Reviews

Clare Fester reviews a new book that looks at the history of Jewish working class radicalism and struggle that Zionism has sought to hide.

Abortion access still faces barriers due to sexist system

Barbara Baird has written extensively on abortion law and politics. In this book, she examines the state of abortion provision in Australia in a history of reproductive health since 1990.

Whitlam’s three years show women can’t rely on Labor

What a state concedes, a state can take back. This book is an argument for a new women’s movement.

Truganini: the apocalypse hasn’t ended

Cassandra Pybus’s book, Truganini, highlights the damning treatment and decimation of First Nations in lutruwita—now known as Tasmania.

Lifting the lid on how ‘social security’ offers no security at all

It’s timely that Who Cares? has landed in our bookshops just as public hearings by the Robodebt Royal Commission wind up this month.

When the Wiradyuri fought colonial capitalist land theft

Stephen Gapps’ book Gudyarra is a compelling account of the opening phase of the genocidal invasion of Wiradyuri lands by British imperialism and the fierce anti-colonial insurgency waged by Wiradyuri people.

LA’s 1960s rebellion a guide to the fire next time

Contrary to the popular perception of Los Angeles as a youth paradise, with surfing and an “endless summer” of partying, LA in the 1960s was a hothouse of activism. The book Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties by American Marxist Mike Davis and Jon Wiener is its history.

Funding public health the alternative to lockdowns

Chip Le Grand’s Lockdown is a fascinating look at the politics of COVID-19, focused on the experience of lockdown in Victoria.

Resisting the draft: lessons for anti-war activists

We can draw inspiration and a dose of realistic expectations from the early resisters and peace activists, writes Steven Kwon.

Lessons from the fight to save the Franklin

Franklin is a beautiful film about the seven-year campaign to save Tasmania’s World Heritage-listed Franklin River from the construction of a hydroelectric dam.

Refugees are still alive, still fighting a horror system

The NSW’s Premier’s Literary Awards 2022 Book of the Year, Still Alive: Notes from Australia’s Immigration Detention System, illustrates the horrors and depravity of Australia’s refugee detention system.

Barber authors give corporate universities a hair cut

In writing The Barber Who Read History, Rowan Cahill and Terry Irving provide an alternative radical philosophy and politics of writing history. Along the way, they provide a damning critique of the neoliberal university.

Can we teach an end to racism?

The ABC miniseries The School That Tried to End Racism documents a class of primary school students in Sydney in an experimental program designed to root out unconscious racial bias.

Australia’s refugee cruelty exposed by one man’s daring escape

Escape from Manus, by Jaivet Ealom, is an incredible story of determination, cunning and sheer luck that tears apart the Coalition’s lies about refugees. It is a book you can’t put down—sharp and clear on the politics of Australia’s refugee cruelty.

SOS: the women who helped derail war in Vietnam

Five members of Melbourne SOS were arrested during a second sit-in in 1971 at the Department of Labour and National Service. When these “mothers” spent 11 days over Easter at Fairlea women’s prison it was a public relations disaster for the government.

Pressure cooker valve: the AFL and the business of sport

Michael Warner’s book The Boys’ Club sets out to examine the inner workings of the Australian Football League (AFL)—run as a particularly obnoxious capitalist business.

Alternative to the anti-China xenophobia and militarism

David Brophy’s book China Panic is a timely intervention into the growing nationalist hysteria about China.

Art: a window to a world of liberation

"Art constitutes an important part of what it means to be human and is intertwined with the struggle for human liberation." Melanie Lazarow reviews The Dialectics of Art.

Vida Goldstein: pioneer in the fight against sexism and poverty

Vida Goldstein was a leading Australian suffragette and campaigner for women’s rights in the late 19th and early 20th century who courageously challenged the prevailing sexism in society.

How the FBI murdered the ‘Black messiah’—revolutionary Fred Hampton

This new film narrates Black Panther Fred Hampton's attempts to build a multiracial working class revolutionary movement in the US, as well as how the FBI spied brutally assassinated him.

Attenborough’s ‘A life on our planet’ is no guide for climate action

Focusing on his extraordinary career documenting the natural world from 1954 to the present day, David Attenborough’s Netflix documentary A life on our planet is a plea for action...

Vere Gordon Childe: the Australian activist who explained what happened in history

Radical historian Terry Irving’s new biography of Vere Gordon Childe is an important contribution to understanding the Left in Australia. Irving uncovers Childe’s two careers, the first as a...

A window into the upsurge for Women’s Liberation

Brazen Hussies shines a light on the Women’s Liberation Movement in Australia in the 1960s and 1970s.

Blaming white workers for racism lets our rulers off the hook

White Fragility is feeding a market hungry for ideas about how to join the fight against racism since the recent Black Lives Matter protests rocked the world.

Legacy of Labor leaders Scullin and Curtin no model for today

This new book by Liam Byrne covers the making of Labor by following the careers of two men later to become Prime Minister—James Scullin and John Curtin.

Socialism and transgender liberation

Pan Karanikolas reviews a new book on transgender oppression that argues winning the working class to the fight against oppression is the key to dismantling it

A Green New Deal requires a frontal challenge to capitalism

Naomi Klein’s new book taps into a growing sentiment around the need for large-scale social transformation in response to the climate crisis.

The anti-austerity politics of Joker

Joker is a powerful indictment of austerity and its effects on those at the bottom of society.

Exposing state secrets—and the danger of the US alliance

Journalist Brian Toohey has spent decades investigating the secrets of Australia “security state”, embarrassing ASIO, Defence officials and successive governments.

A dream betrayed by racism and exclusion

The Australian Dream is a powerful documentary on racism in Australia, but it misses an opportunity to also expose the racist nature of Australian nationalism.

Glorifying the butchery of the Vietnam War

There are a lot of books written about the Battle of Long Tan that try to portray the battle as a victory for the Australian military. Now there is a film, Danger Close.

The proud union history of defying the law—needed now more than ever

“Our movement’s most important achievements were won by breaking unjust laws, because it has nearly always been illegal to take strike action”, writes ACTU Secretary Sally McManus in her...

Calling out the dead end of ‘smug’ identity politics

Jeff Sparrow’s Trigger Warnings argues that the left’s abandonment of mass organising and its commitment to identity politics has allowed the right to gain ground in the US and Australia.

Spike Lee’s BlacKkKlansman film is a call to arms for anti-racists

BlacKkKlansman, the new Spike Lee film, couldn’t come at a better time. It is a powerful anti-racist roar to action against the rise of the far right.

Agriculture and the first states

The emergence of agriculture and the first states were among the most dramatic changes in human history. James C. Scott has produced an accessible and thought provoking account of how the first states arose and functioned.

Capitalism and the social source of mental distress

Iain Ferguson’s new book is a useful examination of the current worldwide mental health crisis, and a detailed history of the understanding of mental distress from Freud, to the anti-psychiatry movement of the 1960s and 1970s, to the psychiatrists’ handbook the DSM-5.

After the Apology—Aboriginal communities fight back against continuing Stolen Generations

Larissa Behrendt’s film, After the Apology, explores the consequences of intergenerational trauma caused by forced removal and the fightback from Grandmothers Against Removals—women campaigning to get their kids back from the child protection system.

New sinews of working class power

American socialist Kim Moody’s important new book on the restructuring of capital in the past four decades argues that the working class, far from disappearing, has renewed potential power, writes Mark L Thomas.

Dangerous, hackneyed rubbish: don’t watch Romper Stomper

There is a lot wrong with the new adaptation of Romper Stomper, but the worst part is its fanciful and dangerous representation of anti-fascists, and Muslim and African youths.

The hidden history of the disability rights movement

Defiant Lives, a documentary by Australian filmmaker Sarah Barton, charts the history of a relatively unknown struggle against oppression: the disability rights movement.

Dissecting the moral panic over Safe Schools

Benjamin Law’s Quarterly Essay “Moral Panic 101” is a timely dissection of the 2016 backlash against the Safe Schools program, the non-compulsory set of resources that schools could use to progress toward eliminating LGBTI school bullying.

Don’t let the bastards grind you down

The Handmaid’s Tale is dystopian TV with great timing. A story of women’s oppression and state violence, it presents as a powerful warning—and a call to arms—against political complacency in the Trump era.

Temporary migration in Australia under the microscope

Peter Mares’ book, published mid-last year, argues there has been a significant shift towards temporary visas away from permanent migration in Australia. He sets out to uncover the impact on temporary migrants, who can go years living in uncertainty without the rights held by other workers.

Fossil fuelled capitalism pushing Earth system into unknown

Ian Angus’ new book Facing the Anthropocene will aid anyone who wants to fight governments that put profit before planet. It will serve as an introduction for many activists to the scientific concept of the Anthropocene—a new geological era that has no analogue in the Earth’s history.

Imperialism in the Pacific: Does the US want war on china?

John Pilger’s new film exposes the ruthless US military buildup against China, but also refuses to let the Chinese government off the hook, writes Mark Gillespie

SBS documents racism in Australia that isn’t fading away

Journalist Ray Martin’s documentary, part of SBS’s “Face up to Racism” week, exposes the racism of everyday life in Australia. But it fails to target the source of racism in Australia in government and major institutions, and show how we can fight it.

Moonlight, a black gay film in hiding from itself

Ffor all the accolades and praise it has received so far, there really isn’t that much to Moonlight. One Guardian review proclaims “Moonlight portrays black gay life in its joy, sadness and complexity”. It’s hard to agree.

Murder at Myall Creek—whitewashing the real history of the massacre

Because there were two trials of the men responsible for the Myall Creek massacre, it is perhaps the most well documented atrocity in the long, genocidal war against Aboriginal people that stretched into the 20th century.

Ford exposes a sexist society, but how do we fight it?

Feminist and media personality Clementine Ford’s first book Fight Like a Girl has gained enormous attention since its publication in October.

Instrument of power: How Mitchell’s Australian shaped a ruling class agenda

It’s often said that journalism is the first rough draft of history. But when a book is by a very senior Murdoch journalist, you have to wonder whose history...

‘Poofter bashing’ was a sport, and police were in the game

A swathe of murders rocked the LGBT community in Sydney in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s. So it was encouraging when SBS announced a series, Deep Water, focusing on the killings. The drama, however, is extremely disappointing.

The Boer War—Australian atrocities for empire

The hellholes on Manus Island and Nauru can trace their lineage from Australia’s participation in the world’s first concentration camps—more than 100 years ago on the South African veldt.

Lessons from women’s liberation in the US

She’s Beautiful When She’s Angry, originally released in 2014, has played to dozens of sold out screenings in Australia, and is now streaming on Netflix.

Only traces on show of Rivera and Kahlo’s revolutionary art

Anyone who has heard of Diego Rivera’s stunning and controversial murals, or of Frida Kahlo’s intense explorations of oppression and sexuality will want to see the Art Gallery of NSW exhibition featuring the two Mexican artists.

Exposing a racist history but conflicted on solutions for today

Stan Grant’s book is a memoir, a conflicted memoir that sometimes reads like he is talking to himself, as much as he is talking to his country.

Must see insight into the reality of offshore detention

Chasing Asylum provides a powerful and emotional look at the human impact of Australia’s cruelty to refugees.

Spotlight: powerful expose of elite’s collusion in Church abuse

The film Spotlight is a true story about the Boston Globe newspaper’s investigative reporting team and its campaign in 2001 to uncover widespread, systemic child abuse by Catholic priests in Massachusetts.

Inside the banking scam that produced a global crash

The Big Short blows the whistle on the catastrophe and madness of a system run by bankers and profiteers.

There’s no Cowspiracy—fossil fuels are the main climate threat

Al Gore has gone vegan and actor Leonardo Di Caprio has thrown his name behind a new film, Cowspiracy, which suggests that all we have to do to stop climate change is stop eating meat. Is that really all there is to it?

Foreclosed futures: the brutality of US crisis in 99 Homes

In her book A Dream Foreclosed, Laura Gottesdiener calls the foreclosures and evictions of millions of American households since the start of the financial crisis “one of the longest...

Klein film foregrounds fight for the climate, but skirts what we’re up against

This Changes Everything was screened around the world in the lead up to December’s climate summit in Paris to promote the People’s Climate March. The focus of the film is the front-line struggles around the world against fossil fuel expansion and exploitation.

Understanding the rise and fall of Syriza

Through all the twists and turns of the last six months, Kevin Ovenden has been a key source of English-language updates on the Syriza government and events taking place in Greece. Now he has produced one of the first detailed accounts of the events that made the radical left’s rise to government possible, and Syriza’s rapid capitulation to EU-imposed austerity.

Holding the Man: Life beyond homophobia

Though Holding the Man is a tragic tale, it’s also a story of hope and pride. The film is based on the play adaptation of Timothy Conigrave’s 1994 memoir of the same name.

Gayby Baby: The kids are alright

The furore over schools screening Gayby Baby has made one thing clear. If it were up to the vast majority of us, we would shake off the idiocy of homophobia and move right along.

More blood won’t solve the Middle East crisis

Former Australian army officer David Kilcullen has become a widely cited establishment expert on counter-terrorism. A hired gun for western imperialism, Kilcullen likes to present himself as the thinking person’s warmonger.

Boundless Plains—but not for sharing

Ian Rintoul looks at Across the Seas, a new book on the history of Australia’s response to asylum seekers and finds a disturbing continuity with the racism of today

More than a Score—Lessons from a teacher rebellion

Lucy Honan looks at a new book on the growing rebellion against standardised testing and the cuts to public education in the US

Hell-Bent on slaughter for empire: Australia in WWI

On the eve of the outbreak of World War I, the British Cabinet was deeply divided. While PM Herbert Asquith was for war against Germany, a large proportion of the Cabinet members were opposed.

Selma a reminder of the justice still to be won

In official US history, the civil rights movement has been emptied it of its radical content.Martin Luther King now gets a national holiday and is celebrated for non-violence...

Workers and Egypt’s unfinished counter-revolution

If you want to understand the social processes and economic contradictions which led to the Egyptian revolution in 2011, read this book. It also explains why the military is back in charge and waging a counter-revolution, but never suggests this was the inevitable outcome.

Sickening piece of propaganda for US power

It was incredibly hard to watch American Sniper. The prospect of a two-hour long justification—or, more accurately, glorification—of the Iraq war was not particularly exciting.

‘The people who help asylum seekers the most are people smugglers’

Confessions of a People-Smuggler is a confronting, and revealing book. Dawood Amiri, a Hazara, tells his story of fleeing from the Taliban’s targeted killings in Quetta in Pakistan, to getting involved in people smuggling in Indonesia to fund his own trip to Australia by boat.

Backing bloodshed a long Labor tradition

Bill Shorten’s uncritical support for Tony Abbott’s renewed war in Iraq has handed the Liberals the political initiative and horrified many Labor voters. But his unquestioning approval of the rush to war has deep precedents in the ALP tradition.

Climate action requires challenging capitalism

Naomi Klein’s new book is a welcome intervention into climate politics. There is a hunger for serious responses to climate change. Over 2000 people turned up to Klein’s book launch in London.

Not a Class Act: McKew joins the education wars

Maxine McKew’s Class Act is sub-headed “Ending the Education Wars”. But it’s actually another shot in the war against teachers and poor, working class public school kids. There’s nothing...

Inspiring story shows how solidarity breaks down divisions

Pride is the brilliant and true story of Lesbians and Gays Support the Miners, a solidarity group set up to raise money for British miners during their historic strike of 1984-1985.

Exposing the phoney ‘deaths at sea’ argument

There is a strong sense of déjà vu for refugee rights activists. Many of the battles waged against the Howard government, like opposing long-term detention and Temporary Protection Visas,...

An outsider in his own country

Charlie’s country is a beautifully shot and brutally honest portrayal of life under apartheid in the Northern Territory.

Files that give a glimpse of what ASIO was up to

Meredith Burgmann’s new book Dirty Secrets brings together chapters from left activists and other well known Australians written after accessing their own files.

Racism—just a laughing matter in Jonah from Tonga

Award-winning comedian Chris Lilley is back with six-part “mockumentary”, Jonah From Tonga, following the life of Year 9 student Jonah Takalua. But Jonah from Tonga is a racist travesty.

Witness to the torture on Nauru

Mark Isaacs spent almost a year as a Salvation Army worker on Nauru. The Undesirables is his compelling firsthand account of the horror, injustice and disaster of offshore detention.

Hitchens on trial: Islam, religion and the left

Richard Seymour’s latest book Unhitched: The Trial of Christopher Hitchens exposes one of the most celebrated public intellectuals of the last 30 years.

Full savagery of black slavery captured on film

Based on the life of Solomon Northup, published as a book in 1853, Twelve Years a Slave is a serious attempt to deal with the substance of slavery.

Mary and Mohammad both in the same boat

Heather Kirkpatrick's documentary, Mary Meets Mohammad, captures two worlds colliding in “Australia’s least multicultural town” of Pontville, where Tasmania’s first refugee detention centre was opened in mid-2011.

One of 20th century’s greatest crimes: Inside Indonesia’s anti-Communist purge

The Act of Killing, Directed by Joshua Oppenheimer

Legally Brown—not much to laugh at

Legally Brown, SBS One

Inside the world of the corporate vultures

Antony Loewenstein’s latest book explores the corrupt and destructive alliances between governments and multi-national corporations. Loewenstein labels this vulture capitalism, where unaccountable corporations are more powerful than states and...

Undesirable alien: Zuzenko and the early days of the Communist Party of Australia

Undesirable: Captain Zuzenko and the workers of Australia and the world Kevin Windle, Australian Scholarly Press $39.95 RRPAlexander Zuzenko arrived in Brisbane in 1911, exiled after taking part in the 1905...

Night Games: An apology for football rape

Night Games Anna Krien Penguin, $29.95Anna Krien has achieved something quite remarkable with her terrible new book, Night Games: Sex, Power and Sport.She set out to write a “balanced and fearless...

Latin America’s new left governments—on the road to socialism?

Latin America’s Turbulent Transitions By Roger Burbach, Michael Fox and Federico Fuentes Zed Books $34.95The new millennium has seen the rise of new left governments across Latin America, from the more...

An apology for American wars and racism

The Reluctant Fundamentalist Directed by Mira Nair Coming to DVDMira Nair’s film The Reluctant Fundamentalist is particularly outrageous viewing in light of the racist backlash to the Woolwich murder. Nair’s protagonist...

Weather Underground: dead end strategy for fighting US power

The Company You Keep Directed by Robert Redford In cinemas nowThe political commotion of the late 1960s and early ‘70s gave rise to many radical organisations, including America’s Weathermen, whose ex-members...

Marx’s theory of alienation: A world where workers have no control

Alienation: an introduction to Marx’s theory by Dan Swain BookmarksThis useful little book provides a very good introduction to Marx’s theory of alienation.For Marxists, the term alienation has a special...

Dead Wrong: Latham’s recipe for killing what’s left of Labor

“Not dead yet: Labor’s post-left future” Quarterly Essay 49 By Mark Latham, Black Inc $19.99Former leader of the Labor Party, Mark Latham, has made a name for himself as a...

Understanding the economic crisis: putting profit rates at the centre

The Failure of Capitalist Production By Andrew Kliman, Pluto Press $39.95Since 2007 the world economy has faced its most serious crisis since the 1930s. Its ongoing failure to recover suggests...

World War II—people’s war or class war?

A People’s History of the Second World War By Donny Gluckstein Pluto Press $35 from SolidarityDonny Gluckstein’s A People’s History of the Second World War illuminates a crucial distinction that has long...

Fighting the market in schools: lessons from US teachers

The Future of Our Schools Lois Weiner Haymarket Books $24The nauseating consensus between Gillard and the Liberal premiers over education policy, where they all agree that teachers are to blame for...

Debating a one state solution for Palestine

After Zionism: One State for Israel and Palestine Edited by Antony Loewenstein and Ahmed Moor Saqi BooksIn their collection of essays After Zionism editors Antony Loewenstein and Ahmed Moor rightly argue,...

Mythologising Lincoln’s opposition to slavery

Lincoln Directed by Steven Spielberg In cinemas nowSteven Spielberg’s Lincoln is a fantastically rendered account of the passage of the 13th Constitutional Amendment which outlawed slavery once and for all. It...

The myths behind Zionism’s claim to Palestine

The Invention of the Jewish People By Shlomo Sand Verso, $25“Zionism is the Jewish national movement of rebirth and renewal in the land of Israel—the historical birthplace of the Jewish people....

Argo: flawlessly reproducing US propaganda on Iran

Argo, Ben Affleck’s gripping, highly entertaining and commercially successful thriller, depicts a little-known episode within the infamous 444-day hostage crisis that followed the Iranian Revolution. Without ...

Chomsky’s “Occupy” reflects the good and the bad

Occupy By Noam Chomsky $9.95, PenguinOccupy by Noam Chomsky is the first of the Zuccotti Park Press/Occupied Media Pamphlet Series produced by the US Occupy movement. The short book is a...

Sexual liberation and the politics of pornography

Money Shot: A Journey into Porn and Censorship By Jeff Sparrow $29.95, ScribeThe left is tangled up in knots over the politics of pornography. Left-wing academics like Clive Hamilton are trying...

The Casual Vacancy exposes middle class prejudice

The Casual Vacancy J.K Rowling Little Brown and Company $39.95 (Hardback)It may not be as “socialist” as Britain’s Daily Mail thinks, but JK Rowling’s new novel lays bare the class divide in...

Go Back shows (again) that we can challenge ideas

Go Back To Where You Came From season two was filmed in early 2012, but the timing of its showing, two weeks after federal parliament endorsed the Pacific Solution,...

The Sapphires: radical history shines strong amidst the glitz and glamour

The Sapphires Directed by Wayne Blair In cinemas now“Soul music is about loss. And they haven’t given up. So every note that passes through your lips should have the tone of...

1835—False hopes in fair governments won’t win Aboriginal rights

1835: The founding of Melbourne and the conquest of Australia By James Boyce $44.95, Black Inc1835 was the year that Tasmanian pastoralists, hungry to expand their wealth through seizure of new...

Telling the story of socialist refugees who resisted Hitler

All That I Am By Anna Funder Penguin, $29.95All That I Am is a dizzying (and compulsory) read for the left-wing activist. Anna Funder’s novel reaches past the common myths about...

Australian racism explored, but not explained

Dumb, Drunk and Racist A Cordell Jigsaw Production ABC 2, Wednesdays at 9.30pm“All they want to do is deny it on TV—‘we have no racism’—hello! Come hang out with me!” So...

Freud and Jung’s debates take centre stage

A Dangerous Method Directed by David Cronenberg Available on DVD soonDangerous Method is a provocative film that depicts the intellectual birth, personal dilemmas and much speculated-upon falling out of the founders...

Can’t pay, won’t pay: debating solutions to Europe’s debt

Crisis in the Eurozone Edited by Costas Lapvitsas Verso Books $29.95The debt crisis in the eurozone has become the most glaring problem facing global capitalism.Across the world many states face high levels...

Clicking off everywhere? Social media and social movements

Why it’s kicking off everywhere: the new global revolutions By Paul Mason Verso Books RRP $27.952011 was a phenomenal year of protest and resistance. From the revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia to...

Tweetin’ about a revolution

Revolution 2.0: The power of the people is greater than the people in power By Wael Ghonim Fourth Estate RRP $29.95Wael Ghonim is a Google marketing manager who became one of the...

Debating ideas to grow the left’s influence on politics

Left Turn: Political Essays for the New Left Edited by Antony Loewenstein and Jeff Sparrow Melbourne University Publishing $27.99Left Turn, according to editors Antony Loewenstein and Jeff Sparrow, aims to, “argue for...

Alex Mitchell: Trotskyist with some stories to tell

Come the Revolution: A memoirBy Alex Mitchell, NewSouth Publishing $39.95Alex Mitchell’s media career spanned the British Sunday Times, work under a young Rupert Murdoch at Sydney’s Daily Mirror and...

Resisting Capitol in The Hunger Games

The Hunger Games Directed by Gary Ross In cinemas nowThe Hunger Games is the latest addition to a string of political Hollywood films produced over the last few years. But unlike films...

The Mad Square: Revolution and reaction in Weimar Germany

Mad Square Modernity in German Art 1910-1937, formerly at Melbourne NGV“A dissolution of the social order was expected by the hour” said the German Minister of Finance in 1923, reflecting...

Rebuilding fighting unions: Lessons from the US

The Civil wars in U.S. Labor: Birth of a New Workers’ Movement or Death Throes of the Old? By Steve Early, Haymarket Books, $24.95The “organising model” developed by unions in...

Weekend: Honest depiction of homophobia in everyday life

Weekend Directed by Andrew Haigh Out now, selected releaseWEEKEND IS a beautiful and sad film about same-sex love. The most impressive and unique thing about this movie is how true to...

Thatcher’s real legacy: rule for the rich

The Iron Lady Directed by Phyllida Lloyd In cinemas now Margaret Thatcher was a ruling class warrior whose policies created record unemployment and misery in Britain. Thatcher’s destructive legacy is obscured in...

The need for an anatomy of the trade union bureaucracy

Review: We Built This Country By Humphrey McQueen, Ginninderra Press, $30I found Humphrey McQueen’s second instalment of his trilogy on the building industry disappointing. And it shouldn’t be, because We...

Marxism and anarchism

Anarchist and autonomist ideas have influenced many recent movements, including Occupy. Lachlan Marshall takes a look at a new booklet that weighs up their merits. Review: Anarchism: A Marxist Criticism,...

Dissecting Murdoch’s hold on the news

Review: Quarterly Essay 43 “Bad News”, by Robert Manne, Black Inc, $19.95Academic Robert Manne believes that Rupert Murdoch’s Australian media empire should be broken up, with the mogul’s control of...

Tony Cliff: a revolutionary thinker

Tony Cliff A Marxist For His Time Bookmarks, $30, available from SolidarityTONY CLIFF was born in 1917, five months before the October revolution in Russia that toppled the provisional government and...

The unknown Mozart

Mozart’s Sister Directed by Rene Feret In cinemas now Mozart’s Sister is a French film that tells the overlooked story of Maria Anna Walburga Ignatius Mozart, or Nannerl, as she is referred...

Telling glimpse into Tamil Tigers’ doomed route to national liberation

Tamil Tigress By Niromi de Soyza Allen & Unwin, $32.99Tamil Tigress is the memoir of Niromi de Soyza, who in 1987, at the age of 17, left her middle-class family to...

Nationalist myths of Australia’s war in the Pacific

Australia’s Pacific War: Challenging a National Myth By Tom O’Lincoln, Interventions $20.00As Tom O’Lincoln’s new book points out, WWII is held up as a “good war”, when Australia fought alongside...

Nagasaki bombing: a war crime to boost US power

Nagasaki: the massacre of the innocent and unknowing, by Craig Collie, Allen and Unwin, $32.99Hiroshima Day, August 4, is an established part of the activist’s political calendar. Anti-war and...

Sexism, psychology and pseudo-science

Review: Delusions of Gender By Cordelia Fine, Allen and Unwin, $29.99In Delusions of Gender, neuro-scientist Cordelia Fine takes an axe to the drivel of biological determinism that self-help books...

Smoke bombs, sit-ins and sixties’ student radicalism at Monash

Review: All Along the Watchtower, by Michael Hyde, The Vulgar Press, $32.95.With this memoir, Michael Hyde opens us up to the world of 1960s revolutionary activists and gives a...

Exploring Stephen Jay Gould’s ideas on science and evolution

The Science and Humanism of Stephen Jay Gould By Richard York and Brett Clark, Monthly Review Press $16.95Stephen Jay Gould was one of the most important evolutionary theorists since Charles Darwin....

A proud history of Aboriginal struggle on display

From Little Things Big Things Grow Exhibtion developed by National Museum of Australia, touring nationally see website for details From Little Things Big Things Grow gives a useful and engaging overview...

Immigration Nation: Probing Australia’s racist roots

Mark Goudkamp takes a look at the SBS series Immigration Nation and its history of the White Australia policySBS’s Immigration Nation is an informative and timely three-part documentary that...

Percy Brookfield: MP who used parliament to agitate and organise

The Best Hated Man in Australia: The Life and Death of Percy Brookfield 1875-1921 By Paul Robert Adams, Puncher and Wattmann, $34In a country where heroism is commonly deemed present...

Asking why Labor stands for nothing

Review article: Power Crisis, by Rodney Cavalier, Cambridge University Press, $34.99 and All That’s Left: What Labor Should Stand For, Edited by Nick Dyrenfurth and Tim Soutphommasane UNSW Press, $29.95Labor’s...

Competition, sexism and rich kids rule in Facebook film

Review: The Social Network Directed by David Fincher, in cinemas nowThe Social Network traces the origin of the online social networking website Facebook from its genesis amongst Harvard University’s elite...

The Pacific Solution: never again!

Review: The Pacific Solution By Susan Metcalfe, Australian Scholarly Publishing, $24.95The recent decision by the High Court in favour of two Tamil asylum seekers (see article here) has again focused...

Understanding redneck America

Rainbow Pie: a redneck memoir By Joe Bageant Scribe, $35All too often the word “redneck” brings up connotations of slack-jawed yokels, wilfully uneducated in everything other than in how to aim...

Exposing raunch culture and the new sexism

Living Dolls: The Return of Sexism By Natasha Walter Virago, $35Living Dolls is a compelling must-read for all those interested in understanding sexism today. Through interviews and research, author Natasha Walter...

Equal love, equal rights: rediscovering the red in the rainbow

Amy Thomas reviews Hannah Dee’s The Red in the Rainbow, an essential look at why fighting homophobia means fighting the systemSince the federal election Julia Gillard has continued to...

Dispelling the modern ‘Malthus myth’

Review: Peoplequake by Fred Pearce Random House, $32.95The resurgence in overpopulation fears—the idea that excessive population is the cause of ecological destruction and that we must cut population levels to...

Working class heroes were made in Dagenham

Review: Made in Dagenham, directed by Nigel Cole In cinemas October 28It's 1968 and 187 female machinists at the huge Ford Dagenham car plant in east London vote for a...

Spying eyes: ASIO and the Communist Party

Writing a four-generation history of a family intimately linked with the history of the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) is not an easy task, especially if you are a...

James Hardie: The Killer Company exposed

Review: Killer Company By Matt Peacock, ABC Books, $35.00In 1898 Britian’s Chief Inspector of Factories reported to Parliament about the “evil effects of asbestos dust”. The first deaths from asbestos...

Goodbye to all that?

Review: Goodbye to all that: The failure of neoliberalism and the urgency of change Edited by David McKnight and Robert Manne, Black Inc, $32.95You can ask the right question at the...

Anzac—a new front in the history wars

Review: What’s Wrong with Anzac? The Militarisation of Australian History Edited byMarilyn Lake and Henry Reynolds, University of New South Wales Press, $29.95As our stomachs recover from the gut wrenching...

Refugee policy is the real crime

Review: Border Crimes By Michael Grewcock, The Federation Press, $49.95With the defeat of the Howard Government in 2007 many assumed the dark days of the mandatory detention of asylum seekers...

Glorifying life as a US solider in occupied Iraq

Review: The Hurt Locker Directed by Kathryn Bigelow, In cinemas nowThe Hurt Locker is a violent, politically shallow and confusing film. The film makers claim to be apolitical but in...

Defending Stalin does socialism no favours

Review: The Idea of Communism By Tariq Ali, University of Chicago Press, $22.95More like a long pamphlet than a book, The Idea of Communism, the first of a series edited by...

Challenging portrayal of life at the bottom

Precious Directed by Lee Daniels, In cinemas nowWatching Precious is a harrowing experience. Director Lee Daniels milks every dramatic movement of Sapphire’s novel Push in bringing Clarieece “Precious” Jones to...

Invaluable guide to climate science, but not solutions

Review: Storms of my grandchildren By James Hansen, Bloomsbury, $35Last year James Hansen, one of the world’s best-known climate scientists, was arrested during a protest against the coal industry in...

Pearson’s Radical Hope: Assimilation

Conservative Indigenous leader Noel Pearson uses his new essay Radical Hope to argue for a neo-liberal agenda in Aboriginal education, argues Ernest PriceNoel Pearson, the Howard government’s go-to conservative...

Hollywood fights imperialism in 3D

Review: Avatar Directed by James Cameron, in cinemas nowAVATAR MIGHT not be the subtlest movie around but its central message is reaching millions: if ordinary people unite, we can win...

Bases of the US Empire

Review: The bases of Empire Edited by Catherine Lutz, Pluto Press $58An empire cannot function without bases. Just as Britain created bases all the way to India—Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, Aden,...

Guidebook for understanding the system

Unravelling Capitalism By Joseph Choonara, Bookmarks, $20Joseph Choonara’s new book, Unravelling Capitalism is a short but comprehensive guide to Marxist economic theory and its continued relevance to understanding the dynamics...

When Hurricane Katrina brought the war home

Review: Zeitoun By Dave Eggers, Penguin $32.95Zeitoun is the true story of one man, his family and the tragedy which besets them in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Many are familiar...

Academic gloss for the new assimilation

Review: The Politics of Suffering By Peter Sutton, Melbourne University Press, $34.95Peter Sutton has a substantial pedigree in anthropology. He is the author of 40 academic papers, has lived at...

Moore’s condemnation of capitalism falls flat

Review: Capitalism: A love story Directed by Michael Moore, In cinemas nowRevolutionaries steeped in Marxist theory and the history of class struggle play an important part in fomenting revolution. But...

The Brisbane Bolshevik and the Russian Revolution

Review: The People’s Train By Tom Keneally, Vintage Books, $32.95TOM KENEALLY’S The People’s Train is an exhilarating story of early 20th century radicalism, friendship and love that traverses three continents,...

Film points finger at Australian complicity over deaths in Balibo

Balibo Directed by Robert Connolly, In cinemas nowBalibo, the film about six Australian-based journalists murdered by Indonesian troops as they invaded East Timor in October 1975, has been canned by...

Bosses build their profits on toll of workers’ lives

Review: Framework of Flesh By Humphrey McQueen, Ginninderra Press, $30Noted Marxist historian Humphrey McQueen’s book on the builders’ labourers battle for health and safety, Framework of Flesh, was recommended to...

A frock-coated communist: rediscovering Friedrich Engels

Review: The frock-coated communist By Tristram Hunt Allen Lane $59.95As establishment economists struggle to explain capitalism’s crisis, the ideas of Karl Marx are enjoying a renewed legitimacy. The sight of French...

Guide for climate campaigners reflects movement’s weak points

Review:Climate action By Mark Diesendorf UNSW Press, $34.95Mark Diesendorf will be well know to many climate activists from his regular speeches for local activist groups and his long-time advocacy for...

Confronting the myths used to justify dispossession

Review: Possession By Bain Atwood, Melbourne University Press, $54.99The introduction to Possession argues, “the principle challenge to the Australian nation’s sense of itself as morally good has lain in the...

Bruno: A homophobic and tedious failure of a film

Review: Bruno Directed by Larry Charles, in cinemas nowDressed up as irony, this caricature of “gayness” is a boost for the bigots. Bruno, Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest comic persona, is an...

The bloody history Stalin tried to hide

Review: Katyn, Directed by Andrzej WadjaThe revolutionary Victor Serge called the period of Hitler and Stalin “midnight of the century”. Hope for a better future, for peace and democracy...

The Red Army Faction—flawed product of 1960s radicalism

Review: The Baader-Meinhof Complex Directed by Uli Edel In selected cinemas nowWhen the state uses violence to repress dissent, is it permissible to use violence in reply? When a mass...

Cannes winner an indictment of Australian racism

Review: Samson and Delilah, Directed by Warwick Thornton In selected cinemas nowSAMSON AND Delilah, written, directed and shot by Aboriginal film maker Warwick Thornton, tells the story of two young...

Illzilla’s political hip hop a flower in the wasteland

Review: Wasteland Illzilla, Out now through Shock From its inception in the late 1970s, hip hop has had strong roots in the politics of rebellion. Hip hop acts from Public Enemy...

Excusing responsibility for the Holocaust?

Review: The Reader Directed by Stephen Daldry, In cinemas now The Reader is a story of illicit love, of betrayal and guilt, and of redemption. Kate Winslet won the Oscar for...

Raw challenge to the realities of racism

Review: The Combination Directed by David Field, In cinemas nowTHE COMBINATION is the story of a contemporary Lebanese family in urban Australia. Shot on location mainly in Guildford, western Sydney,...

Former insider exposes carbon lobby deception

Review: Quarterly Essay “Quarry Vision: coal, climate change and the end of the resource boom” By Guy Pearse, Black Inc, $16.95 AS DEBATE hots up over the Rudd government’s CPRS, the...

Milk

I was born in 1970 in small town New Zealand. I grew up in the 80s in country NSW. I was in a closet inside a closet. I came out...

Labor goes missing in The Howard Years

We survived the Howard years, and now you want us to watch it on Monday night prime time! That’s the sentiment of lots of people who are not tuning...

1949 coal strike: How Chifley lost Labor’s supporters

For decades, only the Left has talked about the 1949 coal miners’ strike, using it as an example of how low a Labor government can stoop—to the point of using soldiers to scab. So it should have been welcome news that the ABC had put resources into an hour-long dramatisation, Infamous Victory: Ben Chifley’s Battle For Coal. Unfortunately, the ABC has given us little to cheer about.