Books
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Relay – info@socialistproject.ca.
Latest Reviews
January 14, 2012 – The Ideal in Human Activity
The Ideal in Human Activity by E. V. Ilyenkov is a substantial tome consisting of two complete books and three articles, which offers for the first time in the form of a single volume the majority of this renowned Soviet philosopher's work currently available in English translation. This publication constitutes an important intervention in the problem of consciousness, which has figured prominently in the canon of Western social and political thought from Plato to the present.
— review by Alex Levant.
January 4, 2012 – Roots of U.S. Capitalism
This is a thoughtful, learned, stimulating, challenging and altogether valuable volume. It reprints a series of reflections by the Marxist sociologist Charles Post on various aspects of the rise and evolution of capitalism in North America between the colonial era and the late 19th century.
— review by Bruce Levine.
November 4, 2011 – The Red Flag: Communism and the Making of the Modern World
The author, David Priestland, sets out to solve a conundrum which first worried him during his initial visit to Russia in 1984 and only deepened when he spent the academic year of 1987-1988 as an exchange student at Moscow State University; a question which only became more pertinent, with the collapse of 'really existing socialism' shortly thereafter: what was the true face of communism?
— review by Matthew Morgan.
October 8, 2011 – Review: The Politics of Combined and Uneven Development: The Theory of Permanent Revolution
Of the many issues raised within orthodox Marxism since Marx's own death, few have had the longevity, or produced as many arguments and internal divisions, as Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. Michael Lowy's short book, an abridged version of an original text from 1981, gives an admirably concise, if partisan, overview of the emergence of the theory.
— review by Alexander Marshall.
September 21, 2011 – The Canadian Parliamentary Crisis of 2008-09
Is it time to abolish Canada's ties to the monarchy? Can we move beyond 'responsible government' and parliamentary democracy? These are questions raised, perhaps indirectly, by these two books. Following the October 2008 federal election, Canada experienced a remarkable series of political events.
— review by Murray Cooke.
Book reviews archive: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12
► Canadian Politics ◄
Review: Working Without Commitments
Free-Fall Employment - the definition of a full-time job is changing radically in Canada. For those aged 40 and under, breaking into a profession today usually requires shouldering significant debt in education or skills development, then undergoing a grim cycle of unpaid or low-paid internships, leading to a cycle of underpaid or insecure contract positions.
— review by Rachel Pulfer.
Review: Reasoning Otherwise
Reasoning Otherwise is part of something that aims to be both sweeping and grand: a massive, multi-volume history of Canada's socialist left that seeks to stitch together new understandings and new visions of the historical landscape and turn the assumptions of previous efforts on their ears.
— review by Scott Neigh.
Review: Black Bloc, White Riot
Reading AK Thompson's book Black Bloc, White Riot kept bringing to mind one particular memory from the Summit of the Americas protests in Quebec City a decade ago. On April 20, the first day of the demonstrations, we marched in our thousands towards the fence, behind which 34 heads of state had gathered to hammer out a hemispheric trade deal.
— review by Dave Mitchell.
Review: Seeing Reds
We need more books like this -- histories of social change in Canadian contexts written for lay audiences and with an eye to contemporary relevance. Smooth, lively writing and a good eye for the right level of detail and the right kind of illustrative digression make the book a pleasant, easy read.
— review by Scott Neigh.
Review: Rebels, Reds, Radicals
I ordered this book expecting a work of history, but I believe it is more appropriately labelled historiography -- it is a book about the study of history, not so much about the facts of the past themselves. Given my current work, it is a very useful read, and it has been very thought provoking.
— review by Scott Neigh.
At Home and Abroad, Canada Is Imperialist
Todd Gordon's new book provides a compelling case that Canada is an imperialist country in its own right. His factual presentation of the matter will reinforce what is already a growing perception among Canadians.
— review by Bill Burgess.
Review: Anti-Semitism Real and Imagined
Michael Keefer has compiled a timely and effective handbook for all those resisting attacks on free speech regarding the Israeli government's crimes against Palestine. Anti-Semitism Real and Imagined, contains contributions from 11 committed campaigners in the fight for freedom of expression, as well as position papers from seven well-respected Canadian social organizations.
— review by Suzanne Weiss.
Review: Alliances: Re/Envisioning Indigenous-non-Indigenous Relationships
Lynne Davis's anthology, Alliances, brings together Indigenous and non-Indigenous activists, scholars and community leaders to reflect on relationship-building/alliance-making in struggle and how such work impacts both the personal and political.
— review by Zainab Amadahy.
Review: Tortured People
I believe that the point of reading is the transformation of the reader. There are other kinds of experience that are more powerfully transformative, certainly, but few that give as useful a window into what is not here, what is not now. This means that there are ways you can be changed by a good book that nothing else could offer; however, it also means that reading in ways to resist or undermine that potential for liberatory movement in self in that "self + text" moment is really, really easy.
— review by Scott Neigh.
Review: Prison of Grass
This book is an anti-colonial classic. Written by radical Métis scholar and Red Power movement veteran Howard Adams, its politics and writing place it in the tradition of the great national liberation texts of the mid-20th century authored by the likes of Fanon and Memmi. Like other authors in that tradition, Adams roots his analysis in accounts of brutally painful personal experiences of living as a colonized individual in the context of colonial social relations.
— review by Scott Neigh.
Canada's 1960s
Canada in the 1960s was deeply affected by the civil rights and anti-war struggles in the United States. It was likewise caught up in the anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist movements that swept the world.
— review by Henry Heller.
Review of 'Real' Nurses and 'Others': Racism in Nursing
Racism is intensifying for nurses of colour in the decreasingly universal Canadian health care system, subjected as it has been to creeping privatization and corporatization since the late 1970s. Even with official recognition by the Ontario Human Rights Commission that systemic racism comes in complex and subtle forms.
— review by Sheila Wilmot.
► Economy ◄
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Roots of U.S. Capitalism
This is a thoughtful, learned, stimulating, challenging and altogether valuable volume. It reprints a series of reflections by the Marxist sociologist Charles Post on various aspects of the rise and evolution of capitalism in North America between the colonial era and the late 19th century.
— review by Bruce Levine.
Review: The Crisis This Time
The various papers in the present volume of the Socialist Register are united in one respect -- they show how capitalist crises are not simply problems of positive economics and neutral economic management. The neutrality is exposed once you try to unbundle the ceteris paribus and the various assumptions that are made in modelling the economy. The realities of class, state, power and conflict provide the socio-historical matrix that configures the economy and its problems.
— review by Pratyush Chandra.
Review: 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism
The popular neo-Keynesian Cambridge economist Ha-Joon Chang is a clever man who might do well to think and/or care more about the ecological catastrophe that the modern disaster called capitalism has all too characteristically cooked up for humanity - and a few other things about that system along the way. Don't get me wrong. Chang's recent bestselling book deserves some success.
— review by Paul Street.
Review: Global Slump
In late 2007, over twenty years of global economic growth came to a screeching halt. A financial panic began in the sub-prime mortgage market, leading to the bankruptcy (Goldman Sachs) and near bankruptcy (AIG, GM) of major financial and industrial cor-porations.
— review by Charlie Post.
Review: The Trouble with Billionaires
How much is a billion dollars? For most of us, that number is more than we can imagine, so Linda McQuaig and Neil Brooks have made it simple. If you were given a dollar every second, it would take almost 32 YEARS to become a billionaire.
— review by Peter G. Prontos.
Review: Another World is Possible
I read books written by world's greatest authors, met some of the left revolutionaries, and from my day to day experiences I concluded that capitalism is bad, globalization is bad and that we need to change these for a better world. However, I was confused about the path to reach there. David McNally's Another World is Possible: Globalization and Anti-Capitalism has shown the way forward.
— review by Kanchan Sarker.
NLR Debate on Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics
This debate points to the need for further investigation of the rural-urban relationship and the nature of China's shift to capitalism. What is undeniable is that as China has joined with global capitalism inequality has risen...
— review by Lang Yan.
Arguing Socialism
The economic crisis beginning in 2007 punctured the dominance of neoliberal ideology, without completely overturning it. To accomplish that, and force socialism back on the agenda, is the urgent political job of the left, as the establishment's relative disarray will not last for the long term.
— review by Dominic Alexander.
Review of Crack Capitalism
I'm pretty sure I've observed before that it makes me wary when I like a book of political theory -- not just agree with it or find it interesting, but like it. "Like" can mean a bunch of different things, I suppose, but in this case it means that there is significant resonance between major elements of this book's approach and my own political sensibility.
— review by Scott Neigh.
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Review of: The Great Financial Crisis by John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff
EVERYONE NOW recognizes that we are in the most severe crisis to hit the capitalist system in generations. The chief of the
International Monetary Fund, Dominique Strauss-Kahn, recently declared that we are already in a depression. The so-called
"maestro" of markets, former Federal Reserve Chair Alan Greenspan, warns that we have been hit by a "once-in-a-century credit tsunami."
— review by Ashley Smith.
► Environment ◄
Review of Green Gone Wrong
FROM WALMART'S recent campaign to call our attention to their eco-friendly practices to the good folks trying to sell us 'clean coal,' corporations the world over have begun marketing themselves as crusaders for environmental sustainability.
— review by John McDonald.
The Global Fight for Climate Justice
The latest dire warning about global warning was buried in the bottom corner of page A9 of Canada's 'newspaper of record.' The front cover of that day's paper featured a 30cm, full colour head-to-toe photograph of the First Lady with the accompanying headline, "Michelle Obama's style secret sets its sights on Canada." Just another day in the myopic world of this country's mainstream media, which, like the rest of the globe's political and economic elite, fiddles while the world burns.
— review by Derrick O'Keefe.
Review of: Marxism and Ecological Economics: Toward a Red and Green Political Economy
This paperback edition of Paul Burkett's valiant but flawed attempt (originally published in 2005) to persuade academics of the value of Marx and Marxism to the newly integrated discipline of ecological economics deserves a broad measure of attention, applause and support.
Rooting itself in Marx's critique of the physiocrats, the book includes a systematic dissection and demolition of the many flavours and varieties of attempts by the high and low priests of capitalist economics to incorporate ecological thinking into their benighted paradigm, as one by one the proponents of Natural Capital try to put a price on Nature.
— review by Gerry Gold and Steven Harris.
Review of: Coming to Terms with Nature - Socialist Register 2007
IN THEIR PREFACE to the 43rd volume of the Socialist Register, Coming to Terms with Nature, editors Leo Panitch and Colin Leys admit that this edition “has been one of the most challenging to put together.”
While socialist activism has a deep and heroic tradition of theorizing and organizing against many of the deadly contradictions of capitalism – from the daily exploitation of the working class to imperialist wars – the present generation is faced with a global environmental crisis “so severe as to potentially threaten the continuation of anything that might be considered tolerable human life.”
— review by John McGough.
- Review of: Coming to Terms with Nature - Socialist Register 2007
The Socialist Register founded in 1964 by Ralph Miliband and John Saville has acquired a unique place
in progressive literature in the English language by bringing out an annual issue focused on one theme. The 2007 issue
deals with the challenge of ecology to socialist theory and practice. The current
global discourse around the climate change summit at Copenhagen highlights
the contemporary importance of the theme chosen by the editors of the 2007 issue.
— review by Pritam Singh.
Review of: Water, Inc. by Varda Burstyn
Water, Inc. is the first novel by Canadian writer and activist Varda Burstyn (Women Against Censorship; The Rites
of Men). The initial premise of this work of fiction is an awful truth: the world is really running out of fresh water.
Recently, the UN Millennium Task Force on Water and Sanitation warned that 60 percent of the world’s ecological
services are stressed beyond the level of replenishment. Of these resources, water fares worst of all.
— review by Matt Fodor and Samantha Fodor (Relay #7). (Preview on Google books.)
- Review of: Hydro: The Decline and Fall of Ontario’s Electric Empire by Keith Stewart and Jamie Swift
Informative, critical and daring, Hydro: The Decline and Fall of Ontario’s Electric Empire offers readers an in depth
analysis of one of this provinces most contentious policy issues. The authors, Jamie Swift and Keith Stewart limit
themselves to no small task, “…the need to produce a volume that, we hope, will inform a democratic debate and help strive
after an electricity that will not poison the planet”. — review by Sheldon Macgillivray (Relay #5).
► Feminism ◄
Book Review: Capitalism, for and Against: A Feminist Debate
Authors Ann Cudd and Nancy Holmstrom stage a fully developed debate about the state of capitalism today, and whether or not it is good for women. The book begins with Cudd's defense of capitalism as an economic system that is both practically and ideally good for women, increasing life expectancy, lowering infant mortality and birth rates, and increasing the quality of life for everyone by maximizing efficiencies in production, innovation, and, most importantly, freedom.
— review by Kate Drabinski.
The revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg
The writer and activist Rosa Luxemburg spent years in prison because of her opposition to the first world war, and was an outspoken critic of Marxism. Sheila Rowbotham finds the woman behind the mystique.
— review by Sheila Rowbotham.
Review: States of Race
When faced with the awful, violent, oppressive social world that produces each and every one of us, the basic question is, "What do I do?" That gets asked and answered in different ways depending on your particular experience of social relations -- the variant that sounds like "What issues should I get involved with?" is usually a product of privilege, whereas "How can I best engage in this fight that I've been forced into since birth?" is more a consequence of oppression.
— review by Scott Neigh.
New book: Women's Liberation and Socialist Revolution
Women's Liberation and Socialist Revolution is the title of the latest book from Socialist resistance, co-published with the IIRE's Notebooks for Study and Research. Its subtitle, Documents of the Fourth International, places it in our 'documents and debates' series, which aim to collect documents and articles around a particular question. Edited and introduced by Penelope Duggan.
Free-Market Feminism
Feminism Seduced, written for a general audience, presents a powerful, historically grounded critique of liberal feminism. Drawing on three decades of writing by socialist/Marxist feminists and women-of-color feminists, Eisenstein weaves a compelling account of how the central ideas of 'hegemonic feminism' have legitimized the corporate capitalist assault on the working class.
— review by Johanna Brenner.
Economic thought from a feminist
This book has a slightly racy title (at least for an economics book) and my initial reaction was that the 'lust' focus was a bit forced. Greed and gender are associated easily with economic ideas, but lust? Nor was I assuaged by the assertion in the introduction that 'lust is to feminist theory what greed is to economic theory -- a marker of contested moral boundaries,' an assertion that seemed too convenient and probably not true.
— review by Marjorie Griffin Cohen.
Review of Feminism Seduced
The 20th century is often called the American century because of the US's advance during that time to become the single greatest power in the world - economically, industrially and militarily. The century's story covers its rise and the beginning of its long slow and brutal decline. However, the 20th century could also be called the women's century.
— review by Lindsey German.
Two book reviews on the Philosophy of Simone de Beauvoir
One of the many problems of writing about Beauvoir, for both author and reviewer, is the question of the boundaries and the meanings of academic disciplines. Everyone who has read anything by (or about) Beauvoir knows of the infamous ranking of their respective abilities in their final examinations: Sartre in first place, Beauvoir second.
— review by Mary Evans.
► International ◄
The Workers' Festival: A History of Labour Day in Canada
For most Canadians today, Labour Day is the last gasp of summer fun: the final long weekend before returning to the everyday routine of work or school. But over its century-long history, there was much more to the September holiday than just having a day off.
Review: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
After racing through Manning Marable's nearly 500-page biography of Malcolm X, recently released, I realized that I hadn't learned anything significant, more than that which I already knew, except that Malcolm was not very happy in his marriage and that he may have cheated on Betty a few times near the end of his life, just as she may have cheated on him.
— review by Noaman Ali.
Review: Lenin by Lars T. Lih
The Critical lives series format has allowed Lars T. Lih to produce a remarkable book. It is an outline sketch of Lenin's life and ideas, which also proposes what is in some respects a new interpretation of both and of their relationship. The book is both highly readable -- one could almost say a 'gripping story' -- and highly thought-provoking.
— review by Mike Macnair.
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Manning Marable and the Malcolm X biography controversy
On the day of Manning Marable's death, April 1, 2011, I received an additional piece of disturbing information. A friend of mine informed me of a discussion he had just had with a Black activist-writer who, in hearing about Marable's passing, went into what could only be described as a rant against Marable.
— review by Bill Fletcher, Jr..
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Review: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
The rich repertoire of songs and music that African-Americans have produced over the last century has to a large extent been recorded. Its value is recognized all over the world. The same cannot be said for black oratory, which shared the same roots and reflected similar emotions: slavery, segregation and imprisonment produced resistance, anger, bitterness and, often, resignation.
— review by Tariq Ali.
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Review: The Crisis This Time
The various papers in the present volume of the Socialist Register are united in one respect -- they show how capitalist crises are not simply problems of positive economics and neutral economic management. The neutrality is exposed once you try to unbundle the ceteris paribus and the various assumptions that are made in modelling the economy. The realities of class, state, power and conflict provide the socio-historical matrix that configures the economy and its problems.
— review by Pratyush Chandra.
Review: Eurocentrism
Due to the influence of Edward Said's Orientalism, and the subsequent rise of postcolonial theory, Marxist analyses of culture were often dismissed a priori as eurocentric and totalizing. Karl Marx, the narrative went, was a consummate European chauvinist who cared little for the struggles of non-European peoples; the Marxist tradition was further flawed because it proposed a homogeneous European discourse.
— review by Joshua Moufawad-Paul.
Review: Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development
Michael Lebowitz's important book portrays a vision of the socialist alternative to capitalism through a synthesis of some of Marx's most important philosophical arguments concerning human development, revolutionary practice and radical democracy.
— review by John Gregson.
Hypocrisy-seeking missile
"Our South Africa moment has finally arrived," said Palestinian author-activist Omar Barghouti in a series of speeches delivered in 2010. With the publication of BDS: The Global Struggle for Palestinian Rights, the first book dedicated to the game-changing boycott, divestment and sanctions movement -- known by the initials BDS -- has itself finally arrived.
— review by Abraham Greenhouse.
Reading Gramsci Anew
What makes Peter D. Thomas's book an important one is, first and foremost, the fact that it takes Gramsci's thought beyond Italy and makes it accessible to a global audience, and in particular to an Anglophone one. Thomas's work explicitly aims to open the debate on Gramsci within Anglo-Saxon Marxism, which is today a key site for the elaboration of Marxist philosophy.
— review by Toni Negri.
Review: Malcolm X: A Life of Reinvention by Manning Marable
Black power hero Malcolm X held bizarre and contradictory beliefs -- yet his popular legacy is greater than Martin Luther King's. Here at last is the meticulous portrait he deserves.
— review by Andrew Anthony.
Review: The Communist Hypothesis
Nietzsche's adage that philosophy is disguised biography is not a neat fit with Badiou, only because there is very little of disguise in Badiou's philosophy. The core of his philosophical project (and of his political activism) has been an attempt to understand what it means to be faithful to the great revolutionary events of the previous two centuries.
— review by David Morgan.
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The revolutionary Rosa Luxemburg
The writer and activist Rosa Luxemburg spent years in prison because of her opposition to the first world war, and was an outspoken critic of Marxism. Sheila Rowbotham finds the woman behind the mystique.
— review by Sheila Rowbotham.
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Review: Global Slump
In late 2007, over twenty years of global economic growth came to a screeching halt. A financial panic began in the sub-prime mortgage market, leading to the bankruptcy (Goldman Sachs) and near bankruptcy (AIG, GM) of major financial and industrial cor-porations.
— review by Charlie Post.
Review: Barack Obama and Twenty-First Century Politics
Horace Campbell has produced a rigorous, thought-provoking look at the political moment in which we find ourselves. Barack Obama and Twenty-first Century Politics: A Revolutionary Moment in the USA presents challenges to a reviewer because it is three books in one. This is not to be taken literally.
— review by Bill Fletcher, Jr..
A Commune in Sichuan? Reflections on Endicott's Red Earth
Stephen Endicott's Red Earth: Revolution in a Sichuan Village is one of the few enjoyable village studies that provide carefully documented, detailed accounts of the system of agrarian 'people's communes' that dramatically transformed rural and urban China from the late 1950s to the early 1980s.
— review by Husunzi.
Review: Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The revolutions of 1848 in Europe are a forgotten episode in radical history, particularly in the United States. While revolutionary turning points such as the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the storming of the Bastille in 1789, the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, or even the Paris Commune of 1871 retain some place in popular consciousness, the same cannot be said of the events of 1848-50.
— review by James Illingworth.
Review: Mao Zedong and China in the Twentieth-Century World
The emergence of China as the world's economic powerhouse has shifted the centre of the global market eastwards. The People's Republic of China's growth rates are the envy of elites everywhere, its commodities circulating even in the tiniest Andean street markets, its leaders courted by governments strong and weak.
— review by Tariq Ali.
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New book: Women's Liberation and Socialist Revolution
Women's Liberation and Socialist Revolution is the title of the latest book from Socialist resistance, co-published with the IIRE's Notebooks for Study and Research. Its subtitle, Documents of the Fourth International, places it in our 'documents and debates' series, which aim to collect documents and articles around a particular question. Edited and introduced by Penelope Duggan.
Excerpt: Capitalism and Class Consciousness: the ideas of Georg Lukacs
Lukacs became a revolutionary and a Marxist during the greatest wave of working class struggle in history, unleashed by the Russian revolution at the end of the First World War. Already a well known intellectual in Hungary, months after joining the newly-formed Hungarian Communist party in December 1918 he found himself a leader in the events which led to the brief Hungarian soviet republic in 1919.
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Review: Another World is Possible
I read books written by world's greatest authors, met some of the left revolutionaries, and from my day to day experiences I concluded that capitalism is bad, globalization is bad and that we need to change these for a better world. However, I was confused about the path to reach there. David McNally's Another World is Possible: Globalization and Anti-Capitalism has shown the way forward.
— review by Kanchan Sarker.
Book Review: The Hidden History of the Korean War
This controversial book by I. F. Stone was originally published in 1952 during the Korean War (1950-1953) and republished in 1970 during the Vietnam War (1960-1975). It raised questions about the origin of the Korean War, made a case that the United States government manipulated the United Nations, and gave evidence that the U.S. military and South Korean oligarchy dragged out the war by sabotaging the peace talks.
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Putting humans back into socialism
The onset of the global economic crisis in mid 2008, symbolised by the collapse of some of Wall Street's most iconic companies, led to soaring sales of Karl Marx's seminal work Das Kapital, as many sought explanations to the tumultuous events unfolding. Michael Lebowitz's latest book, The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development says it is essential also to investigate the important insights Marx made regarding the alternative.
— review by Federico Fuentes.
Review: Marx at the Margins
Rudyard Kipling's 1899 poem 'The White Man's Burden' staunchly articulated the Victorian self-image of the civilizing mission of Empire. The nation's sons would go to far-flung shores to "serve your captives' need." Not that the "sullen peoples" on the receiving end might appreciate it, given that were "half-devil and half-child."
— review by Barry Healy.
Review: The Political Economy of Israel's Occupation: Repression Beyond Exploitation
Shir Hever's analysis attempts to answer important questions such as why the Palestinians in the Occupied Territories live in poverty, and whether Israel benefits from their condition.
— review by Alex Snowdon.
From Victoria to Vladivostok: Canada's Siberian Expedition, 1917-19
This ground-breaking book brings to life a forgotten chapter in the history of Canada and Russia - the journey of 4,200 Canadian soldiers from Victoria to Vladivostok in 1918 to help defeat Bolshevism.
Arab Responses to Nazism
Since 9/11, the term "the Arab street" has been used in the United States to caricature opinions across the Arab world, mashing together the thoughts of tens of millions as if they have one mind with a common worldview. This funhouse mirror image of a complex tableau of opinions among a huge swath of humanity has been further distorted in the bigoted clamoring against the proposed "Ground Zero mosque" in lower Manhattan.
— review by Sherry Wolf.
Review of Economic Democracy
There is a certain genre of book with which anyone who has spent time in community trade union offices will be familiar: the slender, pamphlet-style manifesto that presents basic socialist ideas in clean, accessible prose.
— review by Konrad Read.
Obama: the man who couldn't
A couple of years ago, the Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek made a modest proposal to Americans regarding the improvement of their political life: "Let everybody in the world except U.S. citizens be allowed to vote and elect the American government. I think it would have been much better for you, even, because we all outside the United States would project our desires into how you should be."
— review by Scott McLemee.
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NLR Debate on Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics
This debate points to the need for further investigation of the rural-urban relationship and the nature of China's shift to capitalism. What is undeniable is that as China has joined with global capitalism inequality has risen...
— review by Lang Yan.
Socialism's vision of the future
The Idea of Communism by Tariq Ali is the first book in a five-part series edited by Ali that will examine "What Was Communism?" The aim of the series is to investigate why communism failed in the 20th century: What went wrong, was its collapse inevitable, what can we learn from it, and what parts of the experience should we rehabilitate?
— review by Shaun Harkin.
Review: The Socialist Alternative
It is probably fair to say that revolutionary socialism does not come naturally to everyone. Some of the young and curious pick up a grimy, twenty-page manifesto in a second-hand bookstore and never look back, but for myself it was a long, grueling process full of twists and hesitations.
— review by Konrad Read.
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The Global Fight for Climate Justice
The latest dire warning about global warning was buried in the bottom corner of page A9 of Canada's 'newspaper of record.' The front cover of that day's paper featured a 30cm, full colour head-to-toe photograph of the First Lady with the accompanying headline, "Michelle Obama's style secret sets its sights on Canada." Just another day in the myopic world of this country's mainstream media, which, like the rest of the globe's political and economic elite, fiddles while the world burns.
— review by Derrick O'Keefe.
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Arguing Socialism
The economic crisis beginning in 2007 punctured the dominance of neoliberal ideology, without completely overturning it. To accomplish that, and force socialism back on the agenda, is the urgent political job of the left, as the establishment's relative disarray will not last for the long term.
— review by Dominic Alexander.
Casting Out: The Eviction of Muslims from Western Law and Politics
Even though the discourse of security in the 'war on terror' has come to naturalize otherwise unacceptable violations, for a segment of people, of even the most basic civil rights in law, policy and political practice, the speed and political ease with which liberal democracies have been able to introduce, accept and live with these violations should trouble anyone who would want to prevent future holocausts.
— review by Sedef Arat-Koç.
How Bruce Springsteen Helped Make Being a Working Class Rebel Cool Again
An excerpt from author Cowie's new book, Stayin' Alive reveals the tussle between right and left to claim Springsteen as one of their own.
Bramall on The Battle for China's Past
I just ran across Chris Bramall's 2008 review of The Battle for China's Past by Mobo Gao, called 'Reversing the Verdict on Maoism?' Mobo is a friend whose work I deeply respect, and - like Bramall - I consider Battle a much-needed intervention into the discussions about what happened during the Mao era and after.
— review by Husunzi.
Detailing The Unspoken Truths Of A Deadly Relationship
I could hardly contain my excitement after reading Sasha Polakow-Suransky's The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa. So, I got on the phone and called a long-time friend who had been active in the solidarity movements against white colonial/minority rule in Africa in the 1970s and 1980s.
— review by Bill Fletcher Jr..
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Review of: The Black Jacobins by C.L.R. James
This year marks the seventieth anniversary of C.L.R. James's The Black Jacobins:
Touissaint L'Ouverture and the San Domingo Revolution. This classic account of the
Haitian Revolution of 1791-1803 is one of the greatest books in the twentieth century. Its title
refers to the Jacobins, the most radical element within the French Revolution who propagated,
says the Oxford English Dictionary, "extreme democracy and absolute equality" – principles
fully embraced by the slaves who made history's first and only successful slave revolution in the
French colony of Saint-Domingue, which afterwards they renamed Haiti.
— review by Manuel Yang.
Review of: Rebuilding The Left by Marta Harnecker
"THE left's strategic task is to unite the growing but scattered social opposition into one
vast column, one torrent, and to transform it into a force able to deal a decisive blow to
the ruling system." How often have you heard words to that effect? It's pretty much all we
talk about in the Star office. But is it possible?
Marta Harnecker, who has closely observed democratic revolutions from Chile to Venezuela,
shows the way in this DIY-guide to movement-building.
— review by Charley Allan (Morning Star website).
(Preview on Google books.)
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Review of: Chasing a Mirage: The Tragic lllusion of an Islamic State by Tarek Fatah
Tarek personally asked me to review his book, Chasing a Mirage: the tragic illusion of an
Islamic State (CM). It has been reviewed very favorably indeed in the Canadian media,
especially the Asper-family owned newspapers. The right-wing National Post published long
excerpts from the book in serial form, and frequently runs op-eds by Tarek. His basic
thesis is that religion and politics should be separated in Islam. Although it has major
flaws, it also has many attributes of interest and will be thought-provoking on the
relationship between religion and politics, and between Islam and the West.
— review by Justin Podur.
Review of: Damming the Flood: Haiti, Aristide, and the Politics of Containment by Peter Hallward
Peter Hallward meticulously explains how, on February 29 of 2004, the U.S. managed to
"topple one of the most popular governments in Latin America but it managed to topple it
in a manner that wasn't widely criticized or even recognized as a coup at all." Imperial powers
do not reinvent the wheel when it comes to undermining democracy in poor countries.
Hallward identifies valuable lessons for people who wish to limit the damage that powerful
countries inflict on the weak. — review by Joe Emersberger (MR Zine).
Review of: Latin America at the Crossroads by Roberto Regalado
This compact book by Roberto Regalado, a veteran member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Cuba,
strongly reaffirms the need for revolution in Latin America and beyond.
Regalado, a section chief in the Cuban CP’s Department of International Relations, is anything but dogmatic.
He is attentive to recent new trends in Latin American economics and politics and respectful toward the diverse
currents of socialist opinion. He stresses the importance of the new features of Latin American social struggles:
the role of peasants, the landless, indigenous peoples, women, environmentalists, and
others. — review by John Riddell (Socialist Voice).
Review of: An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President by Randall Robinson
Randall Robinson has written the story of a great tragedy of recent times – the violent overthrow of Haiti’s
elected president and government on February 29, 2004. An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping
of a President gives a blow by blow account of the events surrounding
that tragedy. — review by Roger Annis (Socialist Voice).
Review of: Development After Globalization: Theory and Practice for the Embattled South in a New Imperial Age by John S. Saul
One thing that distinguishes good scholars from exceptional ones is an ability to raise penetrating questions that not only force
a reader to take serious pause and reflect on the rationale for complex global problems and inequities, but more importantly to raise
questions that directly challenge readers to confront their own personal biases
and assumptions. — review by Christopher Gore (Relay #17).
Review of: The Next Liberation Struggle: Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy in Sourthern Africa by John Saul
While we were subjected to the lackluster debate of the federal election of 2006, I remembered the exhilaration
of when Nelson Mandela first came to Canada in the early 1990s after his release from Robben Island and he gave
a speech at Queen’s Park in Toronto. The lawn was covered with people and the mood was full of celebration for
what had been accomplished in the fight against apartheid and what was possible in the future when the African
National Congress (ANC) would come to power in South Africa. — review by David Kidd (Relay #10).
Review of: Locked in Place: State-Building and Late Industrialization in India by Vivek Chibber
Given the dominance of neoliberalism today, it is an assumption in most quarters that state intervention
in the economies of the post-war era was an utter fiasco. This argument is taken as even more self-evident in the
case of the countries of the capitalist periphery or “Third World”.
— review by Raghu Krishnan (Relay #6).
(Preview on Google books.)
- Review of: Incoherent Empire by Michael Mann and The New Imperialism by David Harvey
‘Empire’ is once again on the lips of its supporters and remains a sour taste in the mouth of its opponents. Vaulted from
academic obscurity to the front page of London and New York’s book reviews, historian Niall Ferguson has made an industry
out of empire, as the Empire makes industry out of the world. — review by Simon J. Black (Relay #11).
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Review of: The Unspoken Alliance: Israel's Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa by Sasha Polakow-Suransky
I could hardly contain my excitement after reading Sasha Polakow-Suransky’s The Unspoken Alliance: Israel’s Secret Relationship with Apartheid South Africa. So, I got on the phone and called a long-time friend who had been active in the solidarity movements against white colonial/minority rule in Africa in the 1970s and 1980s. He responded: “Well, didn't we already know about the connection between apartheid South Africa and Israel?”
What is striking about The Unspoken Alliance is not that it contains the revelation of a complete secret. My friend was correct. Bits and pieces of this story had been public for years, at least in some circles. What makes this book different is both the level of detail and factual disclosure combined with its blunt recognition of a strategic unity between Israel and apartheid South Africa based on a common colonial/settler framework.
— review by Bill Fletcher Jr.
► Labour ◄
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Review of: Solidarity Divided by Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Fernando Gapasin
Provoked by the continuing crisis of organized labor after the departure of the Change to Win coalition of
unions from the AFL-CIO in 2005, Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Fernando Gapasin have produced a new book,
Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor and A New Path toward Social Justice.
Hopefully the text will inspire debate, both within the labor movement and
the Left. Solidarity Divided compliments Kim Moody's US Labor in Trouble and Transition, also
produced after the split. — review by Steven Sherman.
Interview with Bill Fletcher, Jr. and Fernando Gapasin
(mp3 audio)
-
Dec 17: Solidarity Divided by Bill Fletcher Jr. and Fernando Gapasin
The Crisis in Organized Labor and a New Path toward Social Justice
A NEW DIRECTION FOR LABOR BY TWO OF ITS LEADING ACTIVIST INTELLECTUALS
Candid, incisive, and accessible, Solidarity Divided is a critical
examination of labor’s current crisis and a plan for a bold new way
forward into the twenty-first century. Bill Fletcher and Fernando
Gapasin offer a remarkable mix of vivid history and probing analysis.
They chart changes in U.S. manufacturing, examine the onslaught
of globalization, consider the influence of the environment on labor,
and provide the first broad analysis of the fallout from the 2000 and
2004 elections on the U.S. labor movement.
-
The Workers' Festival: A History of Labour Day in Canada
For most Canadians today, Labour Day is the last gasp of summer fun: the final long weekend before returning to the everyday routine of work or school. But over its century-long history, there was much more to the September holiday than just having a day off.
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Review: Working Without Commitments
Free-Fall Employment - the definition of a full-time job is changing radically in Canada. For those aged 40 and under, breaking into a profession today usually requires shouldering significant debt in education or skills development, then undergoing a grim cycle of unpaid or low-paid internships, leading to a cycle of underpaid or insecure contract positions.
— review by Rachel Pulfer.
Review: Cultures of Darkness
Bryan Palmer is a Canadian Marxist historian who has done much, in the tradition of E.P. Thompson, to recover and analyze the cultures of resistance that working people developed in the course of practicing class struggle from below. His work is shaped by a particular sympathy for the kind of class struggle that transgresses the existing social order.
— review by Leo Panitch.
Review of If You're in My Way, I'm Walking
Jean Chrétien explained his throttling of protester Bill Clennett on 'Flag Day' in 1996 with the simple statement: 'I had to go, so if you're in my way, I'm walking.' Not only is the incident one politician's knee-jerk reaction when faced with popular resistance to neoliberal policies, it is an apt description of the steamrolling central logic of neoliberalism.
— review by Govind Rao.
► Marxist Theory ◄
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The Ideal in Human Activity
The Ideal in Human Activity by E. V. Ilyenkov is a substantial tome consisting of two complete books and three articles, which offers for the first time in the form of a single volume the majority of this renowned Soviet philosopher's work currently available in English translation. This publication constitutes an important intervention in the problem of consciousness, which has figured prominently in the canon of Western social and political thought from Plato to the present.
— review by Alex Levant.
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The Red Flag: Communism and the Making of the Modern World
The author, David Priestland, sets out to solve a conundrum which first worried him during his initial visit to Russia in 1984 and only deepened when he spent the academic year of 1987-1988 as an exchange student at Moscow State University; a question which only became more pertinent, with the collapse of 'really existing socialism' shortly thereafter: what was the true face of communism?
— review by Matthew Morgan.
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Review: The Politics of Combined and Uneven Development: The Theory of Permanent Revolution
Of the many issues raised within orthodox Marxism since Marx's own death, few have had the longevity, or produced as many arguments and internal divisions, as Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution. Michael Lowy's short book, an abridged version of an original text from 1981, gives an admirably concise, if partisan, overview of the emergence of the theory.
— review by Alexander Marshall.
Review: How to Change the World
Everyone wants to change the world, but no one wants to read Marx! Eric Hobsbawm's new book How to Change the World attempts to help remedy this problem through a curious, specialized, at times awkward, and yet insightful examination of the history of Marx and Marxism from 1840 to the present.
— review by Sean Carleton.
Review: Envisioning Real Utopias
For twenty years now Erik Olin Wright and his colleagues have been involved in the 'Real Utopias' project whose work Verso published in a series of six books. Envisioning Real Utopias is the seventh in the series and attempts to develop a distinct theory of socialist transition, which makes it unique on the international level.
— review by Michael Brie.
Review: Marx's Capital: An Introductory Reader
There is a tremendous renewal of interest in Marxism throughout the globe today, especially for the explanation of the economic crisis that has hit capitalism recently. It was quite natural that the only well-organised segment of India's left intellectuals committed to theoretical endeavours in political economy sensed the need to popularise Marx's Capital.
— review by Pratyush Chandra.
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Review: Lenin by Lars T. Lih
The Critical lives series format has allowed Lars T. Lih to produce a remarkable book. It is an outline sketch of Lenin's life and ideas, which also proposes what is in some respects a new interpretation of both and of their relationship. The book is both highly readable -- one could almost say a 'gripping story' -- and highly thought-provoking.
— review by Mike Macnair.
Review: Reason, Truth, and Reality
Textbooks that look at seventeenth and eighteenth century philosophy tend to leave the impression that Immanuel Kant's response to David Hume's skepticism was unrivaled in its time. This perhaps explains the historical neglect of Thomas Brown's response to his
fellow Scot. Brown, a figure in the Common Sense School of Philosophy, advanced an ad hominem argument using Hume's practical confidence in inductive reasoning to ascribe to Hume a belief that such reasoning is able to generate truths.
— review by Glen Melanson.
Review: Gramsci, Language, and Translation
Antonio Gramsci (1891-1937) was a prominent Italian Marxist philosopher and politician, co-founder of the Italian Communist Party, an influential thinker and critic of contemporary society and culture. His studies on social theory and culture include very important texts and comments on language, translation and translatability. However, this aspect of the Italian philosopher's work is relatively less known, and many ideas remain yet to be discovered and reinterpreted.
— review by Piotr Stalmaszczyk.
Review: Representing Capital
It is impossible not to compare Representing Capital: A Reading of Volume One with last year's The Hegel Variations: in each case it is a rather succinct reflection, a meditation on one book by a central figure for Jameson's thought. This book too has a pedagogical quality, which is not to say that it is pedantic at all, just that it is easy to imagine the book as stemming from a seminar.
— review by Jason Read.
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Review: Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development
Michael Lebowitz's important book portrays a vision of the socialist alternative to capitalism through a synthesis of some of Marx's most important philosophical arguments concerning human development, revolutionary practice and radical democracy.
— review by John Gregson.
Review: Why Marx Was Right
Marx and Lenin both liked a joke. So they would have appreciated the irony that, since the ongoing financial crisis began, their analyses of unstable, destructive capitalism has been spectacularly confirmed at the same time that the movement they ostensibly inspired (and for a time, involuntarily gave their names to) lies powerless and moribund.
— review by Owen Hatherley.
Salvaging the socialist cause
Eric Hobsbawm, known widely as Britain's pre-eminent Marxist historian, has also made more of a mark on the British political landscape than perhaps most are aware. As a former Communist Party intellectual, he has provided an ideological rationale and direction for left practice that has been influential well beyond the party itself.
— review by Richard Seymour.
Review: Re-reading Marx: New Perspectives after the Critical Edition
This book brings together a number of prominent contemporary Marx scholars and is the result of a conference in Bergamo, Italy 2006, organised by the International Symposium on Marxian Theory. Each of the contributions seeks to reassess the Marxian project of critique of political economy.
— review by Nick Gray.
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Reading Gramsci Anew
What makes Peter D. Thomas's book an important one is, first and foremost, the fact that it takes Gramsci's thought beyond Italy and makes it accessible to a global audience, and in particular to an Anglophone one. Thomas's work explicitly aims to open the debate on Gramsci within Anglo-Saxon Marxism, which is today a key site for the elaboration of Marxist philosophy.
— review by Toni Negri.
Review: Capital and Its Discontents
If the North American left is good at anything, it's being discontented. And if the collapse of the left as an effective political force over recent decades has amplified our discontent, it's also forced some radical thinkers to dig in and do the hard work of analyzing society.
— review by Scott Borchert.
Review: Making of a Transnational Capitalist Class
Over the last 30 years the concept of the globalisation of capitalism has been the focus of great debate. For those, like Wallerstein, Arrighi, Franck and me, who have long argued that historical capitalism has always been globalised, at each stage of its development the sole question to ask is whether the latest stage of globalisation presents us with important new characteristics that constitute a qualitative change in the nature of capitalism.
— review by Samir Amin.
Review: Antonio Gramsci
Who was Antonio Gramsci? How do we know him? Many know of Gramsci through a plethora of disciplinary culture industries with their particular definitions of concepts such as hegemony, historical bloc, organic intellectuals, war of position, etc. Then there are his Prison Notebooks with their rich and consistent gems of intellectual enlightenment, and his pre-prison writings too.
— review by Dylan Kerrigan.
Talking About the Market
Every honest economics teacher absolutely must make the book written by Rod Hill and Tony Myatt (The Economics Anti-Textbook) compulsory reading for their students, fed almost exclusively on the conventional textbooks that are prescribed reading.
— review by Samir Amin.
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Review: The Communist Hypothesis
Nietzsche's adage that philosophy is disguised biography is not a neat fit with Badiou, only because there is very little of disguise in Badiou's philosophy. The core of his philosophical project (and of his political activism) has been an attempt to understand what it means to be faithful to the great revolutionary events of the previous two centuries.
— review by David Morgan.
Review: In and Out of Crisis
Among the many books on the contemporary economic crisis, In and Out of Crisis is in a class of its own. Three prominent scholar-activists have teamed up to provide an insightful and provocative analysis of the crisis and its implications for the future of neoliberalism, the American empire and the North American Left.
— review by Kanchan Sarker.
Party and Class in Revolutionary Crises
The Russian Revolution of October 1917, the first successful revolution made by and for workers in world history, posed an immense paradox for revolutionary socialists. On the one hand, the combination of the most advanced forms of industrial capitalist development with a largely non-capitalist countryside and autocratic-absolutist state institutions made Russia 'the weak link' in world capitalism, the society where a workers' revolution could first succeed.
— review by Charlie Post.
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Review: Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
The revolutions of 1848 in Europe are a forgotten episode in radical history, particularly in the United States. While revolutionary turning points such as the signing of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, the storming of the Bastille in 1789, the Emancipation Proclamation of 1863, or even the Paris Commune of 1871 retain some place in popular consciousness, the same cannot be said of the events of 1848-50.
— review by James Illingworth.
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Excerpt: Capitalism and Class Consciousness: the ideas of Georg Lukacs
Lukacs became a revolutionary and a Marxist during the greatest wave of working class struggle in history, unleashed by the Russian revolution at the end of the First World War. Already a well known intellectual in Hungary, months after joining the newly-formed Hungarian Communist party in December 1918 he found himself a leader in the events which led to the brief Hungarian soviet republic in 1919.
Launch of the Communist Manifesto ILLUSTRATED - A four part series
After almost two years of development, the Editorial Collective of Red Quill Books is pleased to release a comic-book style version of the Communist Manifesto in four languages (English, French, Spanish and German). The first part of the series, "Historical Materialism," is now available in English.
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Putting humans back into socialism
The onset of the global economic crisis in mid 2008, symbolised by the collapse of some of Wall Street's most iconic companies, led to soaring sales of Karl Marx's seminal work Das Kapital, as many sought explanations to the tumultuous events unfolding. Michael Lebowitz's latest book, The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development says it is essential also to investigate the important insights Marx made regarding the alternative.
— review by Federico Fuentes.
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Review: Marx at the Margins
Rudyard Kipling's 1899 poem 'The White Man's Burden' staunchly articulated the Victorian self-image of the civilizing mission of Empire. The nation's sons would go to far-flung shores to "serve your captives' need." Not that the "sullen peoples" on the receiving end might appreciate it, given that were "half-devil and half-child."
— review by Barry Healy.
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Socialism's vision of the future
The Idea of Communism by Tariq Ali is the first book in a five-part series edited by Ali that will examine "What Was Communism?" The aim of the series is to investigate why communism failed in the 20th century: What went wrong, was its collapse inevitable, what can we learn from it, and what parts of the experience should we rehabilitate?
— review by Shaun Harkin.
Review of Capitalism and the Dialectic
Until the late 1970s, the writings of Kozo Uno had no real impact on the western debates on Marxist economics. In 1980 the first English translation of the Principles of Political Economy became available to us. He did not base his new method of analysis on the usual textual authority of Marx, but attempted to improve the scientific project of Capital as a whole.
— review by Jelle Versieren.
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Review of: After Socialism: Reconstructing Critical Social Thought by Gabriel Kolko
Radical critics of United States imperialism owe Gabriel Kolko a considerable debt. Of the ‘revisionist’
historians that emerged in North America in the second half of the 20th century, Kolko produced one
of the most sustained and coherent accounts of the material basis of America’s dash to globalism, and
indeed explained why the 20th century was the ‘century of war.’
— review by Phil Hearse.
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Review of: Build it Now: Socialism for the Twenty-First Century by Michael A. Lebowitz
The crisis of capitalism could not be more overt and exposed, but the instruments of survival at
its disposal - both material and ideological - are also very effective with growing financialisation,
commodification and consumerism. There are stark similarities in the way the welfarist face of the
State has been on wane, along with its increased instrumentalisation in favour of global capital,
in the so-called developed world and the inappropriately coined euphemistic developing world. At
the level of movements too, if at one moment and place we hear sagas of popular and sustained
confrontation against the global capital, the next we see a fragmented and weakened struggle
against capital. — review by Ravi Kumar (Radical Notes website).
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Review of: Build it Now: Socialism for the Twenty-First Century by Michael A. Lebowitz
One of the political highlights of summer, 2007 in Toronto, was the visit to the city by author Michael Lebowitz.
His packed out talk introduced a Toronto audience not just to recent developments in the revolutionary process
underway in Venezuela, but to the rethinking of socialism accompanying that
process. — review by Paul Kellogg (Socialist Voice website).
Review of: Canadian Marxists and the Search for a Third Way by Peter Campbell
The impasse of socialist politics across the West has yielded a number of important reflections on the
course of working class politics over the 20th century. The most notable of these, Donald Sassoon's
One Hundred Years of Socialism, Leo Panitch and Colin Leys's The End of Parliamentary Socialism, and
Gerassimos Moschonas's In the Name of Social Democracy, have each had their own take on the end of the
Leninism of the communist movement and the accommodation of the parliamentarism of the social democratic
movement to neoliberalism and globalization. — review by Gregory Albo.
Review of: Mao: The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
I have always considered Mao Zedong’s statement, “To be attacked by the enemy is not a bad thing but a good thing,” to
be among his most valuable. Not only did it alter my conception of struggle, but it encapsulated perhaps more succinctly
than any other of his sayings, the dialectical character of his thinking and strategy. It was this quality that allowed
Mao to exploit the contradictions among the enemy, to “overcome all difficulties,” and to repeatedly turn defeat
into victory.
— review by Robert Weil (SD Online).
Review of: Paradigm Shift: Globalization and the Canadian State by Stephen McBride
Neoliberalism came on to the political scene as a project of the New Right and major corporate
interests with the crisis of Keynesianism in the 1970s. Neoliberalism today represents an
ideological discourse, administrative and regulatory practices, a system of inter-state relations,
and social form of political power across the advanced capitalist countries and, indeed, the
vast majority of the world.
— review by Gregory Albo.
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Review of: Renewing Socialism by Leo Panitch
Leo Panitch has stood out in recent years as one of the socialist intellectuals most fully engaged with political questions, analysing the problems faced by left-wing parties, trade unions and other social movements with great clarity.
The Canadian academic has followed in the tradition of Ralph Miliband, whose work made the case for a non-Communist radical left that would avoid the mistakes of social democracy. Panitch and Colin Leys took over as editors of the Socialist Register after Miliband’s death, and extended his critique of the British Labour Party in an essential book, The End of Parliamentary Socialism (published in the immediate wake of Blair's 1997 triumph, it should be the first port of call for anyone bewildered by the collapse of the New Labour project).
— review by Ed Walsh. (Preview on Google books.)
- Review of: Ruling Canada: Corporate Cohesion and Democracy by Jamie Brownlee
For a discipline explicitly engaged in the study of power, particularly as exercised in liberal democracies, it is striking how little
Canadian political science has actually examined the concentration of private economic power, the political organization of the
business classes and the extension of that power into the political realm. Indeed, Canadian political science has been principally
pre-occupied with power insofar as it pertains to the constitutional distribution of power and the relative access to political
power of the multinational and multicultural constituent groups comprising Canada.
— review by Greg Albo (Relay #15).
Review of: The Soviet Century by Moshe Lewin
Moshe Lewin has contributed much to the understanding of the experience of the Soviet period in Russian history. Taking a
critical approach to traditional ways of looking at the USSR and basing himself on detailed social-historical research, his work has
helped to place the period of communism in historical perspective.
— review by Herman Rosenfeld (Relay #20). (Preview on Google books.)
Review of: Teaching against Global Capitalism and the New Imperialism: A Critical Pedagogy by Peter McLaren and Ramin Farahmandpur
We develop critical understandings of the world through teachers and their teachings. A radical consciousness,
which is to say, a working knowledge of the disconcerting machinations of global capitalism and a never-ending
drive to understand the roots of this system is not simply derived from thin air.
— review by Andrew Michael Lee (Relay #12).
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Review of two books: The Marxism of Leon Trotsky by Kunal Chattopadhyay; Western Marxism and the Soviet Union by Marcel van der Linden
KARL MARX AND his comrades deemed their own approach “scientific,” as compared to “utopian” intellectual efforts on behalf of socialism, because they believed that practical efforts to challenge and ultimately replace capitalism with something better must be grounded in a serious study of economic, political, social, historical realities and dynamics.
— review by Paul Le Blanc.
► Media ◄
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Review of: The Age of Oprah, Cultural Icon For the Neoliberal Era by Janice Peck
If you work hard enough, if you prepare long enough, if you visualize astutely and pray on
it resolutely, it really can happen for you. At least that's the way it works in the world
of Oprah Winfrey. In the Age of Oprah, author Janice Peck explains, there's no such thing
as collective problem-solving; there are only individual, market-driven and spirit-centered
solutions. Water polluted? Buy it bottled. Dissatisfied with your kids' school? Find a private
one or home school. Dead-end job with no respect and no benefits? Polish that resume and assume
an attitude of gratitude, or get ready to start your own business. House falling down? Maybe
you can qualify for an extreme makeover. Is the world view of Oprah really uplifting after all?
Or does it disempower individuals and disarm communities?
— Bruce Dixon interviews Janice Peck.
Review of: The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the 21st Century by Robert McChesney.
That the major U.S. news media uncritically reproduced the Bush Administration’s ideological rationale for the invasion and occupation
of Iraq (Saddam has and is ready to deploy deadly ‘weapons of mass destruction,’ thus, we must defend our national security with a ‘preemptive’
strike; — review by Tanner Mirrlees (Relay #2).
► Urbanism ◄
Review of: Planet of Slums by Mike Davis.
The persistent spread of slums over the last two decades has forced both policy makers and academics to
address the causes and factors underlying this expansion. Explanations for slums have often framed the problem
in terms of uncontrolled demographic increases, rural-urban migration, the absence of private property rights and
wrong government policies. — review by Angela Joya (Relay #13). (Preview on Google books.)
- Review of: Planet of Slums by Mike Davis.
If read from a place of willingness to hear its message, Planet of Slums will inflame a fierce hatred of capitalism in
your heart. It is an analysis of neoliberalism through the prism of urban space around the globe, and it is a relentless,
pounding indictment of the organizing of billions of lives into poverty and suffering by capital.
— review by Scott Neigh.
Review of: uTOpia: Towards A New Toronto edited by Jason McBride and Alana Wilcox.
Over the past several years, Toronto has been undergoing a revitalization – a new opera house, the never-ending development
of condos and lofts, and new innovative architecture, including the new OCAD building and additions to the Art Gallery of Ontario
and the Royal Ontario Museum. — review by Yen Chu (Relay #11).
► Resources ◄
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