Slavery in the British Empire and its Legacy in the Modern World, by Stephen Cushion, situates the crime of enslavement within the business practices that place profit before people. Not only did slavery pollute British politics for over two hundred years, but it still contaminates its contemporary capitalist system. The exploitation of enslaved labor stimulated capitalist expansion during and after the bloody reign of the British Empire—at the cost of war, inter-imperialist rivalry, Indigenous genocide, and the murderous suppression of the rights of the enslaved. To this day many of the direst problems still facing the world—from horrific economic inequality to rampant environmental decline—have their
Millions of words have been written about the Cuban Revolution, which, to both its supporters and detractors, is almost universally understood as being won by a small band of guerillas. In this unique and stimulating book, Stephen Cushion turns the conventional wisdom on its head, and argues that the Cuban working class played a much more decisive role in the Revolution’s outcome than previously understood. Although the working class was well-organized in the 1950s, it is believed to have been too influenced by corrupt trade union leaders, the Partido Socialist Popular, and a tradition of making primarily economic demands to have offered much support to the guerillas. Cushion contends that the opposite is true, and that significant portions of the Cuban working class launched an underground movement in tandem with the guerillas operating in the mountains. | more…
