Boris Johnson, the idea of the individual still lies at the very heart of ruling class ideology.1 The ruling class need to… Continue Reading
In the 1840s, in the manuscripts later published as The German Ideology, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels set out the first comprehensive statement of the approach to understanding history and society that underlay their writing and political activity for the… Continue Reading
In 1922, the great radical journalist Louise Bryant observed that Lenin drew great strength from the women close to him.1 Her observation contrasts sharply with the exploitative Lenin who has come to dominate historical studies and biographies. The women in… Continue Reading
Radicalism is not a term that adheres easily to the 46th president of the United States, Joe Biden.1 Biden is a traditional centre-right Democrat, a long-standing proponent of welfare cuts, a former supporter of George Bush’s 2003 invasion of Iraq,… Continue Reading
A Scottish breakaway from Britain may be edging nearer.1 In the 2014 referendum on Scottish independence, the “Yes” vote fell short of victory by just 5 percent. Now, with a record voter turnout after a campaign centred on independence, elections… Continue Reading
In February 2021, a poll was published which triggered a dramatic chain of events in Northern Ireland. It showed that the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), the main voice of Ulster unionism, had slumped to 19 percent, behind Sinn Féin at… Continue Reading