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

NICK MATTHEWS pays tribute to a fascinating city that’s not always its own best advocate

The great landscapes of the Lake District have been shaped by the words of poets, but they’ve also been shaped by human actions – not always for the good, says NICK MATTHEWS

Described as ‘the last of the great European male revolutionary socialist intellectuals’ in his time, read him today a century after his birth and you will never see the world the same way again, writes NICK MATTHEWS

NICK MATTHEWS reflects on the enduring legacy of one of our most influential early socialists

Now that the Clarion Cycling Club has dropped socialism from its constitution for being ‘divisive,’ NICK MATTHEWS considers the group’s history – and suspects the spirit of fellowship cannot be so easily banished

NICK MATTHEWS looks at the life of the communist who wrote the famous working-class poem I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night and finds a talented screenwriter and novelist