Reviews, art and culture
Review: Engels - A Revolutionary Life
By John Green, Artery Publications, London 2008
Reviewed by Peter Taaffe, Wednesday 4 June 2008
Review: The media lie factory
Flat Earth News by Nick Davies
Reviewed by Peter Taaffe, Wednesday 9 April 2008
Review: The poisoned legacy of British rule in Asia
It is no accident that these books have been produced at this historical juncture.
Peter Taaffe, Socialist Party, cwi England and Wales, Friday 6 July 2007
Review: Rehabilitating Stalin?
Young Stalin by Simon Sebag Montefiore
Review by Peter Taaffe, Friday 29 June 2007
Review: A Soldier's Song: True Stories from the Falklands by Ken Lukowiak
25 anniversary of Falkland Islands/Las Malvinas conflict
Reviewed by Tony Saunois, Monday 25 June 2007
Review: The Writing on the Wall – China and the West in the 21st Century by Will Hutton
An unmistakeable message from Will Hutton’s important book is that China is heading for revolution, although the author merely predicts serious ‘convulsions’.
Peter Taaffe, Socialist Party, Wednesday 7 February 2007
Review: Capitalism Unleashed by Andrew Glyn
Since the early 1980s, world capitalism has followed a trajectory based on globalisation and neo-liberal policies.
Lynn Walsh, editor, Socialism Today, Monday 13 November 2006
Review: 'Storming heaven'
Battle for Spain - The Spanish Civil War of 1936-39 by Anthony Beevor
Peter Taaffe, Socialist Party, England and Wales, Monday 17 July 2006
Review: “European Dawn” by Munkhammar
“Shock therapy to end the welfare state.” New book by Swedish right-wing author finds high praise amongst capitalists.
Per-Åke Westerlund, Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna, Sweden, Sunday 14 May 2006
Review: 1926 General Strike - 9 days that shook Britain by Peter Taaffe
Nine days that shook British capitalism to its foundation.
The Socialist, Friday 12 May 2006
Review: 1926 General Strike - 9 days that shook Britain by Peter Taaffe
;Nine days that shook British capitalism to its foundation.
The Socialist, Friday 12 May 2006
culture: Worldwide “cartoon” uproar
Build a united workers’ movement to fight divisions and capitalism
Robert Bechert, CWI, Tuesday 7 February 2006, Wednesday 8 February 2006
Review: Mao – The Unknown Story by Jung Chang and Jon Halliday
An attempt to discredit the Chinese Revolution and, by association, the ideas of socialism.
Reviewed by Peter Taaffe, Socialist Party, England and Wales, Wednesday 20 July 2005
Review: Lenin’s life rewritten
Lenin by Christopher Read. 4,800 words.
Reviewed by Perter Taaffe, Socialist Party, Tuesday 12 July 2005
Climate change: Can we save the planet?
Capitalism threatens catastrophe
Pete Dickenson, Socialist Party, Monday 04 April 2005
Review: My Side of History by Chin Peng
Memoirs of Malaysian communist guerrilla leader holds many lessons for today
Peter Taaffe, cwi, 4 March 2005
Arthur Miller: Death of a dissenter
Arthur Miller, the American playwright, died on 9 February, aged 89, having battled with cancer, pneumonia and a heart condition.
Tony Mulhearn, Liverpool, 21 February 2005
Environment: Action needed on global warming
The tsunami disaster highlighted the dangers of coastal communities being inundated due to cyclones, floods and extreme weather events.
Pete Dickinson, Socialist Party, England and Wales, 17 January 2005
Science: Tsunamis and warning systems - “We tried to do what we could”
Despite the biblical scale of floods and destruction, the death along the Indian Ocean coastline was no ‘Act of God’.
Jon Dale - Socialist Party (England and Wales), 30 December 2004
Review: Tell Me No Lies, Investigative Journalism and its Triumphs, edited by John Pilger
A collection of some of the greatest pieces of investigative journalism.
Niall Mulholland, cwi, 15 December 2004
Review: Motorcycle diaries
Director Walter Salles and writer Jose Rivera explain the turn in Che Guevara's life that pointed him on the course of revolution.
Dave Reid, 18 November 2004
Environment: Stoking up a disaster
Is there an alternative to global warming?
Pete Dickenson, from The Socialist, Monday 8 November 2004
Review: NHS plc by Allyson Pollock
How the NHS is being taken apart by Allyson Pollock
Alison Hill, Socialist Party, 1 November 2004
New cwi book: a socialist world is possible
The history of the cwi by Peter Taaffe.
socialistworld.net
Review: Why Fahrenheit 9/11 makes Bush fume
It's not surprising that Michael Moore's documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 is storming the US. The film's release coincides with Americans' growing anger at George Bush and his right-wing regime.
Dave Carr, Socialist Party, England and Wales, 19 July 2004
Review: Dare to Struggle, Dare to Win!
Builders Labourers fight deregistration, 1981-94, by Liz Ross.
Stephen Jolly, a shop steward in the CFMEU, 7 June 2004
Review: ‘The Basque Ball’
One of the most controversial and the highest-grossing Spanish films ever
Niall Mulholland., 1 June 2004
Review: How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World by Francis Wheen
The shallowness and class basis of the current counter-enlightenment.
Julian Wilson, Socialist Party, England and Wales, 7 May 2004
Women in science: ”She was a great man”
Emilie du Chatelet and the nature of energy
Roy Farrar, Socialist Party, England and Wales, 6 May 2004
Film review: Goodbye Lenin
A political love story set in East Germany in 1989.
Stephen Jolly, Socialist Party, Australia, 10 February 2004
Review: Empire defeated by Peter Taaffe
Vietnam war - the lessons for today. Interview with Peter Taaffe and extract from book
From The Socialist, 22 November 2003
Review: Is this how to dump Bush?
”Dude, Where’s my country?” by Micael Moore
Alison Hill, Socialist Party, England and Wales, 23 October 2003
Review Fears about anti-capitalism beset The Economist
Infuential right wing magazine right to be anxious.
Per-Åke Westerlund, Rättvisepartiet Socialisterna (CWI Sweden), 5 October 2003
Review: The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists by Robert Tressell
A condemnation of the horrors of capitalism
Roy Farrar, 16 September 2003
Science and big business: Genetic 'Engineering', 'modification' or change?
JOHN DALE puts forward a socialist approach to genetic 'engineering'.
From The Socialist, paper of the Socialist Party, CWI in England and Wales, 5 August 2003
Review: George Monbiot's utopia - capitalism unchallenged
The Age of Consent - A Manifesto for a New World Order by George Monbiot.
Peter Taaffe, from The Socialist, Monday 14 July 2003
Science "There's a woman out there asking questions!"
Cecilia Payne's work on the physics of stars went against the orthodoxy of the male hierarchy and was ignored.
Roy Farrar, from The Socialist, Wednesday 7 July 2003
George Orwell Facing up to the contradictions
The centenary of the birth of George Orwell has been widely commemorated.
Michael Calderbank and Keith Ellis, from The Socialist. 30 June 2003
Review: Dreaming War
Blood for Oil and the Cheney-Bush Junta by Gore Vidal.
THIS IS a tremendous follow up to Gore Vidal's equally impressive Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace published last year.
Peter Taaffe, 11 May 2003
Review: Power and Terror by Noam Chomsky
NOAM CHOMSKY'S Power and Terror is an attack on the hypocrisy and double standards of US foreign policy. It explains why US imperialism is loathed by so many people; because it interferes in international politics not to assist human rights but simply to help itself.
Mark Degranges. From The Socialist.
Science: DNA
It is exactly 50 years since one of the greatest scientific breakthroughs of the twentieth century - the working out of the structure of the DNA molecule.
Geoff Jones, Socialist Party, CWI England and Wales, 21 April 2003
Max Beckmann: Bleak artist of war and reaction
A major retrospective of the work of the 20th Century painter Max Beckmann (1884-1950) is currently running at the Tate Modern in London. Given the exhibition's major concern with war and violent conflict, the timing could hardly be more apt as we approach a likely bloody imperialist war in the Middle East.
Niall Mulholland, CWI, London, 16 March 2003.
Fences and Windows by Naomi Kliene
IN FENCES and Windows, the No Logo author gives a series of 'frontline dispatches' - newspaper articles and speeches - following the 'coming out party' of the anti-capitalist movement in Seattle two years ago.
Sarah Mayo, from The Socialist, 8 December 2002
Rabbit Proof Fence
THE FILM Rabbit Proof Fence is based on the true story of three girls' trek across 1,500 miles of Australian outback in 1931. However, the film is not just the story of an incredible feat of human endurance across inhospitable terrain.
Kieran Roberts, from The Socialist, 18 November 2002
The Dancer Upstairs, directed by John Malkovich
The Dancer Upstairs is set in an unnamed Latin America country in the recent past and concerns the attempts of a policeman, Agustin Rejas (played by Javier Bardem), to capture the elusive guerrilla leader who calls himself Ezequiel. Scripted by Nicholas Shakespeare from his novel of the same title, the movie is based on the real life hunt for the mysterious head of the Shining Path guerrilla movement in Peru during the 1990s.
Niall Mulholland, CWI, 4 November 2002.
Exhibition: Soviet Graphics - States of Illusion
An exhibition of Soviet posters from 1917 to 1989. Tate Modern Museum, London.
3,000 words and 5 pictures (approx 205k).
Niall Mulholland, CWI, 3 November 2002.
Empire - A new Communist Manifesto?
There are few books of political theory that have received such widespread publicity as Empire by Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri. It has been described as 'neo-Marxist', a handbook for the anti-capitalist movement, and even lauded as the 'new Communist Manifesto'. The book, however, is neither a Communist Manifesto for the 21st Century nor a piece of work that seriously analyses global capitalism and its contradictions.
Per Olsson, RS, the Swedish section of the CWI. Posted on 24 October 2002.
The cost of America's war machine
Perpetual War For Perpetual Peace - How We Got To Be So Hated, by Gore Vidal.
THIS BOOK is a searing indictment of the US war machine and internal repressive state apparatus. Gore Vidal doesn't in any way condone the methods of terrorism, but tries to explain why 9/11 occurred and why Timothy McVeigh blew up a federal building in Oklahoma killing 168 people.
From The Socialist, 13 October 2002.
Obituary. Joan Littlewood - radical theatre director
Joan Littlewood, the radical theatre innovator who transformed British drama in the 1950s and 1960s, died on 20 September, aged 87.
Niall Mullholland, CWI, 26 September 2002.
Review. "Rogue State" by William Blum.
BLAIR CLAIMS that his "dossier" on Iraq justifies the US and Britain going to war and forcing a 'regime change'. "Rogue State, a guide to the world's only superpower" by William Blum, is a "dossier" on US imperialism..
John Sharpe. From The Socialist.
Palestine – Still the issue
Unusually for a major broadcasting company, ITV in Britain aired an excellent analysis of the conflict in Israel/Palestine on Monday 15 September (albeit at a very late hour). The programme was made by John Pilger, an outstanding investigative journalist and filmmaker, who has previously exposed the crimes of the Suharto regime in Indonesia against the people of Timor, amongst other topics.
Chris Newby, Socialist Party, England and Wales section of the CWI. 19 Septempber 2002
Socialism in the 21st century by Hannah Sell
This book offers a devastating attack on conditions of life in Britain and the world today and is full of useful facts which demonstrate the barbarity of the capitalist system. But this book is much more than that. Page by page, in everyday language, an argument is constructed which leaves you with one irresistible conclusion - we need to organise to fight for socialism.
Paula Mitchell. From The Socialist, weekly paper of the Socialist Party, England and Wales section of the CWI
How US capitalism causes poverty
IT IS scandal time again for US capitalism as the Worldcom accounting fraud follows hot on the heels of the Enron collapse. Xerox also find their accountants can’t actually count. Against this highly topical background comes a series of articles by the investigative journalist Gregory Palast in his book The Best Democracy Money Can Buy.
Clive Bomford, 4 July 2002. This article first appeared in the The Socialist
Victor Serge: an outstanding socialist fighter and writer
A socialist activist in several countries, revolutionary journalist par excellence, novelist, and poet – Victor Serge was a man of huge talents.
Niall Mulholland, CWI, 16 June 2002
Islam, a thousand years of faith and power
By Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair. Islam is the fastest growing religion in the US and rivals Christianity worldwide: "'They' are now 'us'," is how Jonathan Bloom and Sheila Blair put it. They call for a greater understanding of Islam in the West and denounce the victimisation of Muslims in the wake of 11 September.
Manny Thain, 6 June 2002
Senoir Service by Carlo Feltrinelli
Errant son of the Italian ruling class who called for revolution. Amid the recent upturn in class struggle in Italy, and the alleged reappearance of the Red Brigades armed campaign earlier this year, the recent publication on the life of Giangiacomo Feltrinelli could hardly be timelier. Senoir Service charts the rise and successes of the radical Feltrinelli publishing house in the post-war period, as well as its founder’s pivotal, and eventually fatal, role in the underground leftwing terrorist groups during the early 1970s.
Niall Mulholland, 6 June 2002
Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy by Noreena Hertz
Noreena Hertz has made a remarkable political evolution from 'free market' evangelist in Russia to become a prominent critic of globalisation. LAURENCE COATES looks at the arguments in her book, The Silent Takeover: Global Capitalism and the Death of Democracy which, when published last year, led to her being dubbed 'the British Naomi Klein'.
5 June 2002
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