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In May over 100 people attended an international conference in Cuba discussing the ideas of Leon Trotsky, with the aim of shaking up state–sanctioned “Marxism”. Héctor Puente Sierra reports.

Racial prejudice forces us to define ourselves with categories that it has created writes Yuri Prasad.

Shoshana Zuboff’s new book, The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, explores the world of the giant tech companies such as Google, Microsoft, Apple and Amazon. We all know they collect our data for profitable uses; how deeply does this affect capitalist relations, asks Joseph Choonara.

Talat Ahmed’s new book chronicles the life of Mohandas Gandhi, who was one of the leaders in the Indian Independence movement. She critically examines Gandhi’s political career and provides an understanding on how socialists should view him and his legacy. This is important because, in the UK especially, Indian history is taught with a rose-tinted...

Louise Haagh mounts a passionate defence for a Universal Basic Income (UBI), “to give all residents a modest regular income grant that is not dependent on means-tests or requirements”. Her book “argues for basic income as part of democratic reconstruction at a juncture of global crisis in governance”. She makes some big claims for it:...

Workers at Topshop, Burton, Dorothy Perkins, Evans, Miss Selfridge and other retail brands in the Arcadia empire of Sir Philip Green might want to read this book as they contemplate redundancy. Green is haggling with The Pensions Regulator over the extent of his liability for the black hole in the Arcadia pensions fund as he...

The “Old Poor Law”, first passed in 1601, was a series of pieces of legislation to attempt to deal with poverty in England and Wales. It lasted, with amendments, until 1834 when the New Poor Law was finally introduced after growing discontent at the system’s inadequacies. These laws have been closely studied by historians, because...

Financial blogger Frances Coppola has written a clear, informative little book arguing the case for what she calls “quantitative easing for the people” which she believes can end the stagnation in the world economy since the financial crash of 2008. Quantitative easing (QE) is a process by which central banks create money digitally (“print money”)...

Shortly before Socialist Review went to press we heard of the death of Walter Wolfgang at the age of 95. He was a socialist, a Labour Party activist and an anti-war campaigner — one of the founding members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament. He was perhaps most famous for heckling the then foreign secretary...

Spent teargas canisters. Hundreds of these dull grey tubes the size of deodorant cans littered the sand on the walk to the contaminated former landfill site in Calais that became a temporary camp for as many as 10,000 displaced people until late 2016. This was the place called Lande or “heath” by the French authorities,...

Kenneth Binyavanga Wainaina (1971–2019) was part of a new generation of African writers who grew up after the radicalism of the independence struggles and the highs of Pan-Africanism and African Socialism in the 1960s and 1970s. He has died after a short illness aged 48. His writing was subtle and critical. In an article on...

The Flood opens with these words: “Currently some 70 million individuals have been forcibly displaced by persecution, conflict, and violence around the world… Over 18,000 have died while trying to reach Europe in the last five years alone.” Based on interviews with migrants and ex-Home Office officials, this dignified and dramatic film describes the horrors...