The Marxes: labours of love
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“Most people would come away shocked at what a moderate [Marx] was … if they read what Marx actually wrote.”
Books
Reading the history of Israel-Palestine
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Discussion of Israel-Palestine is often hampered by historical illiteracy. A few trite phrases denouncing “Zionism” is the best many on the left can do.
The Gramsci enigma
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The legacy of the great Italian socialist Antonio Gramsci has been contested in hundreds of books and articles, particularly since the 1970s — so much so that these days university students are more likely to come across him than Karl Marx. But the Gramsci they encounter comes in a confusing variety of interpretations — a proto-Eurocommunist Gramsci, a liberal Gramsci, a revolutionary Gramsci and a radical democrat Gramsci.
Starry-eyed about Chinese capitalism
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Back in the 1930s, a certain breed of starry-eyed European leftist was eager to make the case that the USSR somehow represented “a new civilisation”.
Why Gramsci is important
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The AWL’s book, Antonio Gramsci: working-class revolutionary, has started some very fruitful discussions about what it means to be a Marxist in the present period.
Debating Gramsci's legacy
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Toby Abse reviews Martin Thomas (ed.) Antonio Gramsci: Working-Class Revolutionary: Essays and Interviews, Workers’ Liberty, 2012, pp. 76.
Nationalise pharmaceuticals!
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After the success of Bad Science, Ben Goldacre (doctor and debunker*) has now taken on the pharmaceuticals industry (“big pharma”) in his latest book Bad Pharma.
North Korea by the Acropolis
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John Grahl (Professor of European Integration at Middlesex University) reviews Crisis in the Eurozone by Costas Lapavitsas et al.
Anniversary of the Balfour declaration
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Today is the 95th anniversary of the Balfour declaration, the promise made by the British government to support a Jewish state in Palestine.
The outsider
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Hilary Mantel has become the first woman to win two Booker prizes — for her novels Wolf Hall and Bring up the Bodies (the first two parts of a trilogy about Henry VIII’s chief minister, Thomas Cromwell).