Foe many, Pride Day 2015 turned into a celebration of the June 26 announcement that the U.S. Supreme Court had recognized lesbian and gay marriage rights. This decision marks an important step towards the elimination of legal discrimination against lesbians and gays. The Supreme Court decision served as a gift to mark the 46th anniversary of the Stonewall Riot that launched the contemporary lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) movement.
Anthropocene Mass extinction
23 October 2015, byElizabeth Kolbert’s new book, The Sixth Extinction – an Unnatural History, is a useful, well written, and accessible work. It is, however, a distressing read for those concerned with the impact of the human population on the ecology of the planet. This is because it sets out in stark terms the crisis of global biodiversity that has developed since the industrial revolution in particular, and how it continues to get worse at an alarming rate today.
Between the Power and the Dream
18 September 2015, byPaul Le Blanc has achieved the implausible — he has written a concise and compelling book about a sprawling, gargantuan subject. Leon Trotsky (born Lev Davidovich Bronstein, 1879-1940) was a titan of 20th century politics, a revolutionary Marxist genius who theorized a strategy for the Russian Revolution of 1917 and functioned as its on-the-ground organizer in the capital city of Petrograd (now St. Petersburg).
Even Better the Second Time Around: Reflections on an Updated Socialist-Feminist Classic
12 August 2015, byOriginally published in 1979, Beyond the Fragments (BTF) was an intervention in the left by three British socialist-feminist activists who offered a thoroughgoing critique of democratic centralism and the vanguard party ideal as it was then practiced on the revolutionary left. BTF argued that left groups had failed to capture the creativity and enthusiasm of the tremendous numbers of people who had entered political activity in the 1960s and 70s. The authors recognized the necessity of an organization capable of gathering the energy of social movements and union struggles—the “fragments”—and focusing that energy on a revolutionary vision and anti-capitalist politics. However, they argued that the left would inevitably fail unless we were ready to revolutionize ourselves, taking on board insights from the women’s liberation movement.
Crisis and Strategy: On Daniel Bensaïd’s “The Notion of the Revolutionary Crisis in Lenin”
7 July 2015, byThe English translation of Daniel Bensaïd’s autobiography, Une lente impatience, is a welcome event in the Anglophone Marxist world. Not only does it contain a rich history of some of the most decisive moments for the French Left from the ’60s to the present, it also deepens our understanding of the heterodox sources that coexisted within Bensaïd’s unique form of Marxism.
The New Militant Minority
7 July 2015, byDespite significant changes in the economy, mass worker organizing is still possible. Since the publication of False Promises: The Shaping of American Working Class Consciousness in 1973, Stanley Aronowitz has been one of the most important left critics of the official US labor movement. His latest book, The Death and Life of American Labor, builds on and synthesizes much of this previous work, and is a provocative contribution to discussions of the road out of organized labor’s current crisis.
“A most intelligent and insightful presentation of Trotsky’s thought and historical action”
3 May 2015, byThis new intellectual and political biography of Lev Davidovitch doesn’t pretend to bring sensational new discoveries from the archives in Moscow, but it gives us a wonderful introduction to the ideas and struggles of the founder of the Red Army. Sympathetic but even-handed, it emphasizes the greatness of the revolutionary thinker and leader, without ignoring his shortcomings. The hostile biographers, from Robert Service to Peter Beilherz are criticized and rejected, but their arguments are considered with attention. In short, this is a most intelligent and insightful presentation of Trotsky’s thought and historical action.
Fifty Shades of Pulp
20 April 2015, byPaula Rabinowitz exquisite and startling new book about the “golden age” of U.S. pulp publishing, from the late 1930s to the early 1960s, is rightly confident in the originality of its enterprise. Gorgeously illustrated, American Pulp audaciously sets in motion at least a half-dozen crisscrossing storylines to create a new cartography of pulp performance.
Eslanda Robeson’s Journey
16 April 2015, byFor a woman often described by men as “too abrasive,” “formidable,” and “too ambitious,” Barbara Ransby’s incisive biography provides a more nuanced picture of Eslanda Robeson.
China’s Rise: Strength and Fragility By Au Loong Yu
23 March 2015, byThe meteoric rise of Chinese capitalism over the past two decades has elicited myriad responses by mainstream and left commentators. From neoconservatives decrying the rise of the “red dragon” to leftists seeking to find socialist diamonds in the rough of “the sweatshop of the world,” enormous confusion has been sparked by the seeming contradiction of the world’s largest self-proclaimed “communist” party leading its nation in capitalist dynamism.
