Reading “Intimacy” by Hanif Kureishi This was a strange book: all the reviews say how honest and uncompromising it is, and yet in the end I didn’t believe it. The basic plot is…
Published work Short story publication My short story “Postcards from a Previous Life” is now available to buy. It is being published by Leaf Books as part…
Reading The Shock Doctrine New Left Review 48 carries an interesting review by Michael Hardt (co-author of “Empire”) of Naomi Klein’s new book The Shock Doctrine.…
Thinking Marxism 2007: Day Five (Monday) OK, Day Five has been hanging over me throughout a very busy week, so rather than waiting for the right time I’m…
Thinking Marxism 2007: Day Four (Sunday) “Cuba after Castro” was a great talk, with one small problem: it wasn’t about Cuba after Castro. The speaker, Mike Gonzalez, focused most of his talk on Cuba…
Thinking Marxism 2007: Day Three (Saturday) “Engels and the rise of class society” wasn’t quite what I expected. Firstly the speaker was not Mark Thomas the comedian-activist, but…
Thinking Marxism 2007: Day Two The day started perfectly. A last-minute programme change and poor organisation meant that only two other people turned up to hear Ernesto…
Thinking Marxism 2007 I am attending the oddly-named Marxism 2007 conference for the next few days. I say “oddly-named” because the Bearded Wonder himself doesn’t…