Rania Abouzeid represents that new generation of Arab, in this case Lebanese, journalists who in the years before the 2011 revolutions learned to view the region with a hard eye. They were unmoved by political rhetoric and unconvinced by fantastical conspiracy theories.
They learned to trust what they saw, the ordinary people they spoke to, and that sense that the truth is always concrete, even if it is not what you want to hear.
This book is written as a wake up call for the American ruling class. “If democracy cannot harness capitalism it runs the risk of subverting itself and giving way to neo-fascist regimes that will pretend to manage the market but more often ally themselves with corporations and substitute ultra-nationalist symbols and scapegoats for reforms.”
Written in Chile in 1971 by Ariel Dorfman and Armand Mattelart, How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic has had a troubled existence. Copies were burnt in Chile following 11 September 1973, when the Popular Unity government led by Salvador Allende was overthrown.
When translated only 1,500 copies of the 4,000 published were allowed into the US. It is only now that an American publisher has dared to reprint it in the country.
How did identity politics go from being part of a wider radical movement for change to becoming a tool for establishment politicians to undermine the left? If identity politics doesn’t move us towards genuine liberation, what sort of politics do we need? These are the central questions that Asad Haider asks in this thoughtful and thought-provoking book about race, class and the limitations of identity-based politics.
The bicentenary of Karl Marx’s birth has been commemorated in various ways this year and this colossal new biography by Swedish academic Sven-Eric Liedman is the latest addition to the Marx bibliography.
At over 600 pages, Liedman’s book aims “to present Marx’s work in all its breadth”, giving equal weight to both his life and his work. Everything from Marx’s university thesis and love letters to Jenny Von Westphalen to unpublished responses intended for Russian revolutionary Vera Zasulich are considered worthy of evaluation alongside The Communist Manifesto and Capital.
Tariq Mehmood, author of this novel for young adults, was one of the Bradford 12. Arrested in 1981 when Asian youth took to the streets to confront the threat of organised racist attacks on their community, they were charged with making petrol bombs. All 12 were acquitted in a landmark 1982 trial on the grounds of the right to self-defence. “Self-Defence is No Offence” was the slogan of the campaign to free them.
Akala has already revealed to the world that the Wu-Tang Clan’s lyrics can rival Shakespeare’s. He has also helped restore the weight and significance of African contributions to human history in his Oxford Union speech and his freestyle sessions on the BBC.
In his first book, Natives, Akala now takes on the British Empire and tears down the myths of greatness that surround it. One of these myths, he tells us in chapter five, is that William Wilberforce ended slavery.
It’s 1849 and Karl Marx is living in London, having fled Prussia and been expelled from France following the 1848 revolutions. Poverty stricken, he is trying to complete his manuscript Capital, A critique of Political Economy while cramped in two rooms with his wife Jenny, housekeeper Helene Demuth, three children plus a fourth on the way. Marx, active in the Communist League, defends his revolutionary ideas to workers against anarchist detractors and conspiracy theorists.
Mariana Mazzucato has emerged as a sharp critic of right wing efforts to “shrink the state” and reduce government spending on public services and welfare. She is a key voice for what is sometimes termed the “post-Keynesian” critique of neoliberalism.
The French Blanquist revolutionary, Emmanuel Barthelemy, was hanged for the Warren Street murders on 22 January 1855. He had been sentenced to death, even though the jury that found him guilty had recommended clemency. It was a public execution, watched by perhaps as many as 10,000 people, apparently a disappointing crowd for the time.
How had a dedicated and uncompromising French revolutionary, a veteran of the 1848 barricades, come to die on the scaffold in London?
