Culture.
All of the articles we have published under the tag Culture, beginning with the most recent.
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Here to Stay, Here to Fight: A Race Today Anthology
Here to Stay, Here to Fight is an important archive of Black British History which will be welcome and relevant today and in the years ahead.
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Back to 'Between the Wars'?
Billy Bragg’s 1985 hit remains both a rallying cry and a warning.
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Remembering and Rebuilding Socialist Culture: A talk given at The World Transformed
How collectivism, mutual aid and political education formed a fundamental part of working-class community and culture.
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Building a Socialist Media System
In advance of the TWT policy lab, what might a socialist media look like and how would it relate to other commitments to a democratised everyday life.
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Corbyn, Joyce and Ulysses
What does Jeremy Corbyn's favourite novel reveal about the character of his politics?
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The Salford Docker: Doing Political Education Differently
Salford Community Theatre’s latest production, ‘The Salford Docker’, points the way to new and more engaging forms of socialist political education.
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The Defiance of Durham
The achievements of mining communities and unions are celebrated in spite of the conditions in which they arose, not because of them. This heritage also fuels today's struggles.
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Freedom and Movement
Radical music, like radical politics, can energise and mobilise us towards collective liberation—but physical and conceptual borders are threatening this potential.
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“A Robert Byron of the Left”?
Owen Hatherley discusses his latest book, ‘The Adventures of Owen Hatherley in the Post-Soviet Space’, and the revival of Tribune magazine.
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“The system needs to be fixed, not the people”
Can the arts address ordinary people’s experiences of political, social and cultural marginalisation, and redress media sensationalism of working-class lives?
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Cultural Labour in a City of Culture: Some Problems and Alternatives
UK arts policy has rarely paid attention to working conditions. How can a cultural "projectariat" find good quality work while also building vibrant creative scenes?
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Outlaw Kings and Rebellion Chic
The revolutionary is everywhere in pop culture, but revolutionary politics are conspicuous by their absence - or by their vilification.
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Communist Feelings
Works by Doris Lessing and Vivian Gornick on the fall-out around 1956 uncover the passion that's missing from conventional political histories. What can we learn from them?
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Culture Wars and Decolonising the University
Two very different books show the present state and future possibilities of struggles over the place of universities in society.
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A closer look at #Grime4Corbyn and the 2017 ‘youthquake'
How the alliance of grime and Corbynism bridged the gap between formal and informal politics and strengthened youth engagement.
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Red Moon, Red Earth: the radical science fiction of Kim Stanley Robinson
Like his former teacher Ursula Le Guin, Robinson has never lost faith in our capacity to use our collective intelligence and technological prowess to transcend limiting orthodoxies.
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'I’m the Shy Boy': Remembering Pete Shelley of Buzzcocks
Discussion of Pete Shelley's radical cultural heritage and legacy after his death, and his music.
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Culture for the Many, Not the Few
Alongside economic and political struggle, socialism will involve overcoming elitist gatekeeping to apply shared ownership and democratic control to everyday cultural activities.
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Tiny Wars and Special Cases: Remembering Local Struggle
Rescuing the memory of past working-class struggles, like Telford’s ‘Cinderloo’, can kindle political commitment for the present and future.
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The British Left and Contested Memories of Peterloo
In contrast to the enormous condescension of conservative commentators, the left has tried in various ways to keep the memory of the Peterloo massacre alive.
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On Peterloo, poetry, and the politics of protest history
History disproves the idea that political awareness, activism and culture are beyond the grasp of ‘ordinary’ people.
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Beyond the Manifesto: A New Deal for the Arts
The arts - though sometimes viewed as relatively autonomous - are subject to the diktats of neoliberal structures. It’s time for Labour in government to fundamentally change these structures.
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Could the theatre industry become a vehicle for radical politics?
With spaces like The World Transformed, this future is closer than we might think.
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The Age of Authentocracy
Joe Kennedy’s ‘Authentocrats’ is a staging-post in cultural criticism post Corbyn and post post-politics, where it's valid to talk directly about politics and left-populism without being deemed passé.
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Sneering at the English
An extract from "Authentocrats": Good taste conservationist conservatism and optimistic traditionalism offers no useful challenge to nihilistic paranoid patriotism.
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“People are intelligent and we shouldn't assume otherwise”: Interview with Juliet Jacques on her radio show Suite (212)
“Corbyn’s statement that there is a poetry and a creativity in people that is waiting to be unleashed is a much more appealing prospect than Tom Watson standing in his wellies at a Drenge gig.”
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Le Guin's Revolution
The work of Ursula K Le Guin was built on the conviction that the human soul’s capacity for stoic and principled resistance to oppression is inextinguishable.
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Fantastic Terrors: The Rise of Alt-Right Politics through the Lens of Fantasy
The fantasy genre is suffering from a crisis of imagination, mired in its conservative vision of a world slipping into ruin, longing for its past.
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Bill Brand and the ‘Metallic Logic of Social Democracy’
Four decades on from its debut, Trevor Griffiths' newly-relevant 'Bill Brand' remains a work of unusual political rigour and depth.
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Dialectical Soap Operas: Rainer Werner Fassbinder on TV
On the radical filmmaker’s successful attempt to smuggle socialist critique into popular melodrama.
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Stranger Things: TV for a Lost Reality
Stranger Things and the Democrats are relics of a lost reality; to be truly effective in the age of Trump, all they have to do is look outside.
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This is what happens when you leave the Plebs in charge, "The Death of Stalin"
The Death of Stalin; very much a red flag to a bull.
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The Comedification of Politics; The Politicisation of Comedy
In the struggle for hegemony nothing should be left aside: the left must use the whole arsenal of art, feeling, and sensuousness.
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Please Solve Life: How Transhumanism Distracts Us from Silicon Valley’s Class Warfare
The tricks of the transhumanists are the tricks of any capitalists. Until we solve life, there’s no point in solving death.
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The Brexit Novel?
Anthony Cartwright’s Iron Towns (2016), Paul Kingsnorth’s The Wake (2014) and Ben Myers’ The Gallows Pole considered as ‘Goodhartian Novels’.
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Paul Sng interview - Dispossession: The Great Social Housing Swindle
“Every time I see a person in a cardboard box in London,” Tony Benn once told parliament, “I say, that person is a victim of market forces.”
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Football from Below
Mark Perryman of Philosophy Football explores the possibilities of fan culture as a social movement.
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Conspiracy Theory is Now Conspiracy Fact: Interview with Morag Livingstone on her film "Belonging"
Belonging: The Truth Behind the Headlines is a new documentary by Morag Livingstone.
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Broadcast Me a Joyful Noise: The dissemination of politics and the spirit of folk
What exactly is “folk” about “folk politics”?
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Labour Party Conference: Call for Contributions
This September, thousands of Labour Party members - including constituency and trade union delegates from across Britain - will descend upon Brighton for this year’s Labour conference.
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‘The Past We Inherit, the Future We Build’: Lessons from the Durham Miners’ Gala
A city's character is both constantly negotiated in the struggle between its constituent parts, and shaped and re-shaped by its relationship with local and global economies.
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Islington Redefined
Even the most expensive area in Islington North is home to more diversity than is ever discussed.
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Pragmatics for Pragmatists
‘Fucking melt’, ‘salt the slugs’, ‘absolutely bodied by the absolute boy’. The left internet at the peak of the election was alive with raucous glee.
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It Was a Fantasy: Centrist Political Commentators in the Age of Corbynism
A small group of handsomely paid political commentators convinced themselves that they understood the governing laws of electoral politics.