China – end of the boom?
rs21 member Charlie Hore explores how a changing demographic, environmental issues and inherent instability pose serious threats to the growth of the Chinese economy.
Review | The Communist Road to Capitalism and The Left in China
Charlie Hore reviews two important books on struggle from below in China.
Mikhail Gorbachev: twin portraits of a failed reformer
Gorbachev was neither a liberal man of peace nor an incompetent who trashed Russia
Unearthing hidden histories: an interview with Ian Birchall
An interview with socialist historian Ian Birchall. Ian’s work has has involved researching and reevaluating lesser-known revolutionaries and activists from the Global South.
Covid capitalism
In this essay originally published in Spectre Journal, Tithi Bhattacharya and Gareth Dale explore state responses to coronavirus to mitigate the crisis of capital.
revolutionary reflections | Class struggles in the 1989 revolution
For the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, we publish a translation of Volkhard Mosler’s analysis of the class composition of the East German regime and the opposition movement to it.
Mariana Mazzucato: Dragons Den or progressive State Capitalism
Mike Haynes looks at the work of prominent left-leaning economist Mariana Mazzucato
revolutionary reflections | Notes on Capital and the State: part 3
In the concluding part of our serialisation of his 1978 essay on the state in capitalist society, Colin Barker considers the theory of the Permanent Arms Economy.
revolutionary reflections | Notes on Capital and the State: part 2
In the second of a three part series Colin Barker continues his investigation into the relationship between capital and the state.
revolutionary reflections | Notes on Capital and the State: part 1
The relationship between the state and capital is a major problem in Marxist theory. In the first of a three part series Colin Barker investigates how Marxists have addressed this question.
Review: Ukraine and the Empire of Capital
Nick Evans finds much of interest in Yuliya Yurchenko’s analysis of Ukraine’s recent history.
How memories of Soviet repression turn Eastern Europe against the left
Hanna Gal offers some personal thoughts on anti-communist political culture in Eastern Europe and how to bridge the divide between Eastern European workers and Western Marxists.
After 1917: Civil war and ‘modernising counter-revolution’
The Russian Revolution not only provides the most far reaching example of a socialist revolution in history, it also changes our understanding of counter-revolution.
South Korean Marxist Economics after Soohaeng Kim
Seongjin Jeong, who is Professor of Economics at Gyeongsang National University, pays tribute to Soohaeng Kim, the “Godfather of Marxist economics” in South Korea. Professor Soohaeng Kim, South Korea’s most well-known Marxist economist, died of a heart attack on 1 August at the age of 72. He is survived by his wife and two sons. […]
IS in the 60s: Building a revolutionary group from the ground up
Colin Barker describes how IS grew from tiny beginnings at Oxford University, and what drew people to the group.
East Germany, 1989: when power was in the street
Within a few weeks in the autumn of 1989 a regime fell which had seemed invulnerable. While Reagan and Thatcher seek to take credit for these events, the truth is that millions of East German people took their destiny into their own hands.