Radicals in Conversation

In a context in which abolitionist discourse is reaching an ever-wider audience, and people’s trust in the state, as a vehicle through which we can hope to achieve meaningful political change, continues to ebb away, we are seeing a renewed engagement with prefigurative politics across the left. Pluto has always published books from a variety of political tendencies, and that includes anarchism. Th...

Radicals in Conversation in-haus is a new podcast series collaboration between Pluto Press and  Bookhaus , an independent bookshop in Bristol. RIC in-haus is recorded on location at Bookhaus. The bookshop’s ‘in-haus’ events programme features authors of some of the most exciting radical fiction and nonfiction being published today. Episode 6 was recorded on 30th November. Darran McLaughlin from Bo...

In 2022, workers have taken strike action on a massive scale, and many more are in the process of balloting to take strike action. In Britain, NHS workers, postal workers, criminal barristers, rail workers, university lecturers and many more have all walked out in the face of attacks on pay, pensions and working conditions. Amidst the cost of living and energy crises, spiralling inflation and the...

Radicals in Conversation in-haus is a new podcast series collaboration between Pluto Press and  Bookhaus , an independent bookshop in Bristol. RIC in-haus is recorded on location at Bookhaus. The bookshop’s ‘in-haus’ events programme features authors of some of the most exciting radical nonfiction being published today. In episode 5, Andrew Murray speaks about his new book, Is Socialism Possible i...

Amidst the global pandemic, war, environmental catastrophe, the cost of living crisis, and where victories for anti-capitalist forces are few and far between, it can feel like we are living in well and truly hopeless times. But as Marxist philosopher John Holloway argues in his new book, the times may indeed be hopeless, but we must still have hope. Hope in Hopeless Times is the the final instalme...

Radicals in Conversation in-haus is a new podcast series collaboration between Pluto Press and  Bookhaus , an independent bookshop in Bristol. RIC in-haus is recorded on location at Bookhaus. The bookshop’s ‘in-haus’ events programme features authors of some of the most exciting radical nonfiction being published today. In episode 4, Gracie Mae Bradley and Luke de Noronha are in conversation with...

Giorgia Meloni’s Fratelli d’Italia, or Brothers of Italy, emerged from the Italian general election earlier this week with around 26% of the vote. Although it has been a junior partner in previous coalition governments, this is the first time that the party, which traces its lineage back to Mussolini and the post-war fascism of the Italian Social Movement (MSI), has become the largest political fo...

Radicals in Conversation in-haus is a new podcast series collaboration between Pluto Press and  Bookhaus , an independent bookshop in Bristol. RIC in-haus is recorded on location at Bookhaus. The bookshop’s ‘in-haus’ events programme features authors of some of the most exciting radical nonfiction being published today. Episode 3 features Rodrigo Nunes, author of Neither Vertical nor Horizontal: A...

Recently, U.S. politics has appeared to be very much in a state of crisis. The last president was impeached by Congress, and stands accused of inciting an attempted coup in the January 2021 assault on the Capitol. What's more, in devastating acts of judicial review, The Supreme Court has overturned Roe v. Wade, throwing out the right to an abortion; and its June 30th ruling on West Virginia v. Env...

Radicals in Conversation in-haus is a new podcast series collaboration between Pluto Press and  Bookhaus , an independent bookshop in Bristol. RIC in-haus is recorded on location at Bookhaus. The bookshop’s ‘in-haus’ events programme features authors of some of the most exciting radical nonfiction being published today. Episode two features Azfar Shafi and Ilyas Nagdee, co-authors of Race to the B...

This month we are joined on the panel by Françoise Vergès, author of A Feminist Theory of Violence and A Decolonial Feminism , and Aviah Sarah Day and Shanice Octavia McBean, co-authors of the forthcoming book, Abolition Revolution .  Our discussion focuses on the connections between carceral feminism, racial capitalism and the structural violence perpetrated by the state. We also talk about the p...

Radicals in Conversation in-haus is a new podcast series collaboration between Pluto Press and Bookhaus , an independent bookshop in Bristol. RIC in-haus is recorded on location at Bookhaus. The bookshop's 'in-haus' events programme features authors of some of the most exciting political nonfiction currently being published. In episode 1, Stacey Clare, author of The Ethical Stripper , is in conver...

Islamophobia is everywhere. It is a narrative and history woven so deeply into our everyday lives that we don't even notice it – in our education, how we travel, our healthcare, legal system and at work. Behind the scenes it affects the most vulnerable, at the border and in prisons. Despite this, the conversation about Islamophobia is relegated to microaggressions and slurs. At best, we see it as...

In England today there exist nearly 120,000 miles of public footpath - half what it was 100 years ago and amounting to just 8% of the land in the country. Of England’s 42,000 miles of rivers, we have access to just 3%. The enclosure of common land, and the exclusion of the people who lived upon it, was a violent process that began almost a thousand years ago, and reached its zenith in the 18th and...

To celebrate Black History Month in the US, we've gone through the Radicals in Conversation archive and curated a series of extracts in which our panellists discuss different aspects of Black history in America. Extract 1: Episode 26 (December 2019) - Bill Mullen and Megan Williams discuss the evolution of the radical politics of James Baldwin, as it was expressed in his writing and in his activis...

Almost two years into the Covid-19 pandemic, and the limits of a neoliberal public health orthodoxy have been well and truly exposed. But instead of pushing for radical change, the left in Britain finds itself stuck in a rearguard action focused on defending the National Health Service (NHS) from the wrecking ball of privatisation. In January 2022, Pluto published The Five Health Frontiers: A New...

In October 2021, Pluto published the definitive edition of Anarchism and the Black Revolution by Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin. The book first connected Black radical thought to anarchist theory in 1979, and now amidst a rising tide of Black political organising, this foundational classic has been republished with a wealth of original material, including forewords by William C. Anderson and Joy James. Thi...

Content warning: rape, suicide On 25 May 2018, the Irish people voted to remove the Eighth Amendment from the constitution. This amendment, which had been introduced in 1983, not only made abortion illegal in Ireland, but equated the life of a pregnant woman to the life of a fertilised embryo. Despite this criminalisation, the ban on abortion was always resisted and circumvented. In the years lead...

The trade union movement in Britain has existed for nearly two centuries: from the Tolpuddle Martyrs, to the 1888 Matchgirls’ strike, to the militant action of Women machinists at the Ford plant in Dagenham in 1968 - organised labour has a rich, if complicated, history. But in the ebb and flow and workers’ power over the decades, we find ourselves at a historic low point. Union membership is decli...

Throughout 2021 we have witnessed a number of devastating and deeply disturbing extreme weather events across the globe. From flooding and forest fires, to soaring temperatures, it is abundantly clear that global warming is accelerating faster than anticipated, and our window of opportunity to combat its worst effects is shrinking commensurately.  The 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parti...

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...