As activists mobilise for UN Anti Racism Day, Brian Richardson assesses the state of racism in Britain and across Europe, and asks what anti-racists' priorities should be in the coming period.
Capitalism continually forces workers to fight — whether to defend conditions, challenge racism or take on the whole system. But how do revolutionaries ensure that they mobilise the widest...
Author Hsiao-Hung Pai set out to understand where bigots learn their behaviour. She talks to Socialist Review about the results of her research, her new book, Angry White People.
In a follow-up to his piece on the radical theatre of the 1930s, David Gilchrist examines how the events of 1968 kick-started a new theatre of the people. The 7:84 company took popular forms of...
The Contagious Diseases Acts were symbolic of bourgeois society's desire to control working class women's bodies, writes Diana Swingler. Let's celebrate the campaign that got them repealed
A century ago Constance Markievicz was preparing for the Irish Easter Rising. Mary Smith outlines the remarkable life of an upper class woman who was both a paramilitary leader and the first woman...
The weakness of the global economic recovery vindicates Marxists' analysis of the 2008 crisis.
By early 1916 a flagging British war machine had to resort to conscription to round up enough men for the trenches of Europe. Chris Fuller looks at the machinations of the politicians and the...
Egypt’s 25 January revolution in 2011 was a moment in which history flipped upside down. It was a period of momentous events that are far from over. The counter-revolution of Abdel Fattah el-Sisi...
Doug Henwood sets out to challenge the idea that Hillary Clinton represents anything to do with progress or real change. “The case for Hillary boils down to this: she has experience, she’s a woman...
For a decade or more there has been a sustained assault on the need for a political party in order to achieve social change. Many of the great movements of 2011 such as Occupy and 15M in the...
A Rebel’s Guide to James Connolly is a much needed effort to claim the ideas and struggles of James Connolly as a fighter for the working class — hell bent on sparking the wave of revolution that...
Venezuela’s state capitalist economy and its political dynamics have been shaped in the past 16 years by the indigenous population. In Venezuela Reframed the author argues that constitutional...
This wide-ranging and accessible bestseller is the first popular science book to win the prestigious Samuel Johnson Prize. It addresses a question which remains hugely controversial. What is...
Don’t Mention the Children is only the second anthology of poems Michael Rosen has written for adults.
In his introduction he explains that the poems arise out of three different kinds of...
“Revolutionary Syrians often describe their first protest as an ecstatic event, a kind of rebirth,” explain authors Robin Yassin-Kassab and Leila Al-Shami in Burning Country. “At first I was...
Hugo Slim describes himself as being in the tradition of liberal European Christian philosophy with little knowledge of other traditions of human thought. He nevertheless believes that the human...
Subtitled “A Cultural History”, this enjoyable read sets out to understand the origin and the changing cultural meanings of the concept of the zombie in Western popular culture.
Luckhurst...
Hieronymus Bosch was known as “the devil maker”. In honour of the 500th anniversary of his death the exhibition Hieronymus Bosch: Visions of Genius is taking place at his birthplace in the...
Thirteen miles off the coast of Peru lie the Chincha Islands, three small islands inhabited by large numbers of seabirds. These birds produce what became an incredibly valuable and sought after...
The Coen Brothers’ latest movie tells the story of a day in the life of Eddie Mannix, the real life MGM studio executive and “fixer”. He covered up scandals and dealt with the press, as the movie...
This is a beautiful and distinctive looking stop-motion animation written by Charlie Kaufman, who also wrote the films Being John Malkovich and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind. It captures...
The aspirational residents of a new upmarket residential tower block engage in a war for power and resources. Society collapses in a mess of booze, violence and largely degrading sex.
High-...
At a time when historical programming consists almost entirely of royalist sycophancy and “celebrities” ambling around ruins, it is instructive to recall the early works of radical film-maker...
RnB superstar Beyoncé surprised everyone last month with a politically-charged performance during the halftime show at the NFL Super Bowl. Flanked by dancers dressed in a highly sexualised 21st...
This powerful and disturbing film from Chile is set in a retirement home “for priests who can no longer serve”. Although it is naturalistically shot, the setting — a down-at-heel fishing village...