VINCENT BEVINS’ work If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and the Missing Revolution, and Jeff Schuhrke’s Blue Collar Empire: The Untold Story of US Labor’s Global Anticommunist Crusade (reviewed in the Star at www.bit.ly/blueMS) were maybe the two most important books that I read this past year.

I have read many good books, many well-written books, many timely books, but these were arguably the two most important books.

They are important because they attempt to tackle questions that are neglected or only superficially discussed on the political left. They are most important because they surface popular assumptions that are among the greatest obstacles to the success of any authentically left project: spontaneity as an organisational philosophy and anti-communism as political orthodoxy.