ANDY HEDGECOCK is entertained by a playful novel that embeds a fictional game at its heart
Old Gods, New Enigmas: Marx’s Lost Theory
by Mike Davis
(Verso, £17.99)
MIKE DAVIS started life working as a meat cutter and bus driver in California before he made his name as an urban sociologist with the groundbreaking Planet of Slums, a work that single-handedly changed the way we see our planet.
To mark the 200th anniversary of Karl Marx’s birth, he explores in Old Gods, New Enigmas the historic rise of the working class and the socialist movement in Europe at the time of the great revolutionary philosopher’s emergent body of ideas.
MARTIN GRAHAM welcomes, with reservations, a scholarly addition to the unfinished business of understanding how capital works on a world scale
The selection, analysis and interpretation of historical ‘facts’ always takes place within a paradigm, a model of how the world works. That’s why history is always a battleground, declares the Marx Memorial Library
BEN CHACKO says in different ways, the centenary of the General Strike and that of Fidel Castro’s birth point to priority tasks for the British left in the coming year
Corbyn and Sultana’s ‘Your Party’ represents the first attempt at mass socialist organisation since the CPGB’s formation in 1921, argues DYLAN MURPHY



