Yanguas is perfectly placed to provide insight on the contradiction between intentions of funders and the wider development community, however,Yanguas never explicitly questions how the true goals of the development agencies of imperialist capitalist powers might differ from – or even contradict – their stated goals.

Why We Lie About Aid
Pablo Yanguas
Zed Books, 2018
9781783609338

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

Cardew’s intention was the ‘socialisation’ of music. Reading his graphic scores is not like reading traditional Western notation, where there is usually a single correct reading of a note or other feature. But his involvement with anti-fascism, Irish solidarity, and advocacy of Marxist-Leninism, led to suggestions that his death was politically motivated rather than accidental.

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

‘I guess those journalists and politicians such as Anna Soubry MP from the centre-right Independent Group would be pleased to know that even after apocalypse the mail is still being delivered’, Derek Wall writes.