martin's blog

This is a partial draft of an introduction to a collection of discussions with Marxist economists on the global capitalist crisis which opened i

Not only the scheduled lecture theatre, but also an overflow theatre connected by video link, were crammed full when David Harvey spoke at the London School of Economics on 26 April about his latest book, The Enigma of Capital, a book which concludes with a call for "revolution" to "dispossess" the capitalist class.

Notes on Cliff's "A World to Win"
General:

Dick Bryan and Michael Rafferty, Capitalism with Derivatives, Palgrave Macmillan 2006

Since the 1980s, the trade in financial derivatives has become vastly greater than any other sort of trade.

Makoto Itoh and Costas Lapavitsas, Political Economy of Money and Finance, Macmillan 1999

"A People's History of Iraq", by Ilario Salucci. Haymarket Books 2005

This book is an odd patchwork, and misleadingly titled (it is not at all a general history of Iraq), but contains some useful stuff.

"Targeting Iran", by David Barsamian, with Noam Chomsky, Ervand Abrahamian, and Nahid Mozaffari. City Lights, 2007

This book is essentially an extended pamphlet against the Bush-Cheney administration's talk of a military attack on Iran - talk only temporarily shelved, and not clearly repudiated by Obama.

I hear from a BLF activist in Brisbane that construction sites across the country are likely to walk out on 12 September.

The strongest feature of this book is the detailed evidence it compiles of continued large variation in social conditions between the leading capitalist countries.

My younger daughter Molly is currently reading the Bible - reading it as a convinced atheist, for information and literary instruction - and I'm trying to keep up with her.

Robert Service; Orlando Figes; Jean-Jacques Marie; and Sam Farber on the Russian Revolution and the early Bolshevik regime. Richard Dawkins on God. R J B Boswell on Mussolini. Alfred Rosmer on the workers in World War 1. Jacques Texier on Marx, Engels, and democracy. Read on for links to the notes on each book...

About 150 of us marched through Brisbane city centre on 19 July, on the occasion of the Catholic Church's World Youth Day in Brisbane, to say "No To The Pope".

In July I attended the launch meeting in Brisbane of the Revolutionary Socialist Party, a group formed mainly by the former Leninist Party Faction of the DSP (Castroite) group.