50 years later …
This week marks the 50th anniversary of my first visit to Israel. It was July 1973 and I was one of a group of six members of the Young People’s Socialist League (YPSL) sent to…
Review: Damascus Station, by David McCloskey
Remember a time when the CIA was seen as either the bad guys or at best morally complicated? Back in the Seventies, post-Watergate, if the CIA put in an appearance in a book or film,…
Review: The Russian Revolution and Leninism or Marxism? by Rosa Luxemburg
This is effectively two long articles combined in one small book, and re-reading it after many years, I can now understand it in a different light than before. Rosa Luxemburg has been claimed by many…
Review: Reich for Beginners, by David Zane Mairowitz, illustrated by German Gonzales
A very good introduction — in graphic novel format — to the life and work of Wilhelm Reich, a brilliant psychoanalyst and a man who attempted to reconcile the teachings of Freud and Marx. His…
Review: The Practice and Theory of Bolshevism, by Bertrand Russell
In 1920, when this book first appeared, there were not very many critics of the new Soviet government on the Left (outside of Russia). Anarchists including Emma Goldman visited Russia and came away disenchanted. Rosa…
In Georgia, Chiatura’s miners are once again in struggle
In 1924 a rebellion against Bolshevik rule broke out in western Georgia. The opening shots were fired in the manganese mining town of Chiatura, which had for years stood at the centre of working class…
What Washington can teach London about history
Last week, on a visit to Washington, D.C., I spent some time in two new museums and walked away wondering why we don’t have museums like that in the U.K. The first was the National…
Review: Social Democracy versus Communism, by Karl Kautsky
As the Second World War was coming to an end, anti-Stalinists on the Left found themselves facing a difficult problem. The Soviet Union had won a resounding victory against Nazi Germany. Stalin was widely perceived,…
Review: Smart Brevity: The Power of Saying More with Less, by Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen, and Roy Schwartz
Write shorter sentences. Use one syllable words where possible. That’s the message of this short book, which is padded with lots of empty space, some forgettable graphics and endless advertising for the authors’ software which…
Review: Replay, by Ken Grimwood
If you’ve seen the movies ‘Peggy Sue Got Married’ and ‘Groundhog Day’ you’ve got the plot of Replay. The novel begins with the death of 43-year-old Jeff Winston — who immediately re-awakens a quarter century…