Something magical happened when Howard Brick and Christopher Phelps joined forces to craft this enthralling account of the U.S. Left from its upsurge after World War II to the near present. The two activist scholars, noted for distinguished books of their own, orchestrate stunning erudition, rigorous argumentation, lucid language, and a cohesive narrative to address a serious and taxing topic.
Bankocracy by Eric Toussaint
24 December 2015, byAs I was preparing this review a couple of items in the news caught my eye. One was that British Chancellor George Osborne in Brussels was arguing for a reduction in the regulatory burden on the City of London which he claimed was damaging the ability of financial institutions to promote economic growth.The other was that despite wrecking one of Britain’s largest banks HBOS back in 2008 and despite a new report exposing their role, none of the three former top executives would even be fined because a six-year statute of limitations ran out last year. HBOS, itself the result of a disastrous merger of the Bank of Scotland with the Halifax, was taken over by Lloyds which shortly after also had to be rescued with a government bail-out of £20 billion.
China: Workers Rising?
24 December 2015, byWhen I read a book about rebellious factory workers in China, what I want to know is: Where are all the wildcat strikes heading? Will workers be able to build real (at this point illegal) unions? Will they be able to keep any kind of organization going? Will they ever be able to make connections across factories and coordinate their actions?
Horizons for a New Left
10 December 2015, byBooks taking a hard look at the current state of “the left” are rarely upbeat, let alone inspiring. Alan Sears’ The Next New Left successfully achieves this without dreaminess or utopian speculation.
Anti-Capitalism & Queer Liberation
2 December 2015, byFoe 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.