Melinda Cooper’s Counterrevolution details the political economy of the vast historic links between dynastic families, Christian fundamentalist groups, various lobbying and campaign groups, and an overarching counterrevolutionary in America and, in this review, Harry Holmes recognises the crucial parallels – and crucial differences – in Britain and its economy that must be understood and confronted.

Counterrevolution: Extravagance and Austerity in Public Finance
Melinda Cooper
Zone Books, 2024
9781942130949

A Nation of Shopkeepers offers a provocative analysis of Britain’s culturally mediated class structure and critique of the educated ‘new petty bourgeoisie’ of the left. But Evans’s rigid and ahistorical opposition of working-class and identity-based political claims, based on a misreading of Sivanandan, fails to grasp the necessity of uniting demands for economic redistribution and social justice.

A Nation of Shopkeepers: The Unstoppable Rise of the Petty Bourgeoisie
Dan Evans
Repeater Bookers, 2023
9781913462697

Whereas John Kelly’s Contemporary Trotskyism erred on the side of sympathy towards Trotskyists contributing to the Corbyn project, Daniel Frost writes, The Twilight of World Trotskyism is much more recalcitrant. As an attempt by Kelly to put the nail in the coffin of ‘a dead end for socialists’, this book rarely provides the depth and range of evidence which could break through the sectarian walls to which Kelly devotes so much attention.

The Twilight of World Trotskyism
John Kelly
Routledge, 2023
9781032350080

Transgender Marxism finally acknowledges the necessity of strategies for the working class and oppressed trans people globally, but its dependence on social reproduction theory presents Trotskyism as the acceptable form of trans Marxism.

Transgender Marxism
Edited by Jules Joanne Gleeson & Elle O’Rourke
Pluto, 2021
9780745341668

The embodiment of some of capital’s worst exploits, Walmart may be something of an apparition from the future; it has ascended to dominance on the free market through the payment of poverty wages to its employees and ruthless union busting, but its successes have been predicated on a corporate structure which has eliminated its own internal market.

People’s Republic of Walmart
Leigh Phillips & Michal Rozworski
Verso, 2019
9781786635167

Greaber’s analysis of bullshit work fails to explain how it serves capitalism. As Haymarket martyr Adolph Fischer reminded us, ‘every anarchist is a socialist but not every socialist is necessarily an anarchist.’ In Bullshit Jobs, Graeber has left his socialist behind.

Bullshit Jobs: The Rise of Pointless Work and What We Can Do About It
David Graeber
Penguin, 2018
9780141983479

In Fully Automated Luxury Communism Aaron Bastani ignores the actual gains of communism while attempting to do-battle with capitalism over consumer culture, and rather than looking to the countless people raised out of poverty he looks to Silicon Valley, space, and music videos.

Full Automated Luxury Communism
Aaron Bastani
Verso, 2019
9781786632623