International Socialism #142 online

If bestselling books are a guide to popular mood, the existence of two books attacking inequality and defending the relevance of social class in some form or other -  Capital in the 21st century (by French economist Thomas Piketty)  and also one entitled The People: The Rise and Fall of the Working Class, 1910-2010 by British social historian Selina Todd are certainly worth registering - and their popularity has certainly annoyed many on the ideological Right - even if Piketty rejects Marxism and Todd's subtitle unfortunately suggests she at least partly believes the working class is now powerless to change society.  

Fortunately, the latest issue of International Socialism is now online, with articles defending the relevance of Marxist economics and also theorising British working class struggle both past and present on the 30th anniversary of the Great Miners Strike by Dave Hayes, labour historian Ralph Darlington and Mark O'Brien, who writes on the one day mass strike in the public sector on N30 in 2011.  There are also timely articles on many other issues, from  privilege theory, Stuart Hall's Marxism, the Ukraine, to discussions of bourgeois revolution, counter-revolution in Egypt, and reviews of recent works including environmentalism.