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One-Dimensional Man
“The thesis of Herbert Marcuse’s book One-Dimensional Man is as follows. When dialectical rationality was first brought to bear on the historical process in the early 19th century it was clear, to any one who was prepared to look at the facts, that there existed an identifiable body . . .” read more
Series and Nexus in the Family
“Persons are not separate objects in space. They are centres of orientation to the world. These different centres and their worlds are not islands, but the nature of their reciprocal influence and interaction has always been difficult to incorporate adequately into interpersonal theory. By considering the person from . . .” read more
Obama at Manassas
Does Obama’s victory signal a political turning point comparable to 1980 or 1932? Mike Davis maps county-level changes, from below—minority-majority demographics, subprime suburbs, white-collar financial worries—catalysed by the 2008 campaign. From above, realignment of American capital behind the Silicon President.
Sebastiao Salgado and Fine Art Photojournalism
“Black-and-white photographs of a vast pit, its sides cut into a giant’s stairway and scaled by crude ladders, its surface covered with figures, most bearing large sacks; scanning the space between foreground and distant background, the effect is dizzying—there must be thousands of these figures. The pictures are . . .” read more
Ice Empire and Ice Hockey: Two Fin de Siecle Dreams
“At the beginning of September 1939, the Reichswehr invaded Poland from the West; two weeks later the Red Army invaded from the East. On September 28, Hitler and Stalin signed a partition agreement which gave each tyrant half of a sad country which had only twenty-one years of . . .” read more
Realpolitik in the Gulf
“On the morning before Yom Kippur late this past September, I found myself standing at the western end of the White House, watching as the colour guard paraded the flag of the United States (and the republic for which it stands) along with that of the Emirate of . . .” read more
Economies Out of Control
“At the end of the 1980s a word was pronounced in London and New York which had virtually dropped out of economic vocabulary at the start of the decade—stagflation. The Reagan and Thatcher booms are over and their successors have been left to grapple with a legacy of . . .” read more
Reflections on the Nicaraguan Election
“Following the defeat of the fsln in the Nicaraguan elections of February 1990, the state of that country’s politics remains unclear and unpredictable. Although there can be no doubt that Violeta Chamorro’s victory represents a major setback not only for the Sandinistas but also for the Latin . . .” read more
Between Bad Times and Better
“A familiar question in the Age of Reagan—when would the us Left revive once more?—had become by the last years of his regime the source of deep defeatism or, at least, nagging doubt. So much time had passed since the rise of the Women’s Liberation Movement, itself . . .” read more
The Situationist International
“De Sade liberated from the Bastille in 1789, Baudelaire on the barricades in 1848, Courbet tearing down the Vendôme Column in 1870—French political history is distinguished by a series of glorious and legendary moments which serve to celebrate the convergence of popular revolution with art in revolt. In . . .” read more
Mario Vargas Llosa: Parables and Deceits
“Some time ago I urged a friend from Lima to read Vargas Llosa’s Historia de Mayta—clumsily entitled The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta in the English edition—so that he might give me an insider’s opinion of the book’s treatment of the Peruvian revolutionary left over the last thirty . . .” read more
South Africa: The Question of Strategy
“In June 1976 the students of Soweto forced South Africa back onto the front pages of the world’s newspapers. Subsequently there has been a certain ebb and flow to the resistance in that country, but such has been the growth and consolidation of the forces pressing for change . . .” read more
The Role of the Individual in History: The Case of World War Two
“The primacy of the relationships and conflicts between social forces in determining the course of history is one of the fundamental assumptions of historical materialism. In societies divided into different social classes, such relationships are perforce class relations. History is thus explained, in the final analysis, as a . . .” read more
Spanish Socialism in the Atlantic Order
“In March 1986, the first popular referendum on a military alliance in history was held in Spain. The ruling Socialist Party (psoe)—committed only four years earlier to withdrawal from nato—campaigned for Spanish integration into the Atlantic Alliance, deploying a massive battery of official manipulation, threats and . . .” read more
Reaganomics' Magical Mystery Tour
“The re-election of Ronald Reagan will unleash new debate on the causes of the continuing conservative ascendancy in North America and Western Europe. Following in the well-worn grooves of discussions in 1980–1, some will stress the renewed importance of a reactionary-populist social discourse centred on ‘right to life’, . . .” read more
The Eclipse of Spanish Communism
“In the brief political history of Eurocommunism, which emerged as a public international current in 1974 and has lived only the shadowiest existence since the break-up of the Union de la Gauche in 1977–78, the course of the Communist Party of Spain (pce) merits at least as . . .” read more
Maurice Bishop and the New Jewel Revolution in Grenada
“The brutal killings of Maurice Bishop and a number of his closest friends and supporters, and the subsequent us invasion of the island in October this year, brought a sudden and tragic end to the Grenadian revolution. Coming at a time when the Sandinista regime in Nicaragua . . .” read more
'Teachers, Writers, Celebrities': Intelligentsias and Their Histories
“The appearance of Regis Debray’s Le Pouvoir intellectuel en France was a major cultural event in France. Critical reaction was instant and passionate; the book was soon a talking-point and—on a scale appropriate to a book of its kind—a best-seller. But if the public evidence pointed straightforwardly to . . .” read more
A Scottish Road to Socialism?
“Scotland has been putting on its spectacles with commendable eagerness to read the minute print of a ‘Red Paper’ or socialist symposium on the state of the nation, which has reached the best-seller lists. It is a collection of twenty-eight essays, edited by Edinburgh University’s student rector, Gordon . . .” read more
Politics and Culture in Bengal
“Bengal was the microcosm of British rule in India, the original seat of Imperial power, the base from which the East India Company set out on its career of aggrandisement, ending in the complete subjugation of the subcontinent from the Khyber to Cape Comorin. Private loot, the organized . . .” read more