In The origins of the Family, Private Property, and the State (1877), Friedrich Engels argued that the conditions that had given rise to monogamy and patriarchy — basically, the need to manage the inheritance of wealth — would soon pass away and take with them the prevailing forms of family and sexual life.
Survival Is the Question
22 January 2017, byCritical ecology publications are finding a growing audience in the United States, as is evident in the success of Naomi Klein’s book This Changes Everything. Within this field there is also an increasing interest in ecosocialist thought, of Marxist inspiration, of which the two authors reviewed here are a part.
Sometimes hesitant, sometimes treacherous
11 April 2016, byLabour leader Jeremy Corbyn finds himself in the tricky position of being the anti-austerity leader of a party which is rather ambivalent on the subject. To compound his problem he is the anti-imperialist leader of a party which has generally taken the view that British imperialism is, all things considered, not that bad.
Fossil Capital - a review
11 April 2016, byThis book is a well researched, and well-written account, from a Marxist perspective, of the industrial revolution in Britain, the origins of fossil fuel as the principal source of energy in the industrial age and the bitter struggles and social impact involved.
Playing the whore: the work of sex work
10 April 2016, byWritten by a journalist and former sex worker, this book turns on its head the commonplace approach to sex work. Rather than discrediting the workers and their clients, or calling on police to arrest clients leaving sex workers without any means of survival, this argues for the legalisation of sex work and its clients. She argues that sex work is work and sex workers are at work.
Women of Dada and Their Times
10 April 2016, byThis year is the centennial of the birth of Dada, an anti-bourgeois movement in literature and art with profound Left-wing associations, especially in relation to anti-colonialism. Cabaret Voltaire was a nightclub in Zurich, Switzerland where the movement was launched by the poets Emmy Hennings and other artists. This reflection by Penelope Rosemont is a contribution to both our Women’s History feature and our ongoing centennial retrospective on World War I. — The Editors Against the Current
The age of the Antropocene
10 April 2016, byThis book is a very good introduction to a very big subject that has only been on the radar for a decade and a half and has only become familiar to many of those involved in ecology and climate change in the last few years. It is not an easy read, particularly for those of us without scientific qualifications or familiarity with such terminology. It is, however, well worth the effort.
Suffragette - a film to see
13 March 2016, byWhat is important and positive about this film is that it shows that the British movement for women’s right to vote was a mass movement involving working-class women; it shows the level of repression the state used, learning from how it had treated Irish republicans and testing out methods it would later use against them; and it poses the debate on “direct action” through the attitudes of the women involved.
Climate Change: A Radical Primer
25 January 2016, byMost books on ecosocialism, while they may be of interest to those who already know something about socialism, especially those who already are socialists, are not particularly useful for those who want to be aware of both what climate change is and what capitalism is.
A Memoir of Life in Struggle
26 December 2015, byEuropean Trotskyists, in recent writings about the movement, tend to give short shrift to Trotskyism in North America. (An example is An Impatient Life by the late French leader Daniel Bensaid.)