Author: Editorial Board

A Response to Ugo Palheta By Ken Kawashima I want to thank Historical Materialism for allowing me to respond to Ugo Palheta’s article, ‘Fascism, Fascisation, Anti-Fascism’.1 In what follows, I would like to very schematically develop the meaning and implications of these three terms.   On fascism. Ugo defines fascism as ‘a force capable of

Enzo Traverso In recent years, the dramatic rise of extreme right movements on a global scale has put the question of fascism at the core of the political agenda. Fascism is coming back: nobody could seriously pretend that it belongs exclusively to the past as an object of historical study alone, and it has not

The Problems of Tradition By Alex Maguire To paraphrase Marx who, like Lucifer, has all the best lines: a spectre is haunting political discourse – the spectre of the Traditional Working-Class. By Traditional Working-Class (TWC) I do not mean the class itself, instead I mean the typical concept and collection of common misunderstandings that underpins

David Renton   Thanks are owed to Historical Materialism for publishing Palheta’s piece, which is wide-ranging and compelling.1 I have learned from it, and I am sure other readers feel the same. His article begins from an instinct that we have to explain the crisis of the present, rather than merely repeat models developed from the

Mike Haynes and Ilya Afanaysev discuss the problems of understanding ‘national’ identity in pre-capitalist Europe This discussion that follows began as a response to a challenge posted on Facebook which then developed into a set of private exchanges that seem worth making more widely available. The issue is how to understand the idea of national

Ugo Palheta All over the world, from the United States to Brazil and India, Italy and Hungary, the question of fascism has returned to the forefront. Not just because of the advance – or electoral victories – of far-right organisations, but also because of undeniable authoritarian thrusts and accelerating policies of destruction of workers’ rights,

By Alex Maguire Introduction All classes die eventually, the material reality of society shifts as quantitative changes become qualitative changes. Some classes fade away, others are actively removed by an opposing force, for instance the dismantling of Britain’s industrial proletariat under Margaret Thatcher’s leadership. Thus, changes in society’s class structure and the fortunes of each

1 Igor Shoikhedbrod’s reviews of Shlomo Avineri’s and Enzo Traverso’s works on the “Jewish Question”2have sparked a meta-review by Jordy Cummings, who accuses Shoikhedbrod of misrepresenting Traverso.3 Shoikhedbrod and Cummings are invested in these debates and texts for their relevance to contemporary politics, including the recent resurgence of anti-Semitism. The Jewish Question asks how Jews,

Gareth Dale In ‘Thinking Beyond the Lockdown: On the Possibility of a Democratic Biopolitics’,1 Panagiotis Sotiris has provided a critical analysis of the Covid-19 pandemic, covering its pathogenesis, sociology and the implications for socialist strategy. His essay (and, with added emphasis, his social media posts) draw a line in the sand: lockdowns are repressive, iniquitous

Ralf Hoffrogge The German neo-noir television series Babylon Berlin, based loosely on the best-selling novels of Volker Kutscher, has spurred a wave of nostalgia for the1920s since Netflix aired the first season in 2018. In the latest season three, a young woman enters the scene: Marie Louise Seegers, daughter of the highest-ranking General of the