Workers' Liberty

Peter Doggett’s book recalls in detail (over 525 pages) the uneasy relationship between rock stars, political activists and the “counter–culture” between 1965 and 1972.

Review of two new books The Saladin Murders and the Bethlehem Murders by Matt Rees.

Review of A Thousand Splendid Suns, a novel by Khaled Hosseini

Dedicated to “the women of Afghanistan”, this book tells the tale of two women, Mariam and Laila, as they grow up in the thirty or so years of bloody wars and coups that have defined Afghanistan’s recent history.

Review of Who Runs Britain? How the Super Rich are Changing our Lives by Robert Peston (Hodder and Stoughton)

“No nation”, Frederick Engels once wrote, “will put up with production conducted by trusts [i.e. big, industry-dominating cartels], with so barefaced an exploitation of the community by a small band of dividend-mongers...

It’s over 60 years since Orwell wrote the essay Politics and the English Language —yet its warnings are as relevant now as they were then. Orwell argued that the decline of the English language as a useful tool reflected the political conditions of his time. But it was an inexorable process. He thought the abuse could be stopped. He believed journalists had a particular responsibility amongst writers to show their dissatisfaction.

“One is not born, but rather beomes a woman. No biological, psychological, or economic fate determines the figure that the female figure plays in society; it is civilisation as a whole that produces this creature, intermediate between male and eunuch, which is described as feminine.”

Irish — The Remarkable Saga of a Nation and a City tells the story of the Irish in Glasgow.

The Shock Doctrine: the rise of disaster capitalism is a recent book written by left-wing writer, journalist and broadcaster Naomi Klein (author of No Logo).

Review of Imaginary futures — from thinking machines to the global village by Richard Barbrook, Pluto Press, 2007.

This book is a history of the future, the history of an ideology, which, over the last 60 years, has sought to colonise our conceptions of the way the world is going.

A critical exmaination of Joel Kovel’s eco-socialism as set out in his book The Enemy of Nature. That book has recently been updated and republished to include more emphasis on the effects of global warming, which Kovel argues has “become the defining issue of the ecological crisis as a whole”.

Gorgeous George by David Morley

Given his colossal ego, z-list celebrity status and continuing admiration of Stalinist politics, it is hard to imagine a better candidate for biography than George Galloway. However, those who deduce from David Morley’s chosen title, “Gorgeous George”, that the book is irreverent or cutting will be greatly disappointed.

James P. Cannon and the Origins of the American Revolutionary Left, 1890-1928, by Bryan D. Palmer (2007) reviewed.

James P. Cannon (1890-1974) was a titanic figure in the history of Marxism, yet in spite of a long life devoted to socialism, he has until now eluded a decent biography. This book by Canadian Marxist Bryan Palmer has been long in gestation but has been worth the wait: at last Cannon’s life — or at least the first 38 years of it — has been told.

Review of US labor in trouble and transition, Kim Moody, London: Verso

Why is US labor in decline and how can the situation be turned around? Kim Moody, a prominent Marxist participant and commentator in the US labour movement over the past three decades, has produced a coherent answer to these questions, with implications for the revival of trade unionism everywhere.

Review of The Islamist, by Ed Husain

David Broder reviews Fawwaz Traboulsi’s A History of Modern Lebanon (Pluto Press)

DALE STREET reviews The Blair Years — Extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries

Steve Cohen continues a series about important socialist novels, looking at Ring Lardner Jr and the background to his novel the Ecstasy of Edwin Muir

Charlie Salmon reviews “An Ecosocialist Manifesto” by Joel Kovel and Michael Löwy

“The twenty-first century opens on a catastrophic note, with an unprecedented degree of ecological breakdown and a chaotic world order beset with terror and clusters of low-grade, disintegrative warfare… In our view, the crises of ecology and those of societal breakdown are profoundly interrelated and should be seen as different manifestations of the same structural forces.”

Sacha Ismail on the Socialist Workers Party pamphlet Iraq: why the troops must get out now by Chris Bambery

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Jeff Sparrow’s biography of Australian communist Guido Baracchi - "Communism, a love story", published by Melbourne University Press - is an allegory for twentieth century radicals and anti authoritarians.

Paul Hampton Reviews "Cuba: Socialism and Democracy" by Peter Taaffe
This book is a pseudo-debate between Peter Taaffe of the Socialist Party and CWI (formerly-Militant) in Britain and Doug Lorimer of the Australian Democratic Socialist Party (DSP)

Steve Cohen’s series on great socialist novels continues with “Living” by Henry Green

Living was written in 1929. Christopher Isherwood described it as “the best proletarian novel ever written”. Typically Green – honest, ironic, deprecating – is reported to have replied “the workers in my factory thought it rotten. It was my very good friend Christopher Isherwood used that phrase … and I don’t know that he ever worked in a factory.”

Paul Hampton reviews 2006, Marxism and Ecological Economics by Paul Burkett (Amsterdam: Brill)

Martin Thomas replies to Sheila Cohen

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Paul Hampton reviews Live working or die fighting: How the working class went global, by Paul Mason, (Harvill Secker £12.99)

Review of: Live working or die fighting: How the working class went global, Paul Mason, Harvill Secker £12.99

This book is an ambitious attempt to bring some of the great events from working class history to a new generation of youth. Paul Mason argues that as the working class in the “global south” has expanded, so new workers’ movements are emerging with strong similarities to those that arose during the first wave of globalisation, which began in the 1870s.

Review of Paul Burkett, 2006, Marxism and Ecological Economics, Amsterdam: Brill

The conventional wisdom among Greens is that, so far as environmental struggles go, the organised labour movement is only occasionally an ally and often an opponent. Most ecologists dismiss Marxism as having little to offer today’s environmental concerns such as climate change.

Steve Cohen reviews February House by Sherill Tippins (Pocket Books)