Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century
 
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Review | Sorry We Missed You

Colin Revolting reviews director Ken Loach’s latest film, which centres on the family of two workers in the gig economy

Joker and the Mask of Poverty

Caliban’s Revenge asks who is behind the Joker’s mask and who should be scared.

Actor Hayley Squires and two child actors surrounded by two men dressed as security guards in a scene of the film 'I, Daniel Blake'

Ken Loach, sex work and paternalism

Ken Loach is widely acclaimed for his uncompromising and cutting portrayal of the realities of poverty in his films, but Kate Bradley argues his depictions of sex work fall short.

Film review: For Sama

A documentary film charts the siege of Aleppo and represents a new addition to the depressingly growing genre of ‘genocide documentaries’.

Review: Stolen Moments

Mark Winter welcomes a new exhibition celebrating Namibia’s unsung musical heroes, and remembers the time when the artist Jackson Kaujewa came to stay with his family.

The Making of a Revolution: Art from Sudan

Allan Struthers reflects on a recent exhibition co-hosted by rs21 and the Sudan Doctors’ Union.

revolutionary reflections | Theatre of the Oppressed as a political method

Sophie Coudray introduces the work of the Brazilian theatre practitioner Augusto Boal and the potential of its method for revolutionary praxis.

Move On Up. Curtis Mayfield – Music and message

Emerging from the civil rights movement in the USA, Curtis Mayfield is one of the best exponents of radical soul music and his music lives on, as remembered by John Wheeler.

A gamer’s guide to social reproduction

Video games can be vehicles for a whole range of political ideas – and some can even help us explain social reproduction theory, argues Kate Bradley.

Letter to Edith

Parenthood is full of uncertainties; of hopes and fears. The climate crisis amplifies all of this, and brings into focus the harsh realities and stark choices we face – as individuals and as a society. A poem by Rick Lighten.

Review | Never Again

Colin Revolting reviews Never Again by David Renton, the story of the fascist National Front and the campaign which stopped it in its tracks.

Review: Contralto

Kate Bradley reviews Contralto, a one-hour work for video, strings, and percussion that features a cast of transgender women

A brief history of the Teddy Boys

The post war youth subculture that became the subject of a moral panic.

In Remembrance of ‘Alternative Comedy’

Jeremy Hardy was part of a left-wing generation who transformed British comedy and will be sadly missed.

Review: Sorry to Bother You…

Boots Riley’s film Sorry to Bother You (USA, 2018) is a breath of fresh air.

‘I was, I am, I will be’ – 100 years after the death of Rosa Luxemburg

The deaths of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht have haunted the imagination of the left for a century.

I Bring Her a Flower

On the 100th anniversary of the murder of Rosa Luxemburg, we republish a poetic tribute to her written by Sylvia Townsend Warner.

Review: Deportation Discs: A Public Hearing

A multimedia installation exposed the cruelty at the heart of the ‘hostile environment’.

Favourites of 2018: rs21 reviewers recommend…

Our reviewers recommend the music, films, books, exhibitions and TV they discovered in 2018.

Soon (In 48 Years’ Time)

Story written by Alexandra Kollontai in 1922, imagining a communist future

A Kestral for a Knave: fifty years on

Barry Hines’s book A Kestrel for a Knave, which became the film Kes, was published fifty years ago this year, but it remains as relevant as ever.

16 August 1819

Rich Belbin reviews Mike Leigh’s film Peterloo. The film tells the story of a moment of British history that is too often forgotten.

Welcome to The Jungle

Colin Revolting and his son were moved to tears by the new play The Jungle, currently showing at the Playhouse Theatre in London’s West End.

A Marxist theory of music: it’s all in the groove

Kate Bradley interview Mark Abel, author of Groove: An Aesthetic of Measured Time

Music as a force for change: an interview with Redskins’ Martin Hewes

An interview with Martin Hewes of the Redskins, to some the true inheritors of the Clash’s crown as the radical rockers

Rocking Against Racism and other irrational ideologies

The first Rock Against Racism carnival took place forty years ago, on April 30 1978.

#MeToo workers rights

Some reflections on #MeToo

While #MeToo has seen countless people speak out about sexual violence and harassment, it has also revealed difficulties in building the means of confronting them.

A Farewell to Omelas: remembering Ursula Le Guin

Writer Ursula Le Guin, who died on 22 January aged 88, overturned notions of what Science Fiction should be about.

The total Marx and the total theory of literature

A lost gem of Marxist aesthetic theory, out of print for over forty years.

Music helps us struggle for a better world

Amy Downham is inspired by a recent book about music and politics. I met Dave Randall a few years ago on an antiracism march. I had recently joined rs21 in search of reassurance that I wasn’t alone in the way I thought and felt about the world. We talked and agreed about the importance of sharing political thoughts with like-minded […]