John McDonnell, Labour's shadow chancellor of the Exchequer,聽declared Marxism a 鈥渇orce for change today鈥 as he addressed the closing session of a conference in London marking Karl Marx鈥檚 200th birthday on May 5.
McDonnell, a close comrade of Labour's socialist leader Jeremy Corbyn, received stormy applause for a speech in which he paid tribute to the revolutionary thinker and noted that public interest in his ideas had soared since the bankers鈥 crash of 2008.
Climate & Capitalism editor and author of A Redder Shade of Green: Inter一品探花 of Science and Socialism Ian Angus takes a look at six new books on Marx鈥檚 ecosocialist views, climate change and health, theory and action, inevitability versus contingency in evolution, new politics and the meaning of Marx鈥檚 Capital.
Two articles and a video presentation looking at Russia's two revolutions in 1917, Marx and Engels on ecology and Lukacs' views on alienation and class consciousness
鈥淭he general idea of this little book is to understand and explain why Marx will still be read in the twenty-first century, not only as a monument of the past, but as a contemporary author 鈥 contemporary both because of the questions he poses for philosophy and because of the concepts he offers it,鈥 French philosopher Etienne Balibar writes in The Philosophy of Marx.
With some reservations, I feel he achieves this goal. It is a thought-provoking book, but it may disappoint readers who seek either an introduction to Marx鈥檚 philosophy or a straightforward account of how Marx鈥檚 ideas can inspire focused political action in the 21st century.
Eleanor Marx
By Rachel Holmes
Bloomsbury, 2015
508 pages
鈥淚s it not wonderful when you come to look at things squarely in the face, how rarely we seem to practise all the fine things we preach to others?鈥 lamented Eleanor Marx in 1892.聽
Karl Marx鈥檚 youngest daughter was to be the tragic victim of this truism, as Rachel Holmes explores in her biography that extricates this pioneering revolutionary socialist feminist from the giant shadow of her father.
Economist and author of Capital in the 21st Century Thomas Piketty gave a lecture entitled 鈥淚s Increasing Inequality Inevitable?鈥 to a full house at the Sydney Opera House Concert Hall on October 23.
Piketty presented detailed research on growing income inequality compiled by a number of scholars and sourced directly from national taxation and income statistics from primarily advanced capitalist countries, as well as some statistics from a number of the BRICS countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa).
As the world economy spirals down into its deepest crisis since the great depression, the writings of Karl Marx have made a return to the top seller lists in bookstores. In his native Germany, the sales of Marx鈥檚 works have trebled.