JON BALDWIN recommends a provocative assertion of how working-class culture can rethink knowledge
Winning hearts and minds
JONATHAN WHITE recommends a key study that shows how language is vital to the mobilisation of the class and the development of consciousness
THE LANGUAGE OF CLASS MEMORY: A sculpture designed by Gordon Young depicting the killing of cotton mill workers during the Plug Plot Riots in 1842 was unveiled in front of the Preston Cotton Exchange on the 150th anniversary of the riot, in August 1992
These are vivid accounts of people’s experiences of far-right violence along with documentation of popular resistance, says MARJORIE MAYO
The Star's critic MARIA DUARTE, JOHN GREEN and ANGUS REID review An Army of Women, Julie Keeps Quiet, The Friend and The Ugly Stepsister
GORDON PARSONS squirms at a production that attempts to update Shakespeare’s comedy to a tale of Premier League football
Above a Gothic bar just down from Brighton station, something spooky is happening, suggests JAMES WALSH
PETER MASON is enthralled by an assembly of objects, ancient and modern, that have lain in the mud of London’s river
MIK SABIERS enjoys the theatrical feminist six piece who have a lot of fun that the audience feeds off as the set rolls on
Languages of Class Struggle: Communication and Mass Mobilisation in Britain and Ireland 1842-1972
John Foster (Praxis Press, £25)
IN 1847, Karl Marx wrote that in the process of struggle the working class is transformed from being a class against capital into a class “for itself,” consciously struggling to change the social order.
Throughout his career, from his ground-breaking book Class Struggle and the Industrial Revolution onwards, John Foster’s work can be seen as a dialogue with this idea.
What are the concrete conditions in which class consciousness can develop? Exactly how do classes mobilise and reach the point where they start to pose a challenge to state power? How does consciousness change in the process of struggle and what role do leaders play in this process? What is left over when mobilisations end?
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