Pathfinders: Missionary Positions

“Lord, is this island Satan’s last stronghold where none have heard or even had the chance to hear your name?” So wrote John Allen Chau, the 26-year-old Christian missionary, just before his last visit to North Sentinel Island in the Andaman chain in November last year. His death at the hands of the Sentineli islanders …

Wood for the Trees: Hope

The only good news these days, it would appear, is no news. The rise and rise of populist fascism; the ever-broadening gulf between rich and poor; the degradation of the environment; the multiplicity of wars; all of this seems to leave little space for hope. Is all hope an illusion or is it essential for …

Material World: The military contribution to climate change

The United Nations Intergovernmental Report on Climate Change last October made grim reading. Our planet is facing a crisis unprecedented in human history, one that some believe to be an existential threat to civilisation itself. We are informed that a series of business and life-style reforms might lessen the worst effects of climate change. But …

Almeria’s Greenhouses: The Dark Side of Agri-Capitalism

Part One: Mar de Plastico In Almeria province in Southern Spain there is to be found the largest greenhouse complex in the world, an area roughly the size of the Isle of Wight. Nothing quite prepares you for the sheer scale of it all – or the brutal ugliness. Driving through it can be a …

Rosa Luxemburg, political democracy and mass action

Rosa Luxemburg, who was murdered a hundred years ago this month, had been a socialist member of the German Social Democratic Party (SPD) until it supported the German government in the First World War, sharing its basic positions. She advocated that the working class should win control of political power with a view to replacing …

Our Future on Earth

The workers of the world are yet to unite to accomplish their over-a-century-long pending task of overcoming what Thorstein Veblen called ‘the predatory phase’ of human development. They have yet to move on to the phase of ‘an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all’ …

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