Reviews

Black days

Dan Katz reads “The Buenos Aires Quintet” by Manuel Vazquez Montalban and “Little Scarlet” by Walter Mosley I seem to have been reading crime and noir endlessly, book after book, for years. That’s what it feels like — and God have I read some crap. Villains from south London, investigators from Manchester, cops from Leeds. Even a half-wit from Nottingham (whose author — conspicuously unable to write well — adopts an old trick to give his character a certain melancholy and bleak depth: the man listens to jazz! Apparently liking jazz conveys all the above without the need to write words which...

After the new economy

Doug Henwood's book After the New Economy in review (New York, The New Press, 2003) Doug Henwood, is an independent leftwing economic commentator and critic of capitalism. He edits of the Left Business Observer web site which he founded in 1986. According to Znet he was "briefly a conservative and a member of the Party of the Right, which manoeuvred his election as Secretary of the Political Union, but he quickly came to his senses." In After the New Economy Henwood raises some interesting questions and offers a few insights about the "less-than-lustrous reality beneath the gloss of the 1990s"...

Engels' political testament

Paul Hampton reviews Marx and Engels Collected Works Volume 50 After nearly thirty years and fifty weighty tomes, the final volume of the English-language Marx and Engels Collected Works (MECW) was published earlier this year. Volume 50 contains the last letters written by Frederick Engels between October 1892 and his death in August 1895. According to the editors, of the 320 letters, 229 are published in English for the first time. Of the 89 already published, 38 of these were only available in an abridged form and are now published in full. There are also five letters written between 1842...

Left nationalism

Harry Glass reviews “The Politics of Empire: Globalisation in Crisis” , Alan Freeman and Boris Kagarlitsky eds Pluto 2004. Alan Freeman, one of the book’s editors, is a bag carrier for Mayor Livingstone, associated with Socialist Action and the recent ESF. The book reflects these politics. Beneath its urbane pessimism, it is a manifesto for second-camp “socialism” that abandons the central role of the working class. The editors define globalisation as a distinctive historical era between 1980 until 2003. That regime has now broken down, to be replaced by an age similar to classical imperialism...

The looting freedom

Pat Longman reviews “The freedom” by Christian Parenti, The New Press This book makes real for the reader the total chaos, brutality, madness, violence and corruption that is US-occupied Iraq. Parenti observes how the young US soldiers, “the grunts”, are completely bewildered by their role, and ignorant of Iraqi culture, language and politics. They have a seething hostility to their superiors. There are tensions between the multi-ethnic working-class ranks and the army of “freshly minted MBAs” and “self deluding zealots” holed up in the safer “Green Zone”. Parenti spent time with members of...

Christian Parenti: Workers, resistance and the occupation

Christian Parenti is a San Fransisco based activist and the author of The Freedom: Shadows and Hallucinations in Occupied Iraq . At the end of 2004 he spoke to Solidarity about the nature of the Iraqi resistance I believe we on the left should be calling for a withdrawal of US troops, regardless of whether or not the resistance meets the left’s criteria of a good movement. The resistance is very diverse. There are some very ugly elements. I have interviewed former Iraqi senior officers who were virulently anti-Shia and were involved in the resistance. I don’t support their hatred of the Shia...

Supermarket sweep

Liam Conway reviews Shopped by Joanna Blythman In the 1960s, about 80% of UK grocery and meat shopping was done at local grocery shops and butchers. Now about 80% of it is done at the four main supermarket chains of Tesco, Sainsbury, ASDA and Morrisons. These four aim to mop up the other 20%. And it’s not just grocery shopping they’re after... ASDA is the biggest clothes retailer, through its George label, in the country. Tesco, the biggest supermarket chain, controls 12.5% of all UK retailing. Its chief executive, the £3 million-a-year Terry Leahy, says “that leaves 87.5 per cent to go after”...

Al-Qaeda and those who will come after

Cathy Nugent reviews Al-Qaeda: the true story of Radical Islam by Jason Burke (Penguin, £7.99) Despite its tabloidesque sub-title, Burke’s book is an extremely lucid, balanced and useful account. It is especially useful because it brings together summaries of most of the events, myriad roots of, and religious and political background to the rise of Al-Qaeda and groups like it. It would have been easy to write the “true” account, which sets out to scotch the myths of the bourgeois press about the war on terror. But this book is much more than that. A few aspects of what is a hugely convoluted...

Debate and discussion: Galloway’s sexist tripe

I knew something was rotten at the core of Respect but, as a Nigerian, I had no idea how awful its leader, George Galloway, was until I read his book I’m Not the Only One which Solidarity reviewed a few months ago. I suppose I should have followed the recommendation of the review and not started the book, because I have never read such sexist and national-chauvinistic filth in all my time. Obviously I oppose the Tories, New Labour, and the capitalist press, but when Galloway targets his female opponents with such phrases as “Air-headed blow-dried telly-dollies”, “fragrant rose” or describes...

Balls on imperialism

Letter to Weekly Worker, from Paul Hampton, AWL John Ball’s uncritical summary of The Politics of Empire (Weekly Worker December 16) rehashes some “anti-imperialist” conventional wisdom but misses the flaws of the book – its distortion of reality and its terrible political conclusions. Alan Freeman, one of the book’s editors, is also a bag carrier for Mayor Livingstone, associated with Socialist Action and the recent ESF. The book reflects these politics. Beneath its urbane pessimism, it is nothing less than a manifesto for second-camp “socialism” that abandons the central role of the working...

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