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Books reviewed: Fedor Il’ich Dan, translated and edited by Francis King, Two Years of Wandering: A Menshevik Leader in Lenin’s Russia, London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2016, ISBN 9781910448724, 236pp; Phillip Deery, Red Apple: Communism and McCarthyism in Cold War, New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 2014, ISBN 978-0-8232-5368-5, xi + 252pp; Åsmund Egge and Svend Rybner (eds), Red Star in the North. Communism in the Nordic Countries, Stamsund: Orkana Akademisk, 2015, ISBN 8281042427, 355pp; Tauno Saarela, Suomalainen kommunismi ja vallankumous 1923-1930, Helsinki: SKS, 2008, ISBN 9522220515, 840pp; Tauno Saarela, Finnish Communism Visited, Finnish Society for Labour History, Papers on Labour History VII, 2015, ISBN 9789525976182, 233pp; Eric Aunoble, La Révolution russe, une histoire française. Lectures et représentations depuis 1917, Paris: La Fabrique, 2016, ISBN 9782358720793, 255 pp.

This article opens with a press report of a particularly violent action involving anar-chists at an anti-fascist action in the USA, shows how it was inaccurately perceived by media and law professionals, and how this indicates a universal lack of under-standing about anarchists and militant anti-fascism. We then focus on the UK to see how anarchists prioritise anti-fascism and show their historical connections with militant groups like Anti-Fascist Action (AFA), No Platform and Antifa from the 1980s through to the early 2000s, and their current support for the militant Anti-Fascist Network.

In this essay I reflect on a sample of a relatively new literature that has emerged in recent years on the growth of ‘womenomics’ and what Adrienne Roberts has called ‘transnational business feminism’. Are these developments a triumph for the influence of feminist activists around the globe? Or do we see them as yet another classic attempt by the agents of capitalist globalisation to contain the energies of women and turn them to the advantage of the bottom line? I look at some examples of TBF on the part of Goldman Sachs, Unilever, Levi-Strauss, and the Nike Foundation; at the debate among feminist scholars over whether neoliberal feminism is ‘really’ feminism; at the rise of the concept of ‘empowerment;’ and finally, at some elements that TBF leaves out of the picture, including the neoliberal assault on social reproduction; the extreme exploitation of women workers, from Walmart to Export Processing Zones; the retreat from class analysis under neoliberalism; and the continuing effects of ‘structural adjustment’ on countries in the North like Greece subject to the ravages of the international financial order. I conclude with a call to the international male left to be as welcoming and as creative toward the ideas and the activism of the international women’s movement as their corporate adversaries.

How do we build on the hopes raised in the June election? Jeremy Corbyn’s election campaign, and its outcome, is without doubt the most positive development that has taken place in British politics for more than twenty-five years - since Tony Blair became leader of the Labour Party. The reason for this is that it is the first substantial challenge to neoliberalism that has emerged from Labour in all those years. Corbyn’s campaign has now demonstrated that a politics based on the rejection of neoliberalism - the contemporary version of ‘full capitalism’ - and the development of an alternative to it - is capable of electoral success.

US alt-right extremism is a logical consequence of mainstream neo-conservatism

Inequality is one of the most pressing issues of our time. It has long been the Labour Party’s lodestar. We need to take a clear-eyed look at its causes and consequences in the twenty-first century in order to put together coalitions and policies to tackle it effectively. The challenges are great, but there are new analyses and ideas on the left that should give us hope.

The left has traditionally viewed the fight against inequality through the lens of the poorest in our society. But the stagnating real incomes of those in the middle of the income spectrum means we need to reframe it as a majoritarian issue, and tackle it with a comprehensive plan that attacks inequality from different angles.

Climate change will only break out of its eco bubble if we understand not only the impacts, but also the opportunities that tackling it effectively can open up for greater economic and social justice.