Blog

Kate Soper on the case for building a world beyond consumerism. 

As the crisis of capitalism unfolds, the need for alternatives is felt ever more intensely. The struggle between radical movements and the forces of reaction are merciless. Over the last twenty-five years, radical intellectuals across the world have produced important and innovative ideas. The endeavour to transform the world without falling into the catastrophic traps of the past has been a common element uniting these new approaches.

Theodore W. Allen draws lessons from Irish history, comparing British rule in Ireland with the “white” oppression of Native Americans and African Americans, in this excerpt from The Invention of the White Race, Volume 1, a groundbreaking analysis of the birth of racism in America.

Rossana Rossanda, one of Il Manifesto’s founding editors, passed away on Sunday at the age of 96. Here, comrade Luciana Castellina writes about her extraordinary life and her influential position on the Italian left.

Download before September 30th: includes Perry Anderson, Chantal Mouffe, Walter Rodney, and more.

Rossana Rossanda, one of Il Manifesto’s founding editors, passed away on Sunday at the age of 96. The following extract from her memoir, La Ragazza del Secolo Scorso, published by Verso as The Comrade from Milan, appeared in New Left Review in 2008, prefaced by a short introduction to her life and work.

Ruling the Void offers an authoritative and chilling assessment of the prospects for popular political representation today. In the long-established democracies of Western Europe, electoral turnouts are in decline, membership is shrinking in the major parties, and those who remain loyal partisans are sapped of enthusiasm. Peter Mair’s classic book weighs the impact of these changes, which together show that, after a century of democratic aspiration, electorates are deserting the political arena.

Aranyo Aarjan writes about the situation in West Bengal following Cyclone Amphan

Fredric Jameson demonstrates that it is the moment of reification which enables the emergence of commodification as such; or to put it the other way around, the existence of a tendency to commodification is then what motivates reification and encourages its influence in all kinds of areas (the psychic and the cultural, for example) in which it did not previously hold sway or seem applicable.

In this essay from 1987, Stuart Hall reflects on Labour's defeat and outlines the ideological basis of Thatcherism's electoral triumph.  

To celebrate The World Transformed 2020 programme we're offering 50% off our essential socialist books of the moment!

An update on workplace safety practices and business during COVID-19 from our UK printer.