In his time, Benjamin Lay may have been the most radical person on the planet
Benjamin Lay was one of the first practical abolitionists, grounded in the real day-to-day struggles of enslaved peoples of African descent.
Blog
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Why We Need Benjamin Lay
Benjamin Lay was a class-conscious, race-conscious, gender-conscious, environmentally conscious man with a fully integrated radical worldview; he was “intersectional” almost three centuries ago! -
Faith in Liberation
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.
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Tariq Ali on Tom Nairn
Tariq Ali on Tom Nairn (1932–2023)
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What is class today?
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).
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Watch: Brett Christophers on Our Lives in Their Portfolios
We sat down with Brett Christophers to discuss what happens when the basic infrastructure of our everyday lives (housing, roads, schools, water networks, etc.) become assets in the portfolios of asset management firms. -
A Political Education
Alexander Baron, the writer, political activist, journalist, soldier, and prominent figure in mid-twentieth-century British cultural history, is best remembered today as the author of the novels The Human Kind (1953), The Lowlife (1963), and King Dido (1969). In this extract from his recently published memoir Chapters of Accidents, introduced by his son Nick Baron, he recounts his political education in interwar East London. -
Beyond the Rainbow
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.
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The Culture War in France
Anticapitalist class politics have receded from French political discourse and action over the last several decades, replaced in part by what some French figures have identified as an American-influenced identity politics. As Daniel Zamora argues in this essay, however, France has long embraced a home-grown, essentialising politics of identity. -
Politics Theory Other: Israel's radicalising ethnonationalism w/ Richard Seymour
The latest episode of the Politics Theory Other podcast. -
The Future is Degrowth: A Five Book Plan
To celebrate Earth Day, the authors of The Future Is Degrowth suggest five books to contextualize the demands of a system hell-bent on perpetual growth and to help conceptualize a world centered around a vision of global ecological justice. -
How To Blow Up A Pipeline: A 5 Book Plan
How to Blow Up a Pipeline is in theaters everywhere! Director/co-writer Daniel Goldhaber, producers/co-writers Jordan Sjol and Ariela Barer, and editor Daniel Garber provide a five book plan for confronting the looming climate apocalypse.
