Barry Healy

Federal minister for the environment Greg Hunt faces two big threats to waste reduction in Australia, but appears not to be aware of the problems. Hunt boasted on March 6 about the effectiveness of the National Television and Computer Recycling Scheme. Australia had recycled “the equivalent of four Eiffel Towers in weight” of used televisions, computers and other electronic waste, he said. However, growing piles of e-waste on the ground in Queensland show that Hunt is out of touch with reality. Australia is amassing e-waste with no plan for recycling it.

Sense & Sensibility, an Annotated Edition By Jane Austen (edited by Patricia Meyer Spacks) Harvard University Press 2013 448 pp, $54.95 The Annotated Frankenstein By Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (edited by Susan J. Wolfson & Ronald Levao) Harvard University Press 2012 400pp., $45.00 In January, federal education minister Christopher Pyne announced that he wants the national school history curriculum to recognise “the legacy of Western civilisation”.

Spartacus (Revealing Antiquity) By Aldo Schiavone (translation by Jeremy Carden) Harvard University Press, 2013 208 pp., $29.95 Karl Marx was a great admirer of ancient Roman and Greek philosophers and leaders. However, there was one he singled out as the “finest fellow antiquity had to offer”: Spartacus, the Thracian who led the most significant slave revolt against the Roman empire. Marx was not the only member of the Spartacus fan club. German Communists led by Rosa Luxemburg named their party after him.

Alienation: An Introduction to Marx’s Theory By Dan Swain Bookmarks, 2012 The human race lives in a terrible contradiction. Quite obviously, there is enough wealth to create a decent life for every person on the planet. Yet, billions suffer deprivation and are denied basic human rights so that the capitalist profit-making system can maintain itself.

Haiti’s New Dictatorship: The Coup, the Earthquake & the UN Occupation Justin Podur Pluto Press, 2012 280 pp, $44.00 There seems to be no lie too base, no crime too awful that the “international community” has not committed against the tiny nation of Haiti ― the poorest country in the western hemisphere. Canadian solidarity activist Justin Podur explains in exacting detail every slander and misrepresentation peddled by imperialist governments and retailed by the Western media to justify the continuing denial of Haitian sovereignty that began in 2004.

The Big Truck That Went By, How the World Came to Save Haiti and left Behind a Disaster By Jonathan M. Katz Palgrave Macmillan, 2013 282 pp., $24.95 On January 12, 2010, Haiti, one of the poorest countries in the world, was devastated by a huge earthquake. Death toll estimates range from between 100,000 to more than 300,000. Nobody really knows, because Haiti was poorly governed beforehand and virtually taken over by foreign governments and non-government organisations (NGOs) afterwards.

Karl Marx: A Nineteenth Century Life Jonathan Sperber Liveright Publishing, 2013 In life, Karl Marx lived a tumultuous, revolutionary life. His death, too, has been less than tranquil. Alive, he was the best hated man in Europe. For the ruling classes and police spies he personified the “spectre” that was haunting the continent, the demonic rise of workers’ revolution. After his death he was bleached of his humanity, canonised by admirers and slandered by enemies. Both misrepresented him.

Love & Struggle, My Life in SDS, the Weather Underground & Beyond By David Gilbert, PM Press, 2012 336 pp, $22.00 From the earliest anti-capitalist revolutions, starting almost as soon as capitalism cemented its political mastery of Europe in the late 1700s, there has been dispute between those whose moral outrage at oppression led them to conspiratorial methods and those saying that open political struggle is superior. Originally this debate was between the Blanquists and Marxists and later between Bakuninite anarchists and (again) Marxists.

Toussaint Louverture: The Story of the Only Successful Slave Revolt in History; A Play in Three Acts CLR James, edited by Christian Hogsbjerg Duke University Press 2013 222 pp., $47.99 Hegel, Haiti & Universal History Susan Buck-Moss University of Pittsburgh Press 2009 176 pp., $89.99 “I was born a slave, but nature gave me the soul of a free man,” said Toussaint Louverture, the leader of the successful Haitian slave revolt of 1791 to 1804.

The Condition of the Working Class, A Documentary Film By Mike Wayne & Deirdre O’Neill Inside Film 2012 www.conditionoftheworkingclass.info In the 1840s, when Frederick Engels went to Manchester to take up his duties of administering his father’s cotton milling enterprise, he discovered the dreadful conditions in which the city’s workers lived.

Northern Ireland: The Reluctant Peace Feargal Cochrane Yale University Press, 2013 368 pp, $38.00 Reginald Maudling, the Tory Home Secretary who oversaw the 1972 Bloody Sunday massacre in Northern Ireland, perfectly expressed the British ruling class’s blend of condescension and indifference towards Ireland when he blurted out to his staff: “For God’s sake bring me a large Scotch — what a bloody awful country.” As his policies created mayhem on the streets of Ulster, he coined the cute phrase “acceptable level of violence” to describe what was going on.

Black Against Empire, the History & Politics of the Black Panther Party Joshua Bloom and Waldo E. Martin Jr, University of California Press, 2013, 560 pp., $54.95 The United States in the 1960s was a tinderbox of unresolved racial tensions. With Jim Crow racism dominating the South and oppressive police patrolling the northern ghettos, Martin Luther King’s Civil Rights Movement ignited hopes for change nation-wide.