The commons as the fulcrum for social regeneration
Karl Marx’s 1875 critique of the German Social Democratic Party provides a withering examination of capitalism’s ‘wicked ways’ and a guide to what the commons is and how to bring it about.
Stories by: Peter Linebaugh
From the Archive | Part four: Lizard talk
In the final instalment of a four-part series, Peter Linebaugh completes his review of 10 historical plagues by looking at the 1918 flu pandemic and the US syphilis experiments.
From the Archive | Part three: Lizard talk
In this third of a four-part series, Peter Linebaugh considers the effect of disease on the working classes, from the uprising in Haiti to newly formed UK and US industrial cities.
The wonderful history of May Day
From the Woodland Epoch to the current day, May Day along with its festive iterations is littered with heathens and holydays, workers and dynamite, Maid Marions and Little Johns.
From the Archive | Part two: Lizard talk
In this second of a four-part series, historian Peter Linebaugh compares microparasites, including the bubonic plague and smallpox, to the macroparasite of capitalism.
From the Archive | Part one: Lizard talk
In this first of a four-part series, historian Peter Linebaugh riffs on historical plagues, including those found in Exodus and the Book of Revelation, to think about HIV/Aids.
New Books | Enclosure of the commons
By hand, land, prison and sea, enclosure preceded the industrial revolution, leading Karl Marx to describe it as the original form of accumulation, “written in letters of blood and fire” that gave birth to capitalism.