MATTHEW HAWKINS applauds a psychotherapist’s disection of William Blake
Ruskin’s vision
NICK MATTHEWS welcomes the Communist Party of Britain’s commitment to culture and suggests that the Victorian critic points the way toward combining social function with beauty
RUSKIN’S VISION: The social housing complex Alt-Erlaa, 1970s, by architect Harry Gluck in Vienna, Austria is centered on the welfare of the residents and includes saunas, indoor and outdoor (roof-top) swimming pools, gyms and other exquisite communal areas
[Jussi Toivanen/flickr/CC] 
New releases from Christina Alden and Alex Patterson, Odette Michell, Clementine Lovell
JOHN GREEN is fascinated by a very readable account of Britain’s involvement in South America
Strip cartoons used to be the bread and butter of newspapers and they have been around for centuries. MICHAL BONCZA asks our own Paul Tanner about which bees are in his bonnet
GORDON PARSONS acknowledges the authority with which Sarah Kane’s theatrical justification for suicide has resonance today
RON JACOBS welcomes a timely homage to one of the IWW and CPUSA’s most effective orators
RECENTLY I have been delighted to see the Communist Party take the issue of culture more seriously.
Raymond Williams argued that “the Labour Party and the unions had failed throughout even to see the cultural struggle as a major element in all political and economic struggles.”
There is much for Marxists to consider. The founders of Western Marxism, Gyorgy Lukacs and Antonio Gramsci, made huge contributions in this space as did our own Christopher Caudwell.
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PHIL KATZ applauds the biography of a man of principle that is a vibrant excavation of the radical tradition itself
RICHARD CLARKE applauds the assertion that Western Marxism represents a withdrawal from action to change the world into the academy
PAUL MACGEE highlights a new series of books that brings together a treasure trove of writings by a Jewish Marxist art historian who offers readers a refreshingly grounded theory of art
SIAN LEWIS draws attention to a tradition of design whose mass production was conceived for the greater good rather than the greatest profit