The Class Ceiling, U.K. Version
LSE Review of Books
The Labour leader said the party had 'changed the face of British politics' after making significant gains across the country.
Rebel Crossings charts six 19th century socialists as they journey from the constraints of Old-World Britain to a New-World America. They were part of a wider historical search for self-fulfillment and an alternative to a cruelly competitive capitalism. The book surveys the interaction of feminism, socialism and anarchism, bringing fresh slants on political and cultural movements and upon influential individuals including Walt Whitman, Eleanor Marx, and William Morris.
By all means, look to the past. Learn and be inspired, but do not try to turn the clock back. The ultimate aim of socialism should be the abolition of capitalism — anything less than this is reformism in the service of capital. Socialists may disagree about the pace of transition, or the means of enacting revolutionary change — but their ultimate aim must be the end of capitalism.
Labor historian E.P. Thompson is perhaps best known for his monumental and path-breaking work, The Making of the English Working Class. The collected essays reviewed here, many either out-of-print or difficult to obtain, were written between 1955 and 1963. They show Thompson as also a dedicated educator of workers, a sharp polemicist, a skilled political theorist and a tireless agitator for peace, against nuclear weapons and for a rebirth of the socialist project.
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