RON JACOBS welcomes a timely history of the Anti Imperialist league of America, and the role that culture played in their politics
Latest editorial
Crusoe and his Consequences by James Dunkerley
Radical demystification of Daniel Defoe’s iconic work
‘RADICAL STAR’: Portrait of Defoe by unknown artist
[National Maritime Museum]
STEVE ANDREW appreciates a passionate account of the Scottish Club during the ‘lost decade’
By telling the story of a lawless frontier town from the point of view of the Lakota, Chinese labourers, prostitutes and displaced prospectors, makes for a potted history of capital, suggests ALEX HALL
TONY BURKE speaks to Gambian kora player SUNTOU SUSSO
MARIA DUARTE recommends a British boxing biopic about the stormy relationship between Nazeem Hamed and his trainer Brendan Ingle
ANDY HEDGECOCK and MARIA DUARTE review Good Night, and Good Luck: Live from Broadway, Becoming Victoria Wood, Hamnet, and Song Sung Blue
CHRIS SEARLE speaks to Filipino-US saxophonist JON IRABAGON about the threat of AI in the time of Musk and Trump, and how an artist can respond
KNOWN to millions, even those who have never read Daniel Defoe’s popular desert-island story, Robinson Crusoe has never failed to engage the interests of not only enthusiasts for tales of adventure but also literary critics, sociologists, economists and psychologists.
Widely recognised as the first modern novel, Defoe’s work has been claimed as “a core mythic text of Western and capitalist civilisation over the last three centuries,” with Marx criticising classical bourgeois economists who seized upon the enterprising marooned Crusoe, reduced to the state of natural man, as a model for a perfect market economy.
Similar stories
Peter Mitchell's photography reveals a poetic relationship with Leeds
Ben Cowles speaks with IAN ‘TREE’ ROBINSON and ANDY DAVIES, two of the string pullers behind the Manchester Punk Festival, ahead of its 10th year show later this month
JAN WOOLF wallows in the historical mulch of post WW2 West Germany, and the resistant, challenging sense made of it by Anselm Kiefer
CAROLINE FOWLER explains how the slave trade helped establish the ‘golden age’ of Dutch painting and where to find its hidden traces