Social Reproduction Theory
Edited by Tithi Bhattacharya
Pluto Press $45
The rise of #MeToo, the anti-rape culture movement in India, the global women’s strike and the pro-choice movements that have rocked Ireland and Argentina reveal a new generation of feminist activists organising for change. Many of the new activists may not have heard the debates from the previous upsurge — the “second wave” of feminism.
Six new books for reds and greens, as recommended by Climate and Capitalist editor Ian Angus.
John Bellamy Foster is editor of Marxist journal Monthly Review, whose books include Marx’s Ecology (2002) and The Ecological Revolution (2009). He spoke to Fiona Ferguson, a Belfast-based activist in People Before Profit. The interview below is posted the Irish socialist website REBEL.
***
Daniel Gasparri, the Charge d’affaires at the Embassy of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, was welcomed here at a 60-strong dinner on August 26, hosted by the Communist Party of Australia.
Is it any wonder polls show 58% of Millennials think of socialism in a positive way? Many are questioning capitalism, for the simple reason they are wondering how they will be able to afford to move out of home. Housing once was a rite of passage in Australia. Now, it is barely considered a human right.
Of the many world-shaking events that took place in 1968, high on the list was the movement for reform in Czechoslovakia to create a democratic socialist alternative to the Stalinist bureaucratic dictatorships that ruled the Soviet bloc. Chris Slee takes a look at the movement, which was dramatically ended by a Soviet Union-led invasion.
On the night of August 20/21, 1968, tanks from the armies of the Soviet Union, Poland, Hungary and Bulgaria rolled into Czechoslovakia. The aim of the invaders was to crush a movement for reform.
Socialist groups and community activists of different stripes have come together under the banner of Victorian Socialists in one of the most ambitious bids in decades to get a socialist elected to state parliament. Green Left Weekly’s Jacob Andrewartha spoke to Stephen Jolly, Victorian Socialists’ lead candidate for the upper house Northern Metropolitan seat, about this initiative.
Last September, while campaigning for the position of Lord Mayor of Newcastle and a ward councillor, I bumped into an NSW Labor Party officer at a coffee shop.
“Comrade”, he said, “You’ve got some great policies”. “Feel free to borrow any of them,” I relied cheekily. “Our housing policy, for example, is based on Socialist Alliance councillor Sue Bolton's work in Moreland, Victoria.”
The next day the local papers reported that ALP candidates were talking up “affordable housing”.
Egyptian-French Marxist academic Samir Amin passed away aged 86 on August 12. The man who introduced the concept of “Eurocentrism” was, writes Nick Dearden, one of the world’s greatest radical thinkers.
Editor of Climate and Capitalism Ian Angus takes a look at five new books of interest to ecosocalists.
***
Monthly Review, July/August 2018
Special double issue on metabolic rifts
Populism Now! The Case for Progressive Populism
David McKnight
New South, 2018
177 pages, rrp $29.99
David McKnight’s Populism Now! catches a wave of discussion about the chances for a progressive “populism”, writes Jonathan Strauss.
Also in the spray, for example, is a June Quarterly Essay piece by the Australia Institute’s Richard Denniss “Dead Right: how neoliberalism ate itself and what comes next” and the previously post-whatever Chantal Mouffe’s musings on “left populism”.
Red-Green Revolution: The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism
Victor Wallis
Political Animal Press 2018