At the centre of the recent fascist demonstration in Charlottesville was the attempt to defend a monument to pro-slavery Confederate General Robert E. Lee .
The Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville. James Grannell writes: Some liberals, probably with good intentions, have said they deplore racism and slavery but defend this and other Confederate statues on the grounds of maintaining an objective historical record. In reality neither the erection nor the demolition of public monuments has ever been politically neutral or […]
The Russian revolutionary leader has been in the news recently as British Labour Party Blairites have been denouncing Corbyn supporters as ‘Trotskyite entrists’. Against this background James Granell reviews Trotsky’s autobiography ‘My Life’.
Leon Trotsky’s My Life is a remarkable work. First published in 1930 while Trotsky was living in exile in Constantinople; the book demonstrates how his life was inseparably bound up with some of the most important events of the early twentieth century. Crucially, Trotsky was the only Bolshevik leader to write his memoirs and thus […]
In September 2015, Jeremy Corbyn won the Labour leadership election with a landslide 59.5% of the vote. A surge of new members and supporters joining the party during the leadership campaign resulted in about 550,000 people being eligible to vote in the contest.
In September 2015, Jeremy Corbyn won the Labour leadership election with a landslide 59.5% of the vote. A surge of new members and supporters joining the party during the leadership campaign resulted in about 550,000 people being eligible to vote in the contest. At the time former leader, Ed Miliband, said “Jeremy has won a […]
In the latest of his reviews of classic socialist texts James Grannell looks at Lenin’s most famous book The State and Revolution.
In the latest of his reviews of classic socialist texts James Grannell looks at Lenin’s most famous book The State and Revolution. Lenin’s The State and Revolution, written in 1917, is widely accepted as one of the classics of Marxist theory, but what’s it all about? In this relatively short text Lenin outlined his theory […]
In the latest in our series on socialist classics James Grannell reviews Frederick Engels: The Housing Question, (1872)
‘It is perfectly clear that the existing state is neither able nor willing to do anything to remedy the housing difficulty. The state is nothing but the organized collective power of the possessing classes, the landowners and the capitalists as against the exploited classes, the peasants and the workers. What the individual capitalists (and it […]
Seán Mitchell’s A Rebel’s Guide to James Connolly is a timely and welcome addition to what has been a popular and useful series exploring the lives and ideas of key Marxist figures throughout history. It will undoubtedly leave the reader with a thirst to know more about Ireland’s most famous Marxist, and is an excellent […]
James Grannell reviews a classic text by Marx which introduces his fundamental ideas about how capitalism works. Wage Labour and Capital is an excellent example of a Marxist text which unravels the mystique of the capitalist system of production, and exposes it for the flesh-devouring monster that it truly is. In this short work Marx […]
In our series on socialist classics , James Grannell reviews what may be the most influential political pamphlet ever written. ‘A spectre is haunting Europe — the spectre of Communism.’These were the opening words of the Communist Manifesto written by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels in early 1848. This short, yet marvellous, pamphlet emboldens the […]
James Granell reviews a new collection Irish short fiction.
Young Irelanders, New Island Books €13.99 James Granell reviews a new collection Irish short fiction. Dave Lordan’s anthology, Young Irelanders, blows away the cobwebs of the culturally homogeneous, Catholic, conservative Ireland of the twentieth century with all of its little islander mentality, false prophets and false profits. In its place it presents the new Ireland […]
