Revolutionary Socialism in the 21st Century
 
Revolutionary
Socialism in the
21st Century

Articles >

book review

Review | Disability Praxis

Disability Praxis covers some of today’s key debates on disability justice in Britain and the US. rs21 member Shiraz Hussain reviews.

Review | Who’s Afraid of Gender?

Around the world, the right are mobilising around “gender”. Colin Wilson reviews Judith Butler’s new intervention.

Review | What Was Neoliberalism?

What can we learn about neoliberalism from Neil Davidson’s new book? Charlie Post reviews ‘What Was Neoliberalism’

Review | The Vote

Danny Bee reviews Paul Foot’s ‘The Vote’ – how it was won and how it’s undermined.

Debate on settler colonialism: Part 4

Steve Leigh contributes with a review of Englert’s book.

Interview | Empire of Normality

Hazel Croft talks to author Robert Chapman about their new book and discusses neurodiversity and how we can challenge the capitalist logics of ‘normality’.

Review | The State and Revolution

Lenin’s The State and Revolution is one of the most important books he ever wrote, a restatement and rediscovery of the revolutionary understanding of the state.

Review | Against Landlords: How to Solve the Housing Crisis

Housing activist Kate Bradley reviews Nick Bano’s Against Landlords: How to Solve the Housing Crisis

Lenin, National Liberation and Palestine

Gus Woody reviews Imperialism and the National Question recently published by Verso.

Writing the future

Colin Wilson celebrates fantasy novel Babel, part of a growing trend for speculative fiction to include radical politics in work written by women, often women of colour.

Lewis's book with an image of Kautsky and the Erfurt Program

Review | Ben Lewis, ‘Karl Kautsky on Democracy and Republicanism’

Is it time to re-evaluate renegade Kautsky? Andreas Chari reviews a new collection.

book cover and artwork

Interview | Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History

Matthew Cookson interviews the authors of a new graphic novel on the Haitian Revolution.

A diagram of classes under capitalism and the front cover of the book 'Nation of Shopkeepers'

Where did all the gravediggers go?

‘A Nation of Shopkeepers’ asks important questions about class in Britain today, but lacks clarity in its answers.

Review | White Riot

Novel celebrating anti-racist and anti-fascist struggles

George Padmore reading a newspaper.

Review | Making the Revolution Global

The history of black anticolonial radicals in Britain is central to the history of the left.

Abortion Rights protest, London 17th June 2023

Review | Bodies Under Siege

Even traditional mainstream conservative parties are linked to proponents of reactionary ‘Great Replacement’ theories.

American and Chinese flags and USA dollars

Review | The New Cold War

The new imperialist world order is characterised by increasing military tensions between the world’s major powers, but also by economic competition.

Review | Mute Compulsion: A Marxist Theory of the Economic Power of Capital

‘The mute compulsion of economic relations sets the seal on the domination of the capitalist over the worker.’

Review | The Communist Road to Capitalism and The Left in China

Charlie Hore reviews two important books on struggle from below in China.

Image shows a portion of the front cover of Leo Zeilig's book on Walter Rodney.

Review | A Revolutionary for Our Time: the Walter Rodney Story

Rachel Iboraii reviews Leo Zeilig book on Walter Rodney, finding a compelling account of the life of the great Marxist and pan-Africanist.

Pacer train

Review | Derailed: How to Fix Britain’s Broken Railways

Why is train travel a disaster? How can we fix it?

Review | Shake the City – Experiments in Space and Time, Music and Crisis

Kate Bradley reviews Shake the City by Alexander Billet, a well-written and thought-provoking book on the role of music in making political change.

Image of the book cover, China after Mao, along with a poster featuring Mao's head

Understanding China after Mao

Charlie Hore reviews China after Mao, finding a work with large omissions which fails to explain why China has changed so much since the 1970s.

Drawing of London slum along with the cover of Tenants by Vicky Spratt

The scale of Britain’s housing crisis

Danny Schultz reviews a recent work exploring the scale of exploitative landlordism in Britain, finding an indictment of British capitalism and an urgent call for renter organising.

Towards a truly radical Scottish independence movement

Jim Ritchie reviews Scotland After Britain, a new book on the Scottish independence movement.

The Overstory – eco-fiction and capitalism

In the first article of their new Substack Capture the Flag, Caliban’s Revenge considers eco-fiction award winner The Overstory. Whilst it is an impassioned plea for environmental consciousness, they find a novel trapped by individualistic and problematic understandings of capitalist society.  This summer has been, I’m sure you’ve noticed, terrifying. The earth is broiling and the […]

Hating capitalism more than The Communist Manifesto

The Communist Manifesto is one of the cornerstones of Marxism. Neil Rogall celebrates a compelling new account of its importance today by author and activist China Miéville. I first read the Communist Manifesto sometime in 1968, when I was still at school and involved in a School Students Union in Leeds. It was the first […]

London in revolt – revisiting the English Civil War

Andrew Stone looks at a new history of the origins of the English Civil Wars, finding an engaging account of the class character of the process which ultimately saw Charles I executed. London may not have the same revolutionary reputation of Paris or St Petersburg, but in this new account of the outbreak of the […]

Image of the Eiffel tower next to the Marx in Paris book cover

The Marx family visits the Commune

Leslie Cunningham reviews a new piece of political fiction, imagining Karl and Jenny Marx visiting the Paris Commune. Marx in Paris provides a great introduction to both the Commune and its political significance for socialists today. This short work (100 pages) purports to be a “found document”, a blue notebook discovered in a trunk containing […]

The deviant law student

In a piece originally published in Socialist Lawyer, Kate Bradley reviews the Critical Legal Pocketbook, and finds it a useful corrective to capitalist legal education, perfect for socialists who study and work in law. There are many reasons why socialists may be attracted to the legal profession. Though it is an embattled terrain dominated by […]