Käthe Kollwitz, one of the 20th century’s greatest socialist artists, has an exhibition of 40 prints and drawings at the National Gallery until 10 December.
6 September – 10 December 2017, National Gallery of Ireland |, Free admission By John Molyneux It is a wonderful show but be prepared to be moved almost to the point of hurt. Kollwitz was born in Koningsberg in Prussia in 1867 into a Social Democratic family. In 1891 she married Karl Kollwitz, a doctor […]
Armando Iannucci’s new feature The Death of Stalin plays Soviet terror for laughs while laying bare the cowardice, self-interest and vanity that characterises every ruling class.
Reviewed by Sean Egan Eliciting audience laughter from inside a secret police torture chamber is no easy task but Iannucci manages to find moments of dark humour in otherwise stomach-churning circumstances. The veteran political satirist who skewered the shallow spectacle of modern politics in his tv gems: Veep and The Thick of It portrays the […]
There are two new books that may be of particular interest to Socialist Worker readers.
The first is Struggle or Starve by Seán Mitchell who is People Before Profit North-South Coordinator . It tells the story of working class unity in Belfast’s 1932 Outdoor Relief Riots. In October 1932 the streets of Belfast were gripped by rioting. Railing at the indignity of the state’s ‘relief’ programmes of poverty pay and […]
Dave O’Farrell reviews the ‘Humans Need Not Apply’ exhibition in the Science Gallery, Trinity College.
Exhibitions which try to combine art and science can often come up short on both the art and the science. Add a political theme to the work and the potential pitfalls are legion. Unfortunately the current exhibition at the Science Gallery in Trinity College generally falls short on all fronts. Humans Need Not Apply aims […]
Emma Hendrick replies to Panti Bliss’s call for moderation
Rory O’Neill (aka Panti Bliss) is a nationally recognised figure who has campaigned on LGBTQ issues for many years. In 2014 he gripped the hearts of the nation with his Nobel Call from the Abbey theatre. To date, his speech, which offered a deeply personal account of homophobia in Ireland, has been viewed over 800,000 […]
The relentlessly-positive Wham! duo of George Michael and Andrew Ridgeley burst onto the British stage in the early 1980s. While Ridgeley faded from the celebrity stage George Michael's solo career, good humour and drug-fuelled antics kept him a household name until his death on Christmas Day.
George was the embodiment of 1990’s pop, but there were hints throughout his career, and in revelations since his death that he wasn’t simply the rich playboy the media often portrayed him as. The seemingly apolitical Wham! released “Wham!- Rap!” with the lyric “I ain’t never gonna work” advocating the dole life as a good […]
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 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 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 […]
