For Asad Haider, the fact that people think constitutes the condition of liberation. Yet thinking does not take place in a vacuum. It remains bound to the situations of which it is a part. And these situations are not self-determined but – at least for the time being – largely determined by others. Already at
Matan Kaminer, Capitalist Colonial: Thai Migrant Workers in Israeli Agriculture, Stanford University Press, 2024. Reviewed by Heba Taha As Israel’s genocide against Palestinians in Gaza continued to escalate, many people found themselves feeling either subdued by the imperialist war machine or engaging in wishful thinking about its imminent collapse. While there have been notable and
Dear comrades, On behalf of the steering committee for the Marxism & Disability Network (MDN), we hope you all have been keeping well amidst a year of struggle but also success. To continue efforts that heighten understanding while prefiguring the communities and society we want to live in, the steering committee is excited to announce
In an interview given in 2011, Peter Watkins remarked ‘I don’t think I’ve made a particularly radical film in forty years, not really’,[1] a remark that might surprise those who regarded him as one of the most important left-wing film directors of the second-half of the twentieth century. Watkins’ caution seems here to point to
‘Our subjective horizon is the optimism of the intellect; our objective, structuring condition is pessimism of the will. Without optimism of the intellect, we have the party without the people. Without pessimism of the will, we have the illusion of power. Until we recognize this there is no path for action.’[1] Asad Haider It is
Ciara Cremin, The Spectral Woman: Transfemininity and the Abolition of Gender, Pluto Press, 2025 Reviewed by Cat Moir Wolfe Introduction: the mask of manhood One of the memes on the popular satirical social media profile #manwhohasitall shows a picture of a man (young, white, able-bodied) running along a tarmacked road wearing a grey sports
Nat Raha and Mijke van der Drift, Trans femme futures: Abolitionist ethics for transfeminist worlds. Pluto Press, 2024. Sophie Lewis, Enemy Feminisms: TERFs, Policewomen, and Girlbosses against Liberation. Chicago: Haymarket Books, 2025. Reviewed by Katharina Hunfeld What does the consolidation of far-right power in mainstream politics demand of the Left? On the current terrain
This interview with Shi Yongqin was originally commissioned by Mr. Shen Wentao for Wenyi Yanjiu (文艺研究Literary Research) (monthly) but, for some reason, the journal did not publish it. Wenyi Yanjiu was founded in May 1979. It is a large comprehensive literary theory journal supervised by the Ministry of Culture and hosted by the Chinese Academy
At a time when the lives of trans people, migrant workers, and women, amongst others, are threatened by the far Right, it is important to engage with the demands and analyses of these groups, both on their own terms and as part of the broader struggle against the relations of capital. This necessitates an expansive
A huge thanks to all the participants in the 2025 Historical Materialism London conference. The conference was a huge success with 1,043 presentations and over 1,400 participants. The biggest Historical Materialism London Conference ever! We would like to thank you for this huge commitment to travel (some of you from very far, at great expense,
In der Dämmerung: Studien zur Vor- und Frühgeschichte der Kritischen Theorie (In the Twilight. Studies on the Pre- and Early History of Critical Theory) by Christian Voller, Matthes & Seitz, 2022, 414 pages, German. Reviewed by Jonathan Roessler, Free University Berlin, 2023. Pentecost 1923, Geraberg, a small village on the northern edge of the
Sonja Buckel, Subjectivation and Cohesion, trans. Monika Vykoukal (Brill, 2021) Reviewed by Susan Dianne Brophy From the start, Sonja Buckel faces a difficult task. Although writing “in the tradition of Karl Marx”, she is “diametrically opposed” to the standard line adopted by latter-day Marxist legal theorists, namely that law should be unmasked as ideologically
