BARRY WINTER went to the Critical Politics conference in November, and found a Left still confused about how to respond to new times. Organised by the Signs of the Times collective, the intellectual heirs of Marxism Today, this conference was really back to front. It concluded where it might, more usefully, have begun, with...
A Hill of beans?
BARRY WINTER reviews Anti-Capitalism: The social economy alternative, by Chris Hill, and considers the role of the social economy in creating change, as well as sustaining socialism. This is an intriguing book. Written and, indeed, published by a former, long-standing member of Militant and, at the time of writing, a member of one of...
Hobbes, socialism and human nature
MARTIN JENKINS re-examines the work of Thomas Hobbes to counter the popular prejudice that humans are naturally competitive and aggressive isolationists. Will human nature act as an impediment to socialistic political change? Are we naturally greedy or selfish in seeking to gratify our desires and needs? Thinking people on the ‘left’ maintain that human...
The right to the city
If our urban world has been imagined and made then it can be re-imagined and re-made, says DAVID HARVEY. The city, the noted urban sociologist Robert Park wrote, is: Man’s most consistent and on the whole, his most successful attempt to remake the world he lives in more after his heart’s desire. But, if...