Alex Miller

Free by Lea Ypi

Alex Miller reviews Lea Ypi's fascinating memoir, which paints a vivid picture of growing up in Albania during Communist rule and the descent into casino capitalism and civil war.

Scottish Socialist Green New Deal

Alex Miller reviews a new booklet from the Scottish Socialist Party that makes the case for a socialist green new deal. 

The influence of French colonialism on the work of existentialist writer Albert Camus is significant. But Alex Miller argues that a new introduction to Camus' work vastly overstates the case.

Alex Miller reviews The Jakarta Method, a powerful book examining the US-backed anti-communist program of extermination in Indonesia.

June marks eighty years since the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany. It was a titanic struggle that decided the outcome of World War Two. One of the fronts of struggle was cultural, as Alex Miller explains.

Alex Miller reviews a highly speculative and naive work on the death of Albert Camus, who was perhaps France’s most prominent philosophical writer of the 20th century.

Hit and Run: The New Zealand SAS in Afghanistan & the Meaning of Honour
By Nicky Hager & Jon Stephenson
Potton & Burton, 2017 
159 pages

In this well-written and powerful book, Nicky Hager and Jon Stephenson present a barrage of evidence that “New Zealanders and their United States allies were involved in war crimes” in Afghanistan in 2010.

Who Rules The World?
By Noam Chomsky
Hamish Hamilton, 2016

Noam Chomsky, who turns 88 this month, revolutionised the study of linguistics in the second half of the 20th century, starting with books like Syntactic Structures (1957) and Aspects of the Theory of Syntax (1965). He remains professor emeritus at the Massachussetts Institute of Technology.

Left-wing supporters of Scottish independence in the 2014 referendum campaign. Is There A Scottish Road to Socialism? Edited by Gregor Gall Scottish Left Review Press Third edition, 2016 £5.99, 164 pages This is the third edition in a series previously published in 2007 and 2013. A range of left-wing activists and commentators debate the question of whether Scottish independence would help or hinder the prospects for socialism in Scotland.
The People’s Referendum: Why Scotland Will Never Be the Same Again by Paul Geoghegan Luath Press 2015 177 pages The British-wide general election for the Westminster parliament scheduled for May 7 looks set to be very close, perhaps even closer than the 2010 election that resulted in the Labour Party being replaced by a Conservative Party-Liberal Democrat coalition government. Opinion polls suggest that neither of the two main British parties, Conservative or Labour, will win enough seats for a majority of their own in the House of Commons.
Disunited Kingdom: How Westminster Won a Referendum But Lost Scotland By Iain MacWhirter Cargo Publishing, 2014, 174 pages The independence referendum on September 18 last year has been hailed by many as the most important event in the recent Scottish history. The result was far closer than any supporter of independence would have dared predict even a few months before the vote. About 1.6 million voters (45%) refused to be swayed by a sustained fear campaign by the British state and its allies ― voting “Yes” to Scottish independence.
In Place of Fear II: A Socialist Programme for an Independent Scotland By Jim Sillars Vagabond Voices Publishing, 2014 www.inplaceoffear.com Jim Sillars is a well-known and well-respected figure on the Scottish political scene. Elected a Labour Party MP for South Ayrshire in 1970, he shifted away from mainstream Labour Party politics due to his commitment to setting up a Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh.