A book that changed the course of the class struggle
After a six-month strike, the struggle at Waihi came to a head in early November 1912, shortly after the arrival in Waihi of the Commissioner of Police John Cullen, a […]
Category Archives: literature
The death of the revolution in China and its re-birth – told in a brilliant new novel
The generation of workers and peasants who made the Chinese revolution in the course of the bitter fight against Japanese occupation in the 1940s has largely passed away. So have […]
The nervous moment of insurrection
The October revolution which brought to power the Bolshevik regime in Russia one hundred years ago was both the greatest achievement of the working class, and a watershed which conditioned […]
Larissa Reisner and the German revolution of 1923
In a vain effort to escape from the disgusting trivia of the New Zealand elections, I have been reading Hamburg at the Barricades, Larissa Reisner’s1 account of the failed German […]
Apology, anthropology, and colonial genocide
A review of Terra Nullius, A Journey Through No One’s Land, by Sven Lindqvist Terra Nullius – a Latin expression meaning ‘no one’s land’ – was a legal fiction used to clear […]
Cultural appropriation, race-baiting, and the power of fiction: in defence of Lionel Shriver
US novelist Lionel Shriver ruffled a few feathers – to put it mildly – when she spoke at the Brisbane Writers Festival in September. Shriver took aim at ‘identity politics’ […]
Shanghai and the holocaust
Jewish communities have existed in China for at least a thousand years, since they arrived as traders along the silk road. The European explorer Marco Polo, visiting Beijing in the […]
The Condition of the Working Class in New Zealand in 1890
In 1842 Friedrich Engels, the 22-year-old son of a German textile manufacturer, was sent to Manchester, England, to work in the family business. Manchester was at the time the centre […]
“Really living life” vs the Russian Revolution: Watching Doctor Zhivago fifty years on
When you’re trapped in an aeroplane seat for twelve hours, you will watch almost any movie to take your mind off the noise of the engines and the thought of […]
Beauty, truth, and “the hideous music admired by savages”
Beauty is truth, truth, beauty – that is all Ye know on earth and all ye need to know John Keats, Ode on a Grecian urn With this, Keats articulated […]
