The Monad Unchained
The Nazis conducted their genocide in secret, and took pains to ensure that this secrecy would survive the war. After the failed prisoner uprising of August 2nd, 1943 – when it was already clear to every sentient German that the war was as good as lost – the SS set about dismantling the death factory […]
Spurning the Dust
Hotel Lux: An Intimate History of Communism’s Forgotten Radicals, by Maurice J Casey, Footnote Press, 404 pp, £22, ISBN: 978-804440995 Travellers of the World Revolution: A Global History of the Communist International, by Brigitte Studer, Verso Books, 496 pp, £30, ISBN: 978-1839768019 American Girls in Red Russia: Chasing the Soviet Dream, by Julia L […]
The Case for the State
The largely successful growth of the world economy since 1945, which has seen hundreds of millions of people lifted out of poverty and continuing scientific and technological development, has been based on a system of multilateral global governance developed in the aftermath of World War II. That system of governance, which has been taken for […]
The Nightmare of Gaza
You have been watching for fifteen months now the annihilation of Gaza? You have witnessed the ceaseless cascade of images of desperate families clawing massacred relatives from under astounding mountains of rubble? You have caught glimpses of people scooping body parts into white plastic bags? You have witnessed the shattered shells of what once were […]
Commodity Citizenship
Citizenship is an arbitrary status that to a large extent determines the material conditions of one’s future. More than class, gender or race, it is the most important factor affecting one’s life chances. Put crudely, some passports come with an array of desirable entitlements; others do not.
The Political Anatomy of a Crime
Every conflict in Latin America is, at the heart of it, about land. Land tenure is vital in a region where such a large portion of the population is comprised of small farmers. Without much of a social safety net, land ownership is often the only security against starvation.