Category: Monthly Review Press /

How capitalism was born in ‘robbery, violence and fraud’ (The War Against the Commons reviewed by ‘Socialist Worker’)

As Marx wrote, the common rights “were simply redefined as crimes: poaching, wood-theft, trespass”. The war against the commons removed the rights for people to hunt, forage, collect firewood and more. Game laws put restrictions on the poor, where you were criminalised even “if you took one hare when your family was starving”. The rich enclosed lands to hunt for sport, while the poor could be sentenced to death for hunting deer...

Contradictions of the contemporary accumulation regime (Socialist Register 2023 reviewed in ‘Counterfire’)

as Marx showed, while accumulation creates an ever greater mass of means of production, this in itself begins to throw up barriers to the profitable reproduction of such great quantities of capital. This contradiction results in the intensification of competition between capitals over labour, raw materials and markets, not the least consequence of which is imperialist tension and war...

Register: Kohei Saito to speak at Ecosocialism 2023

Japanese Marxist academic Kohei Saito will be a keynote speaker at the Ecosocialism 2023, being organised by Green Left — and supported by LINKS International Journal of Socialist Renewal — in Naarm/Melbourne over July 1–2.

Hierarchies leveled by solidarity around a shared hatred of fascism (International Brigade Memorial Trust on !Brigadistas!)

The simplicity of the story, as well as the excellent historical summary provided in Fraser Ottanelli’s foreword, also make it a useful, accessible introduction to the International Brigades. There is, as the afterword by Paul Buhle suggests, something inherently comic-book-worthy about the anti-fascists who volunteered for Spain. Theirs is a story of ordinary – not invincible – people pushed into performing heroic and terrifying feats of bravery for no gain but the greater good. It is to Ferguson and Timmons’ credit that they really do capture this truth in the book.