Radicals in Conversation

In May 2021, Pluto published a new edited collection from Jules Joanne Gleeson and Elle O’Rourke, titled Transgender Marxism . The book offers a groundbreaking synthesis of transgender studies and Marxist theory. Exploring trans lives and movements, the collection’s contributors delve into the experiences of surviving as transgender under capitalism. They explore the pressures, oppression and stat...

The Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill is a far-reaching piece of legislation that would, if passed into law, result in an enormous and unprecedented extension of policing powers, severely curtailing the right to peaceful protest. Over the summer, many people have taken to the streets in #KilltheBill protests to voice their opposition and alarm. One aspect of the Policing bill that is perha...

'Work hard, get paid.' It's simple. Self-evident. But it's also a lie - at least for most of us. For people today, the old assumptions are crumbling; hard work in school no longer guarantees a secure, well-paying job in the future. Far from a gateway to riches and fulfillment, 'work' means precarity, anxiety and alienation. Discussing everything from the history of work under capitalism, to social...

Content warning: suicide Academia was once thought of as the best job in the world - a career that fosters autonomy, craft, intrinsic job satisfaction and vocational zeal. And yet you would be hard-pressed to find a lecturer who believes that now. Indeed, there’s a strong correlation between the marketisation and commercialisation of higher education over the last 30 years and the psychological he...

Borders are more than geographical lines - they impact all our lives, whether it's the inhumanity of deportations, or a rise in racist attacks in the wake of the EU referendum. Border Nation, the new book by Leah Cowan, shows how oppressive borders must be resisted. Laying bare the web of media myths that vilify migrants, Leah dives into the murky waters of corporate profiteering from borders by c...

We are in a moment of profound overlapping crises. The landscape of politics and entitlement is being rapidly remade. As movements against colonial legacies and state violence coincide with the rise of authoritarian regimes, it is the lens of racism, and the politics of race, that offers the sharpest focus. The 'hostile environment' and the fallout from Brexit have, over the last few years, thrown...

In the early hours of the morning of the 12th October 1984, a bomb exploded in the Grand Hotel in Brighton. Five people were killed and many more were injured. The bombing was an attempt by the Provisional IRA to kill the Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, and her cabinet. Patrick Magee, the man responsible for planting the bomb, was eventually apprehended, put on trial and imprisoned. He was rele...

In 2019, over 10,000 possible victims of slavery were found in the UK. From men working in Sports Direct warehouses for barely any pay, to teenaged Vietnamese girls trafficked into small town nail bars, we're told that modern slavery is all around us, operating in plain sight. But is this really slavery, and is it even a new phenomenon? Why has the British Conservative Party called it 'one of the...

For decades we have spoken of the 'Israel-Palestine conflict', but what if our understanding and framing of the issue has been wrong all along?  That’s the argument of a new book published in January 2021, Decolonizing Israel, Liberating Palestine. Joining us in conversation this month is the author, Jeff Halper, former Director of the Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions (ICAHD) and a foun...

Walk into any European museum today and you will see the curated spoils of Empire. They sit behind plate glass: dignified, tastefully lit. Accompanying pieces of card offer a name, date and place of origin. They do not mention that the objects are all stolen. Few artefacts embody this history of rapacious and extractive colonialism better than the Benin Bronzes - a collection of thousands of brass...

Amazon is the most powerful corporation on the planet. Now with a net worth in excess of $200 billion dollars, its CEO, Jeff Bezos, has become the richest person in history, and one of the few people to profit from the global pandemic. Amazon’s dominance is so profound that it has reshaped the global economy itself: we now live in the age of 'Amazon Capitalism'. Servicing the expansion of its e-co...

A global pandemic; the onset of a massive economic crisis; and the reinvigoration of a powerful social movement for racial justice - these are just some of the seismic events that have defined 2020, a year that still has several months to run, and yet already has few historical parallels. In July, Pluto launched a new series of short books, ' Vagabonds '. Intended as radical pamphlets to fan the f...

Pristine lawns, tennis whites, strawberries and cream - tennis is synonymous with the upper echelons of society, but scratch beneath the surface and you'll quickly discover a different history, one of untold struggles on and off the courts. From the birth of modern tennis in Victorian Britain to the present day, A People's History of Tennis lays bear struggles around sexuality, gender, race and cl...

In this episode, Jordan T. Camp speaks with popular educator Stephanie Weatherbee Brito about the rightwing turn in Latin America and its connection to U.S. and imperial interests in the region.

'Mutual aid, solidarity and commoning become most visible during periods of deep crisis. This is when the structures of the state and of capitalist markets not only fail to address the emergency situation, but they often show their complicity in making it worse. When solidarity is revealed to the majority as the practice that makes a difference, it is as if society en masse were to whisper in our...

This month Jordan T. Camp talks to actor and director Sudhanva Deshpande about his new book, Halla Bol: The Death and Life of Safdar Hashmi (LeftWord Books).

This month we join San Francisco-based historian, tour guide and author Chris Carlsson in a discussion centered around his new book, Hidden San Francisco: A Guide to Lost Landscapes, Unsung Heroes and Radical Histories (Pluto, 2020). Chris is in conversation with fellow historians Nicole Meldahl, Liam O'Donoghue and LisaRuth Elliott. They discuss the genesis of the Shaping San Francisco project in...

Jordan T. Camp is joined by historian Andrew Zimmerman to discuss his edited volume of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' writings, The Civil War in the United States (International Publishers).  

Covid-19 has thrown the idea of class, and class society, into sharp relief, ridiculing many of our economic system’s foundational premises - for one, the idea that as a worker, your pay cheque is a reflection of your value to society. Facing the possibility of economic collapse and a new great recession, the overton window has shifted dramatically on state intervention in the economy, the value o...

In the first episode of The New Intellectuals, Jordan T. Camp's guest is scholar-activist Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, who discusses her new book, Race for Profit: How Banks and Real Estate Industry Undermined Black Homeownership (University of North Carolina Press, 2019). --- The New Intellectuals is a monthly interview podcast produced for Pluto Press and The People’s Forum. Hosted by author, editor...

Celebrating the launch of her new book, Feminism, Interrupted: Disrupting Power , Lola Olufemi guest hosts this month's episode of Radicals in Conversation. She is joined on the panel by Jade Bentil, a black feminist historian and PhD researcher at the University of Oxford, and author of the forthcoming book, Rebel Citizen: A History of Black Women Living, Loving and Resisting (2021); and Gail Lew...

The more radical orientation of the Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn's leadership attracted many activists back to the party in 2015. Nearly five years later, with 580,000 registered members, it has become the largest political party in Europe. Yet in spite of this groundswell of grassroots support, the 2019 General Election handed Labour its worst defeat since 1935. Dogged by accusations of antis...

The ‘hostile environment’  - the anti-migrant policy announced by then-Home Secretary Theresa May in 2012 - has extended border policing into universities, healthcare, schools, and other sectors, forcing workers in those sectors to enforce immigration policy. Within higher education, international students and staff now face regular passport checks, and an obligation to report their exact whereabo...

James Baldwin left an indelible mark on the face of Western politics and culture. Novels like Go Tell it on a Mountain, Giovanni’s Room and Another Country were groundbreaking when they were first published in the 1950s and '60s, and Baldwin’s work continues to resonate. The 2018 cinematic release of If Beale Street Could Talk, based on Baldwin's novel of the same name, is the latest testament to...

Few political projects in recent years have been a source of greater hope and inspiration than Rojava - the Kurdish region of north-eastern Syria. Inspired by the political philosophy of Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned co-founder of the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), Rojava embodies a radical ecology, direct democracy and a deep commitment to gender equality. Although always threatened by a hosti...