The Industrial Revolution's chief product was not goods, but a new class of laborers who owned nothing and worked to survive. Historian Peter Linebaugh traces the creation of this working class through the violent enclosure of the commons they once r
A book not only for history buffs but for activists focuses on the Levellers in a history from the bottom-up that tells the story of a revolutionary mid-17th century British radical group that turned its world upside down.
John Rees, author of The Leveller Revolution: Radical Political Organization in England 1640-1650, (Verso, 2016; reviewed in Portside Culture, November 30, 2016) weighs in with his recommendations about some of the best fiction in English dealing with radical movements and the revolutionary experience.
A look at the English Revolution's first decade, where radicals forced parliamentary leaders to complete the revolt against the monarchy, creating a some two decades-long republic through a genuine social revolution. The book's author is credited with bringing an activist's perspective to it and situating the uprising and the corresponding invention of the pamphlet as the basis for English popular sovereignty, despite the Glorious Revolution's return to a monarchy later.
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