Reviews

From Munich to Geneva

This week I wasted two hours of my life on a terrible new film called Munich: The Edge of War . It is based on a best-selling novel by Robert Harris. Now the problem with Robert Harris’ novels is that they are often not very good. I know this because I have read most of them. He usually starts with an intriguing idea and then goes off to have a nap. Or something. The books are disappointing. One of the silliest revolved around the revelation that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin secretly had… a child! But of course Stalin had several children, none of whom featured in this story. A minor point...

Cells, complexity and chaos

Paul Nurse’s What is Life? is a useful primer in modern biology, especially for Marxists who are trying to get to grips how the word “metabolism” helps illuminate questions of ecology. He starts with explaining that cells are much more than the basic building block of life. Cells are “the simplest thing that embodies all the signature characteristics of life” (ch 9). Cells, like all lifeforms, are “bounded physical entities separate from, but in communication with, their environments”. Each cell is surrounded by a lipid membrane that is two molecules across. Cells absorb materials and energy...

20,000 days: a history of life expectancy

Throughout history, life expectancy (LE) has been around 30 years, sometimes lower, e.g. with the adoption of agriculture, plague, or cramming the new industrial working class into slums (described in Engels’ Condition of the Working Class in England ; he called their accelerated deaths “social murder”). Marx predicted increasing immiseration of the working class relative to the ruling class so it is doubtful whether he could have predicted what would actually happen to all classes, LE more than doubling in under 200 years, an average extra 20,000 days of life. A sharp change Though the rich...

Feminism and “gender wars”

Finn Mackay introduces Female Masculinities and the Gender Wars with the hope that it will inform those who are “stuck in the middle of the gender wars”. The early chapters give a useful overview of the historical background of trans inclusion and exclusion in the feminist movement, including the infamous events of the 1976 Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, seen as the birth of the trans-exclusionary radical feminist movement. There is also a relatively accessible explanation of the debates on the social construction of gender and sex, written from a trans-inclusive queer perspective. Mackay is...

A radical adventure

Sacha Ismail on Around the World in 80 Days (BBC1, all episodes on iPlayer) I read it a long time ago, but I remember finding Jules Vernes’ Around the World in Eighty Days distinctly underwhelming. Did I miss something? A new television adaptation, co-produced by French, Italian and German public broadcasters and currently showing on BBC1, shares the 1872 novel’s basic premise. A rich Englishman, Phileas Fogg, circumnavigates the world for a bet of £20,000 (over £2m in today’s money). The series is very enjoyable and politically surprising. As far as I can tell, the series’ creator Ashley...

A welcome contribution to a necessary debate

Daniel Randall reviews David Renton's Labour's Antisemitism Crisis: What the Left Got Wrong (Routledge, 2021). David Renton's Labour's Antisemitism Crisis: What the Left Got Wrong and How to Learn from It is a welcome addition to a slowly but steadily expanding discourse that aims to develop a critique of left antisemitism that is explicitly from the left, and for the left. Renton and I corresponded while I was writing my own book on left antisemitism, Confronting Antisemitism on the Left: Arguments for Socialists , a correspondence I found useful and which I feel helped improve my manuscript...

The early life of Paul Frölich

The German revolution, 1919 Paul Frölich deserves to be better known. He is chiefly credited for his valuable 1928 biography of Rosa Luxemburg. However Frölich was a significant figure on the German revolutionary left in his own right. A recent book, Paul Frölich, In the Radical Camp: A Political Autobiography 1890-1921 , edited and introduced by Reiner Tosstorff, provides a window into his life. The book deserves the attention of contemporary socialists. Paul Frölich was born in Leipzig on 7 August 1884. Both his parents were active in the Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands (SPD), which...

A new history of humanity

Clive Bradley reviews The Dawn of Everything: a new history of humanity , by David Graeber and David Wengrow (Allen and Lane). Potentially, this book changes everything. It is certainly what the authors intend. For Marxists, it poses some profound challenges. Broadly speaking, Marxists have accepted what these authors call the ‘evolutionary’ perspective on human history, namely that there are certain stages through which human culture has passed: pre-agricultural societies, which have no classes; agriculture, which gives birth to classes (because it facilitates the accumulation of a surplus...

"Geoengineering", carbon drawdown - readings

What should we, as socialist environmentalists, say about proposals for "geoengineering" (or "climate intervention"). The most common proposals are for a variety of methods for carbon sequestration ("drawdown", or "negative emissions"), to remove CO2 from the carbon cycle and air; and "solar radiation management", seeking to reflect more of the sun's rays back into space, such as by spraying vast quantities of sulphur into the high atmosphere. Are these proposals for climate intervention a distraction from the need to prevent ongoing emissions? Too risky or harmful to try? Or a necessary move to mitigate the harm of historic (and ongoing) emissions?

Confronting antisemitism on the left

The double meaning apparent in the title of Daniel Randall’s new book Confronting Antisemitism on the Left expresses its two important aims: to confront antisemitism which appears on the left while at the same time confronting antisemitism firmly from a left perspective. Grabbing the baton from Steve Cohen’s important 1984 analysis of left-wing antisemitism, That’s Funny, You Don’t Look Antisemitic , and running much further, Randall’s book is not only sharp in its arguments about the nature of antisemitic forms of leftist discourse, but it’s also very well grounded in the history of the...

This website uses cookies, you can find out more and set your preferences here.
By continuing to use this website, you agree to our Privacy Policy and Terms & Conditions.