Ecofeminism as Politics in times of crisis

In 2017, Ariel Salleh published the second edition of her book Ecofeminism as Politics: Nature, Marx and the Postmodern (Zed Books, 2017). In her outstanding engagement with multiple oppressions within the capitalist global economy, Salleh convincingly argues that patriarchal oppression is inextricably internally related to the destruction of nature in capitalism’s relentless search for accumulating ever higher levels of surplus value. In this blog post, I will provide an overview of the main arguments of the book as well as offer some critical reflections.

Labour and Transnational Action in Times of Crisis

From August 2013 to June 2014, the trasnational labour project group came together in Oslo to work on the project Globalization and the possibility of transnational actors: the case of trade unions. One of the key publications resulting from the project, the edited volume Labour and Transnational Action in Times of Crisis, has just been published by Rowman & Littlefield International. In this post, I want to draw out briefly the two main common themes underlying the various contributions as well as highlight a number of key findings.

The Next Revolution – Questions to Murray Bookchin.

Over the last weeks, the Marxism Reading Group (MRG) of the Centre for the Study of Social and Global Justice (CSSGJ) at Nottingham University has read the book The Next Revolution: Popular Assemblies and the Promise of Direct Democracy (London: Verso, 2015) by Murray Bookchin. In this post, six members of the group critically assess different aspects of the book in their questions to Murray Bookchin.

We make our own history – A call to action!

‘As we become political subjects on our own behalf, recognise ourselves in each other and see the connections between our different movements, we come closer to being able not only to articulate the hope of “another world”, but also to bring it about’ (P.209). With these words, Laurence Cox and Alf Gunvald Nilsen conclude their latest book We make our own history: Marxism and Social Movements in the Twilight of Neoliberalism (Pluto Press, 2014). In this blog post, I will provide a critical appraisal of this important book. 

Marxism, Social Movements and resistance to capitalist exploitation!

In the Theses On Feuerbach, Marx famously wrote that ‘the philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it’ (Marx 1845). In their edited volume Marxism and Social Movements, Colin Barker, Laurence Cox, John Krinsky and Alf Gunvald Nilsen have lived up to this demand in that the contributions are directly informed by, and related to, concrete struggles. The collection of essays succeeds at not only assisting us in understanding, in interpreting the role of social movements in current struggles. It also helps us to reflect on strategies of resistance in order to improve them.