The Marxist Review issue 1

The Marxist Review represents our attempt to respond to the big questions posed by contemporary capitalism and will seek to develop a strand of Marxist thought that remains rooted in working-class struggle.

This opening issue begins with Chris Nineham’s article on Marxism and mass movements, analysing the rise of global mass protests and asking how they can win. These protests have been and continue to be a significant challenge to a capitalist class which is also facing considerable economic challenges, as Dominic Alexander explains in his analysis of how neoliberalism ran out of road. 

Shifting from the twenty-first century to the seventeenth, Elaine Graham-Leigh looks at modern feminists’ uses of the European witch-hunt, encapsulated in the claim that ‘we are the daughters of the witches they failed to burn’, while John Rees introduces his new book, The Fiery Spirits, on how popular protest shaped the English Revolution. Finally, Chris Bambery highlights the nineteenth-century history of anti-Irish racism in England and reflects on Marx and Engels’ understanding of the centrality of oppression to exploitation.

Our ‘The Back’ section then has a range of shorter pieces. In this issue, Lucy Nichols looks at Antonio Gramsci’s ideas on hegemony to ask if the ruling class is losing its control over ideas, we reprint Clara Zetkin and Karl Liebknecht on World War I, and Michael Lavalette puts together his recommended reading on the history of popular struggles in the United States.