Ståle Holgersen is a Senior Lecturer in Human Geography at Stockholm University and a member of the ecosocialist Zetkin Collective. His new book makes essential contributions to socialist strategy in our crisis times and, more broadly, to theorizing crisis. He develops a fresh understanding of the ecological crisis as one expression of capitalist crisis tendencies and persuasively argues against the left shibboleth that capitalist crises are good for radicals. “Crises are the enemy,” writes Holgersen, in his characteristically clear, captivating voice. The book will advance thinking among socialists familiar with crisis debates and active in movement struggles. It will also be an excellent resource for people becoming politicized who are newer to radical ideas. I recommend the book both to your radical reading group, and to instructors teaching critical sociology classes at undergraduate and grad levels.
Autonomous for Abortion Care
8 March, byIn the face of escalating restrictions and criminalization of abortion, Naomi Braine’s Abortion Beyond the Law highlights the transformative power of mutual aid and solidarity in ensuring access to abortion, despite oppressive laws.
Ta-Nehisi Coates’ Trip to Palestine: Facing the Zionist Backlash
19 February, byTa-Nehisi Coates is a celebrated writer, journalist and public intellectual known for his works on racism and the Black freedom struggle. Coates has been praised for his books and essays, including establishment publications. That would change after his 2023 visit to Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territories of Palestine, his first trip to the region.
How the Left Organized the Filipino Diaspora
11 September 2024, byMore than 10% of the population of the Philippines works overseas, sending back remittances that are crucial to the country’s economy. A new book outlines how the Left won this demographic — only to soon lose it
Internationalism or Russification? A Study in the Soviet Nationalities Problem
26 July 2024, byThe Ukrainian publicist Ivan Dzyuba wrote Internationalism or Russification? A Study in the Soviet Nationalities Problem in 1965. Nikita Khrushchev had just been succeeded by Leonid Brezhnev. For several reasons, republishing the book today is a good idea. This 60-year-old book is surprisingly interesting and not only because in 2014 Putin launched a new attempt to Russify Ukraine through force of arms.
Resistance Work” of Women Workers
26 July 2024, byDaria Saburova has written a fascinating three-month wartime field study of the Ukrainian mining town of Krivih Rih (which happens to be the home town of president Zelensky). It focuses on the voluntary “resistance work” of working-class women in this town. (For now, “Resistance Work” of Women Workers. The Ukrainian working classes in the face of war is in French only.)
This is a “situated” investigation: it breaks with the “geo-political” approaches that dominate a section of the left (…)
Cause at Heart: Socialists & the Abolition of Antisemitism
26 July 2024, bySafety Through Solidarity: A Radical Guide to Fighting Antisemitism By Shane Burley and Ben Lorber. Brooklyn: Melville House, 2024. 375 pages. $19.99 paperback. Zionism: An Emotional State By Derek J. Penslar New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2023. 321 pages. $21.30 paperback. The Threshold of Dissent: A History of American Jewish Critics of Zionism By Marjorie N. Feld New York: New York University Press, 2024. 279 pages. $30 hardback. Tolerance is a Wasteland: Palestine and the Culture of Denial By Saree Makdisi Oakland, California: California University Press, 2022. 228 pages. $29.49 hardback. Colonizing Palestine: The Zionist Left and the Making of the Palestinian Nakba By Areej Sabbagh-Khoury Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2023. 348 pages. $75.00 hardback.
The Revolutionary Life and Times of Michel Pablo
30 March 2024, byThe Greek revolutionary Michel Pablo had a remarkable, globe-spanning career, from wartime resistance activity to his work supplying weapons and finance for the Algerian independence struggle. He’s finally gotten the biography he deserves.
Marx, Communism and Degrowth
21 March 2024, byMarx in the Anthropocene. Towards the Idea of Degrowth Communism. Cambridge University Press, 2022.
The life of an unorthodox Marxist
27 February 2024, byIncarcerated by a Greek dictator, narrowly escaping the Nazis in occupied France, and tried and convicted of aiding the Algerian revolution in the Netherlands in 1961: never a dull moment for the well-dressed revolutionary Mihalis Raptis. Hall Greenland has written a sympathetic but critical biography of the man better known as Michel Pablo, long-time secretary of the Fourth International.
