One point to make about Helena Sheehan’s political odyssey—from a conservative Catholic upbringing, through the radicalism of the US left in the 1960s and early 70s, on to Official Sinn Fein and the Communist Party of Ireland, and then into the Irish Labour Party—is that it demonstrates the importance of the theory of state capitalism for revolutionary politics…. | more…
Gerald Coles’ Miseducating for the Global Economy takes a critical look at what we are told by people who hardly ever enter a classroom but are called educational experts or educational policy makers, and politicians, the corporate media, and state officials… And then there are right-wing think tanks, CEOs, businesspeople, and rafts of capitalism’s little helpers…. | more…
Certainly, being a ‘jazz’ musician in the first decades of the 20th century was probably the most dangerous profession in the arts and, along with coal mining, one of the most dangerous jobs of all. Inhaling cigarette smoke in dank clubs, being plied with alcohol and other controlled substances by unscrupulous bosses of clubs and record labels alike, being attacked violently by racist ‘fans’ | more…
Michael Heinrich’s biography of Karl Marx captures what most biographies reduce merely to a background mention: contemporary conflicts, struggles and disputes that engaged Marx at the time when he was writing as well as his complex relationships with a varied range of friends and opponents…. | more…
Marx and Engels were deeply concerned about capitalism’s destruction of the natural world, including river and urban pollution, and the degradation of the soil that all life depends on. For them, the word ‘socialism’ included those concerns and the need to overcome them. But in the 20th Century, most socialist organisations treated such matters as secondary… | more…
This exceptionally clear and well-researched book is based on Saito’s dissertation, originally in German, and incorporates the results of his study of as-yet unpublished manuscripts and excerpt notebooks compiled during the last fifteen years of Marx’s life…. | more…
David L. Wilson writes frequently about immigration and the cruelties of detention for Truthout. Here, he explains why more arrests will help neither immigrant or nor U.S.-born workers: what working people really need is an end to the raids. | more…
“Capitalism turns art into product, which is put on the shelf with other products…As soon as capitalism enters the equation, there’s no caring about the artistic properties that jazz as a music makes available…”–Julian Priester, trombonist | more…
“We’re making headway on global poverty,” trills billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates. “Decline of Global Extreme Poverty Continues,” reports the World Bank. “How did the global poverty rate halve in 20 years?” inquires The Economist. Seth Donnelly answers: “It didn’t!”… | more…
Too many socialists, even among those who like to see themselves as revolutionary Marxists, have been sadly late in discovering and understanding the ecological analysis of capitalism’s irreparable metabolic rift … | more…
Sheehan’s autobiography is an important book, not just for documenting her times and the very interesting circles she moved in but in allowing the reader to explore in some depth a crucial question for us all: how do I know my current belief system is right? | more…
On August 5, former President Obama released a powerful statement in response to the latest gun massacres in Gilroy, El Paso, and Dayton that left scores dead and wounded—including children… | more…
Why write an autobiography? Who do I think I am? Why should anybody be more interested in my life than anyone else’s life? … I’m not a celebrity. I haven’t starred in Oscar-winning movies getting reviews of mesmerising performances…. ¶ I’ve lived a life that was not headline-making, but not totally obscure either, as an activist, academic and author…” | more…