The government needs to raise its game when it comes to the tech giants who behave like the robber barons of old, argues NICK MATTHEWS

NICK MATTHEWS looks at the great Bolshevik leader’s intense three-week period of furious study in the British Library in 1908 and the timeless classic on Marxism and philosophy it produced: Materialism and Empirio-Criticism

NICK MATTHEWS recommends a vivacious blend of classical and traditional Cuban music that brings swing to Mozart

NICK MATTHEWS looks back to the historic 14-week dispute which was to form a significant early test for the then-recently formed Transport and General Workers Union

We have a lot to honour and much to learn from the giants of the historical 'class struggle in the fields,' writes NICK MATTHEWS

For decades, portraits of great socialists by the same artist hung in very different houses, one working class and one a country estate — and both played a role in labour movement history, writes NICK MATTHEWS

NICK MATTHEWS recalls the founding of the annual Levellers Day and its stalwart supporters Dudley Edwards and Tony Benn

NICK MATTHEWS recommends an exhibition by an artist who was as true to his art as he was to his radical politics

NICK MATTHEWS looks back on the continuing legacy of Alan Bush, the Workers Music Association’s Topic Records and BBC Radio 3

The remarkable history of a Stoke pub, which played a role in the industrial revolution and the early days of the labour movement, has ended with an unremarkable fate: what will become of our traditional social spaces, asks NICK MATTHEWS

Working for the New York Daily Tribune, Marx excoriated the British empire’s opium trade that brought China under its influence with a staggering human cost, writes NICK MATTHEWS

NICK MATTHEWS gets into the Victorian festive spirit with Marx, Engels – and Charles Dickens