Thatcher and Thatcherism - Eric J. Evans

Drawing extensively on political memoirs, Thatcher and Thatcherism surveys the origins and impact of 'Thatcherism' as a cultural construct and an economic creed.
Focusing on the career of Margaret Thatcher, Eric J. Evans proposes that the ideological coherence and originality of 'Thatcherism' was illusory. He argues that 'Thatcherism' was a bold experiment in ideologically driven government which failed to meet its main objectives.

He includes discussion of:
* privatization and the fate of the trade unions
* Britain's slow economic decline versus Thatcher's delusions of British grandeur
* the legacy of the Falklands and of Britain's approach to Europe
* education, the civil service, and crime.
* the contribution of the poll tax fiasco to her fall from power.
With full bibliography and explanation of the economic, social and historical context of Britain in the late 1970s and 80s, Thatcher and Thatcherism is an invaluable guide to the complexities and paradoxes of contemporary Britain.

The Ethnographical Notebooks of Karl Marx

Marx copied out long passages of Morgan and others with his own substantial commentaries alongside. These were notes for a substantial work left unwritten and although their existence was known at his death in 1883, they were not published as one volume until 1972, 89 years later, and then only in a high priced specialist edition. These Ethnological Notebooks, as they became known were much less than a rough draft, "Rather it is a raw substance of a work, a private jumble of jottings intended for no other eyes than Marx’s own" Rosemont, p.201, italics in original.

Engels summarised these in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, but missed out many of Marx’s most important insights. It was simply a popular digest of the work of Morgan and others. Sadly, Engels’ work has been taken for orthodoxy particularly in the traditional "Stalinized" version of Marxism. This is not to blame Engels, who himself describes it as "but a meagre substitute", for the much larger work that Marx left unwritten. 

Marx saw aspects of these ancient societies as progressive and worthy of preservation during the socialist transition to Communism. He felt that they were in some ways superior to societies based on alienated labour and commodity production. Iroquois society, in particular, impressed him. Marx admired not just their democratic culture but also their whole way of life: egalitarianism, independence, reverence for life and personal dignity. 

Marx praised Iroquois participatory democracy as expressed in their councils as a "democratic assembly where every adult male and female member had a voice upon all questions brought before it."

Squatting in Europe - Squatting Europe Kollective

Squatting offers a radical but simple solution to the crises of housing, homelessness, and the lack of social space that mark contemporary society: occupying empty buildings and rebuilding lives and communities in the process. Squatting has a long and complex history, interwoven with the changing and contested nature of urban politics over the last forty years.

Squatting can be an individual strategy for shelter or a collective experiment in communal living. Squatted and self-managed social centres have contributed to the renewal of urban struggles across Europe and intersect with larger political projects. However, not all squatters share the same goals, resources, backgrounds or desire for visibility.

Squatting in Europe aims to move beyond the conventional understandings of squatting, investigating its history in Europe over the past four decades. Historical comparisons and analysis blend together in these inquiries into squatting in the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, France, Germany and England. In it members of SqEK (Squatting Europe Kollective) explore the diverse, radical, and often controversial nature of squatting as a form of militant research and self-managed knowledge production.

Essays by Miguel Martínez, Gianni Piazza, Hans Pruijt, Pierpaolo Mudu, Claudio Cattaneo, Andre Holm, Armin Kuhn, Linus Owens, Florence Bouillon, Thomas Aguilera, and ETC Dee.

“Amidst the proliferation of post-political banter, it is refreshing to see the time-tested politics of pre-figurative direct action being taking so seriously.  This is a must-read for anybody who wants to better understand how the politics of squatting offer a set of transformative strategies for a creating a more egalitarian world.  Furthermore, this collection illustrates how such transformative politics so often start in the world’s cities through deliberate organizing and thoughtful reflection by committed groups of activists, scholars and everyday citizens.” – Nik Heynen, University of Georgia

“In an era of austerity, capitalist accumulation by dispossession, and the criminalization of protest this excellent book serves as an inspiring and timely reminder of people’s re-appropriation of urban spaces in order to fashion alternatives to the status quo. Structured around a typology of squatting configurations – as anti-deprivation; entrepreneurial; conservational; political; and alternative housing strategies – this empirically-rich collection of essays by scholars and activists provides persuasive evidence of the creativity and politically transformative potential involved in such practices.” – Paul Routledge, University of Glasgow