“Ashley Bohrer’s Marxism and Intersectionality is indispensable reading for socialists trying to understand how class, race and gender mesh. ” Marxism and Intersectionality: Race, Gender, Class and Sexuality under Contemporary Capitalism by Ashley J. Bohrer, Bielefeld (Germany): Transcript, 2019, distributed by Columbia University Press, $45.00
Understanding the Holocaust
4 April 2020, byUnderstanding the Holocaust is a direct challenge to Marxism. Marxism is a body of theoretical and experiential understanding, which tries to explain the rationality behind history, but the fusion of racism, slave labour, oppression, persecution, irrationalites and barbarism, of the Holocaust and Auschwitz is hard to explain even with Marxism’s insights.
Prophets Unarmed. Chinese Trotskyists in Revolution, War, Jail, and the Return from Limbo
31 March 2020, byReview of Gregor Benton (ed.) Prophets Unarmed. Chinese Trotskyists in Revolution, War, Jail, and the Return from Limbo Leiden e.a., Brill, 2015. XVII, 1269 pp. (Historical Materialism Book Series. 81). – ISBN 978-90-04-26976-7.
Looking at Social Reproduction
9 March 2020, byMaterialist and Marxist feminist theory is currently undergoing something of a renaissance. Wide-ranging conceptual and empirical work on social reproduction is a major part of that theoretical innovation. So, too, are the recent international women’s strikes highlighting key issues such as gender violence and attacks on reproductive autonomy, as well as the range of unpaid social reproductive labor often performed by those gendered as women.
More than a cultist
7 March 2020, byLivio Maitan, Memoirs of a critical communist. Towards a History of the Fourth International, Preface by Daniel Bensaid, translated by Gregor Benton, edited with and introduction by Penelope Duggan, Resistance Books, IIRE, Merlin Press, 2019, 455 pages
“Winter in the Bookshop”
16 February 2020, byThe Bookshop was the functional centre of the International Group (IG) the precursor to the IMG. The IG was led by some older comrades such as Pat Jordan, Ken Coates, Alex Acheson and Ken Tarbuck. Grouped around them was a younger set recruited from the Labour Party and the Young Socialists. There was also a sprinkling of black comrades such as Dick Skyers and George Powe. Ken attracted several students from the University including Brian Simister who became dedicated to improving the Marxist education of IG members. These students soon drifted into the orbit of the Bookshop. Sylvia has not written a history: it is better than that. She recollects the activities, the feelings and the hopes of young people coming into politics. The story is delightfully irreverent and funny.
The Power of Gulf Capitalism
23 January 2020, byADAM HANIEH HAS produced a compelling and well-documented account of the modern evolution of capitalism in the Persian Gulf. Skillfully utilizing the Marxist categories of class, state, and mode of production he situates the role of Gulf capitalists, organized around the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), within the larger global capitalist economy. His concluding chapter ties the economic trends he details to an analysis of the political crises of the past decade.
Syria’s Unfinished Revolution
23 January 2020, byPERHAPS MORE THAN any other recent question, the Syrian Revolution confused and divided the international left. Many dismissed the revolt as a “color revolution” orchestrated by the United States, and some became willing spokespeople for Bashar al-Assad’s regime, recycling its talking points and conspiracy theories.
Heroism of reason
19 January 2020, byLivio Maitan, Memoirs of a critical communist. Towards a History of the Fourth International, Preface by Daniel Bensaïd, translated by Gregor Benton, edited with and introduction by Penelope Duggan, Resistance Books, IIRE, Merlin Press, 2019, 455 pages
A paradigm of modern barbarism
13 November 2019, byIn its series Notebooks for Study and Research the Amsterdam International Institute for Research and Education has published, or rather re-published, an interesting collection of essays by Enzo Traverso. Re-published because Critique of modern barbarism is an enlarged version of Traverso’s Understanding the Nazi Genocide. Six more recent essays cover subjects related to the original theme, aiming to bring the understanding further and extend these findings to more general issues. Nevertheless the bulk of the book is formed by the six original texts. So a spoiler alert is warranted: those who know the original book may feel disappointed.
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