Karl Marx

'Marxism a force for change today,' says British Labour shadow chancellor John McDonnell

John McDonnell, Labour's shadow chancellor of the Exchequer,Β declared Marxism a β€œforce for change today” as he addressed the closing session of a conference in London marking Karl Marx’s 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’ crash of 2008.

Six new books for green-lefts and left-greens

Climate & Capitalism editor and author of A Redder Shade of Green: InterΒιΆΉΣ³»­ of Science and Socialism Ian Angus takes a look at six new books on Marx’s ecosocialist views, climate change and health, theory and action, inevitability versus contingency in evolution, new politics and the meaning of Marx’s Capital.

New on Links: Russia's revolutions, Marx and Engels on ecology and Georg Lukacs' legacy

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

An in-depth, if flawed, look at Marx’s philosophy

β€œThe 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 β€” contemporary both because of the questions he poses for philosophy and because of the concepts he offers it,” 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’s philosophy or a straightforward account of how Marx’s ideas can inspire focused political action in the 21st century.

Eleanor Marx: a pioneering socialist-feminist

Eleanor Marx
By Rachel Holmes
Bloomsbury, 2015
508 pages

β€œIs 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?” lamented Eleanor Marx in 1892.Β 

Karl Marx’s 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.

Thomas Piketty speaks in Sydney on inequality

Economist and author of Capital in the 21st Century Thomas Piketty gave a lecture entitled β€œIs Increasing Inequality Inevitable?” 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).

Turnbull's plan to destroy Australian literature

Eight short months ago, much of the population celebrated Malcolm Turnbull's ascension to power. Small-l liberals were drunk with joy and rumour has it that even some self-styled socialists joined the love-in. Turnbull was the Great White Knight who had slain the Abbott Dragon. He would turn the political rudder to the left, so we were told, and we would all live happily ever after. Many writers, no doubt, were also sucked in by this master of spin and his chorus of sycophants. Eight months on, the illusions of those spring days pile up like dead leaves.

Marxism as if the planet mattered

Do oil spills make good economic sense? A witness called by Canadian firm Enbridge Incβ€” which wants approval to build a $6.5 billion pipeline linking Alberta’s tar sands with the Pacific coast β€” in British Columbia that the answer is yes.

A spectre is haunting the internet

If you have consulted Karl Marx for an answer to the recent global economic crisis, you are not alone. Google has confirmed the popularity of Marx’s writings is booming as people around the world try to make sense of increasingly harsh economic conditions. The phenomenon was reported in an article posted at Time.com by Rana Foroohar, who said: β€œI consulted Google to see if the term β€˜Marxism’ was trending upward. It was and has been ever since the end of December.”

Karl Marx the ecologist

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’s works have trebled.