What have been the outcomes of reunification in the Federal Republic? Perry Anderson charts contradictory cross-currents within its polity, economy, culture and society, gauging the impact of a contested neoliberal offensive on the ‘Modell Deutschland’ and its intellectual life.
Mountaineering lessons from the Bolsheviks’ master strategist provide a metaphor for regroupment in hard times. Slavoj Žižek identifies the principal antagonisms within contemporary capitalism, as the basis for positing anew the ‘communist hypothesis’.
Interview with leading French jurist on the fate of ‘social Europe’ after Maastricht: subordination of labour to market, and of EU enlargement to the priorities of capital. Might the continent’s bloody past inspire alternative visions?
Contrary to mainstream diagnoses blaming the current financial crisis on a retreat of the state, Leo Panitch and Martijn Konings trace the active interventions that have shaped US finance and yoked working-class America to the discipline of debt.
In what ways does Brecht’s drama—and the world-transforming impulse behind his strategies of defamiliarization—speak to times and places other than his own? Ups and downs of his resonance in Brazil and beyond, shadowing the movements of history’s leading edge.
Against claims for a de-territorialized, fully globalized art world, Chin-tao Wu measures the stubborn realities of continued Western dominance. Birthplace and residence of art-festival participants as indices of enduring hierarchy.
Immanuel Wallerstein draws on The Wretched of the Earth to set out three central dilemmas for today’s anti-systemic movements. Questions of violence, identity and class seen through an anti-colonial lens.
Alexander Zevin on Serge Audier, La Pensée anti-68. Recasting of Aron, Sartre and Debray in an attempt to make the May événements safe for liberalism.
Tom Hazeldine on John Adamson, The Noble Revolt. The English Civil War re-staged as baronial rebellion, leaving socio-economic forces waiting in the wings.
R Taggart Murphy on Graham Turner, The Credit Crunch. Origins of the financial crisis in the global squeeze on labour, and the example of Japan’s lost decade.
