Marx’s texts from the 1850s onwards took a different approach to his previous work: different not only in their style but also their concepts and formats, but united by their object – capitalism – grasped from different angles and viewpoints.
Benjamin Lay was one of the first practical abolitionists, grounded in the real day-to-day struggles of enslaved peoples of African descent.
Lucien Goldmann, the tearaway son of a Romanian Rabbi who would become one of the greatest Marxist sociologists of literature and culture, maintained a lifelong commitment to liberation and to particular form of socialist humanism. Here, Madoc Cairns charts his personal and intellectual development from the tumultuous years in the Romanian communist party of the 1930s to his pioneering studies of Kant and Pascal in post-war France, and the vital role he played in the development of a Marxist study of culture.
Tariq Ali on Tom Nairn (1932–2023)
Common Wealth’s Amelia Horgan spoke to historian Gabriel Winant about class in the twenty-first century. Gabriel Winant is the author of The Next Shift: The Fall of Industry and the Rise of Health Care in Rust Belt America (Harvard University Press: 2021).
50 years ago today, Gravity's Rainbow, was first published. Here, Jared Marcel Pollen discusses Thomas Pynchon’s masterpiece, and its thrilling vision of technological modernity and its mystical offshoots.
