Reviews

Anyone who is feeling a little demoralised and frustrated by the lack of strikes in the UK should add this book to their Christmas list, and then make sure they take some time out to read it.

Everyone knows about the booming Chinese economy, and many people know about the horrendous working conditions of those who have migrated from the countryside to the cities. There are two responses to alienating working conditions. One is the individual response which at best is walking out and at worst committing suicide.

The execution of Charles I in January 1649 terrified the kings and queens of Europe. Civil wars weren’t uncommon, but never before had one become quite so revolutionary. Particularly worrying was the central involvement of ordinary people in the process and their active participation at key moments.

Adam Mayer has rendered a great service to the workers’ movement in Nigeria and internationally. He shows that rather than being a foreign imposition, Marxism, a political guide to action, was very much part and parcel of the resistance to both colonial exploitation and to the predatory bourgeois classes that inherited power after independence.

Why has there has been no real recovery in the world economy since the crash of 2007?

After what is now almost a decade, still there has been no return to pre-crash levels of economic growth and profitability. Unable to explain this grim reality, mainstream economists and many so-called “financial experts” flounder and struggle to explain the economic world we live in today.