February 20, 2024
This latest work by Gerald Horne, born January 3, 1949 and still producing history monographs at a rate of knots, inspired me to wonder why he is not better known in Britain. ...
February 20, 2024
That capitalist medicine prioritises the generation of surplus value over the health of populations should be obvious to any critical student or scholar in the field, but where Waitzkin and colleagues depart from this basic assumption is in demonstrating the political economy of health in the current phase of neoliberalism where, for example, the processes of financialization have eclipsed material production….
February 20, 2024
The end of 2019 has seen a growing ‘global revolt’ in countries as varied as Hong Kong, Chile, Iraq, Ecuador, Catalonia and Lebanon. Seth Donnelly's new book is not about these revolts, but is an explanation of the dynamics that have driven the impoverishment of the Global South and how the ruling class seeks to justify things....
February 20, 2024
"The idea of biofuels was only given serious attention because it was a way for agribusiness to manipulate the market...."
February 20, 2024
Michael Heinrich has raised the standards of biographical writing with Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society. In content and scope, it is an unparalleled work of scholarship. It makes Marx relevant to our understanding of capitalist society, while cutting down the overgrown myths about him....
February 20, 2024
“No artist is able to overcome, through his own individual resources, the contradiction of enchained art within an enchained society. The most which we can hope to accomplish is the contradiction of such a society through emancipated art, and even in this attempt he might well be the victim of despair.”—Theodor Adorno
February 20, 2024
Neoliberals love to quote the World Bank’s rosy statistics about capitalism lifting hundreds of millions out of poverty. Unfortunately, those statistics are skewed and manipulated to the point of outright prevarication, as Seth Donnelly demonstrates in his book, The Lie of Global Prosperity. He quotes a breathless World Bank press release, ‘soon 90 percent of the world’s population will live on $1.90 a day or more’…
February 20, 2024
‘The only conceivable answer today to cascading planetary catastrophe is a broad-based ecological and social revolution, in which the population mobilizes to protect the future of humanity: a revolutionary war for the planet’...
February 20, 2024
Autobiographies are tricky things. The memoir can ground the writer in external events or situations and provide an objective rationale. The autobiography places oneself at the centre of the narrative and is an act of whopping self-regard that demands a weighty justification...
February 20, 2024
Shell promised wonderful things.... But when the citizens of County Mayo realized what Shell actually intended to do, they rose up. Shamrocks & Oil Slicks tells the story of County Mayo—the fishermen, farmers, teachers, business people—who, motivated by love for their environment, their community, and their country, fought one of the planet’s most powerful destroyers to a standstill.
