The new capitalist economy produced a form of civic equality. In ever more areas of daily life, men and women operated under the same formal abstract rules – the rules of the consumer marketplace –...
When people in Louisiana say that a city will disappear, they don’t just mean that it will be taken over by industry, or abandoned after one too many hurricanes or floods. They mean that it will actually...
Mike Makin-Waite, a militant anti-fascist, was working for the borough council in Burnley when, after riots in the town in 2001, it became a stronghold of the British National Party. On...
Most firms operate as partnerships and, apart from Glencore, none has chosen to go public and expose itself to the scrutiny that a prospectus for a stock market listing brings. Commodities traders don’t...
Defenders of Berlin’s new palace claim that as home to the Humboldt Forum – a collection of objects from Africa and Asia – it demonstrates Germany’s eagerness to engage in a ‘dialogue of cultures’....
The politics of class hasn’t disappeared, though its articulations have not remained the same. Deindustrialisation has led to a cascade of changes in the economy and society; its impact on Britain’s...
Imperialism was the foundation of Britain’s power and wealth, and so criticism of it was integral to campaigns for liberty. It was not only Indians and the Indian diaspora who looked to Dadabhai Naoroji...
American occupation has made the Taliban more disciplined fighters – with new elite battalions such as the Red Unit – and above all a more media-savvy organisation. Video footage from Kabul airport...
Kennedy was perfectly aware that nuclear missiles in Cuba posed no real threat to national security, even if they slightly narrowed America’s enormous lead in weapons capable of reaching the other’s...
Because the British Museum has artefacts from so many other places the British pillaged and destroyed, and because many more people visit London than Benin City, or even Lagos, it follows that this is...
Scores of former agents have exposed CIA crimes and defeats in books, films and articles. In the wake of American humiliation in Vietnam and the Watergate scandal, Senate and House investigations documented...
Those who portray themselves as beleaguered defenders of academic freedom also enjoy less tangible benefits: it’s possible for them to configure good faith criticism – the substance of academic life...
Neither Trump nor the people around him were part of a sinister plot to subvert and ultimately take over the democratic institutions of the United States. They didn’t possess even the minimum competence...
The demand of Black Lives Matter and others to ‘defund the police’ follows the logic that addressing the causes of crime – by funding housing, drug rehabilitation, education and mental health services...
Many of the journalists and activists I knew when I lived in Haiti ten years ago have fled. Since June, violence has displaced more than fourteen thousand people in Port-au-Prince. The week before Moïse’s...
Looking back at the Hong Kong protests now – especially at the hundreds of hours of video footage on YouTube and elsewhere – I find it hard not to marvel at what happened. I’m also shocked by it....
Decades of resentment in Northern Ireland, ignored by Westminster, finally resulted in 1969 in what are known euphemistically as ‘the Troubles’. Almost three decades of violence...
As names were called, children stood up from the benches and gathered at the front, until an entire class had been assembled. A, B, C, D, E and F were called, and I was still there, waiting with around...