WILL STONE fact-checks the colourful life of Ozzy Osbourne
Book Review: People's Republic of Walmart
ANDY HEDGECOCK recommends a challenge to conventional thinking on a socialist planned economy
Planning for a global socialist future? A Walmart supercentre in Argentina
[MewMeowth/Creative Commons] 
JAMES CROSSLEY applauds a lucid biography of the German radical preacher who reemerged as a hero in the GDR
Prizes all round: the Bard hands plaudits to the Miners Gala, OT&JC, Joe Solo, Black Sabbath’s frontman and the Lionesses
Star cartoonist JAMIE BRITTON is in awe of a graphic novel of epic proportions that explores class, religion and globalisation via the strange cultivation of Ginseng in the US Midwest
GUILLERMO THOMAS is intrigued by a history of the Middle East that demonstrates how promising post colonial beginnings were snuffed out by Western imperialist interests
MARIA DUARTE recommends the intricate study of a high-performance and highly dysfuntional German family
People’s Republic of Walmart: How the World’s Biggest Corporations Are Laying the Foundation for Socialism
by Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski
(Verso, £9.99)
IGNORED both by conservatives obsessed with the “invisible hand” of the market and socialists caught up in the drama of challenging oppression, planning doesn’t elicit a passionate response.
But, as Leigh Phillips and Michal Rozworski explain in People’s Republic of Walmart, it is essential to innovation, complex projects and economic stability.
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