SOLOMON HUGHES recommends Sunjeev Sahota’s recent novel set in a trade union election campaign for its fresh approach to what unites and divides workers, but wishes the union backdrop was truer to life
WE SWIM in a sea of obfuscation, confusion, and fabrication. We are bombarded by academics, commentators, consultants — experts of every type — who build their brands on telling us what our rulers want us to hear. Through calculated ruses, they penetrate our entertainment, even our escapism, with embedded messages that strengthen conformity and consensus.
The purveyors of this conformity — the messengers — are given the stolid image of trustworthy tradition or the superficial appearance of daring nonconformity or diversity, depending on the sensibility of the audience, though the message is the same in all cases.
Today’s bourgeois society has utilised previously unimaginable advances in communication and technology to achieve even more unimaginable control over the thinking of the people. This is what Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky so insightfully called “manufacturing consent.”
ISAAC SANEY points to the global stakes involved in defending the Cuban revolution against imperialism and calls for resistance
In 2024, 19 households grew richer by $1 trillion while 66 million households shared 3 per cent of wealth in the US, validating Marx’s prediction that capitalism ‘establishes an accumulation of misery corresponding with accumulation of capital,’ writes ZOLTAN ZIGEDY



