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Blind, dumb logic of capitalism

Posted on January 11th 2010 | No comments

James Turley reviews Mark Bould and China Miéville (eds) Red planets: Marxism and science fiction Pluto, 2009, pp293, £19.99

When English literature departments first arose in Anglo-Saxon academia, their purpose was in some ways relatively well defined. The bourgeoisie, so its political allies in the aristocracy and flunkies among the intelligentsia argued, was culturally bereft; worse, [...]

Review: China Miéville’s ‘The city and the city’

Posted on November 11th 2009 | No comments
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Uncanny detective story
James Turley reviews China Miéville’s The city and the city London 2009, pp312, £17.99
China Miéville is one of the foremost writers in contemporary genre fiction. He is somewhat unique in that, unlike many others, his crossover success has not involved disavowing the generic in favour of the more conventionally ‘literary’ – on the [...]

Review: Darwin’s island: The Galapagos in the garden of England – Steve Jones

Posted on September 11th 2009 | No comments
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Beyond the limits
Huw Sheridan reviews Steve Jones’s Darwin’s island: The Galapagos in the garden of England Little, Brown, 2009, pp307, £20
The anniversarial hype surrounding Charles Darwin continues unabated. The BBC alone broadcast a seemingly endless flow of programmes as part of its Darwin season.
Jones’s book is essentially a polemic against the parody of Darwin’s life [...]

Islam and Rushdie

Posted on August 4th 2009 | No comments
From Fatwa to Jihad

James Turley reviews Kenan Malik’s From fatwa to jihad: the Rushdie affair and its legacy Atlantic, 2009, pp266, £16.99
The year 2009 is the anniversary of many things – the 20th of the collapse of the eastern bloc countries that instigated the final death of a decrepit Stalinism; the 25th of the Miners’ Great Strike; and [...]

Youth and the Police

Posted on July 16th 2009 | No comments

The French town of Firminy has been the scene of rioting sparked by the death of Mohamed Benmouna in police custody. 200 officers were brought in and responded with tear gas and rubber bullets. The unrest began on Tuesday the 7th of July when Mr Benmouna was still alive but in a coma according to [...]

Back to the futurists

Posted on July 10th 2009 | No comments
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Dani Thomas reviews Futurism at Tate Modern
To mark the centenary of the futurist movement, the Tate Modern is now displaying what it describes as a “ground-breaking exhibition”. Despite this bold claim, the experience is actually rather low-key and captures little of the feverish drama of early 20th century Italian modernity.
In 1909, FT Marinetti penned the [...]

Revolutionary subjectivity

Posted on March 26th 2009 | No comments
Popova

Dani Thomas reviews Rodchenko and Popova: defining constructivism, at Tate Modern until May 17

Standing in front of one of Liubov Popova’s astonishing works in her 1918 ‘Painterly architectonics’ series, you get the impression that you are witnessing before your eyes the formation of a brand new aesthetic. The smashed shards of the old order are [...]

Another deadly war

Posted on March 13th 2009 | No comments
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Afghanistan is not the only campaign to be escalated under Obama, writes Ted North

Barack Obama conveniently found god at the time he entered politics. Similarly, as he has risen in politics, his attitude to drugs has become ever more reactionary and opportunist. He was lucky the police did not kick down the door when as [...]

Tolstoy’s literary estate

Posted on February 6th 2009 | No comments
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The last in our series of previously untranslated works by Rosa Luxemburg shows a different side of her output. It was first published in Die Neue Zeit 1912-13, Vol 2, pp97-100. CS member Ben Lewis has been assisting with these translations

Tolstoy’s literary estate, which has been published in German in  three volumes by Ladyschnikow in [...]

Burnt by lies

Posted on January 22nd 2009 | No comments
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Dave Isaacson reviews Mark Steel’s What’s going on? (Simon and Schuster, 2008, pp252, £12.99)

Mark Steel is one of Britain’s most prominent socialist comedians, known not just on the stand-up circuit, but also for his appearances on television and radio (not least his ‘Mark Steel lectures’ series) and as an author. Before this book he had [...]

 
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