‘Only by treasuring that we are stewards of planet Earth, and the finitude that comes with it, will be able to avoid humanity pitting its many powers against itself.’ On the Origin of Time is an important book in two respects: it develops our thinking about the nature of the universe and it calls for […]

Capitalism and Disability
The Neuro Pride Ireland festival 2022 took place in August and Eoghan Neville of Independent Left prepared a webinar on capitalism and disability for Neuro Pride Ireland, based on his reading of Roddy Slorach’s A Very Capitalist Condition: A History and Politics of Disability. He spoke to Conor Kostick about the book and disability rights. […]
The Carpet Crawlers: the Meaning of the Lyrics
What is the meaning of The Carpet Crawlers? The Genesis song, whose lyrics were written by Peter Gabriel, has a dense, religious imagery leading to considerable discussion over the years as to what is the meaning of the The Carpet Crawlers lyrics. Here I’ll offer an interpretation that it is, at heart, addressing a terrible […]
‘Primitive Communism’: Did it Ever Exist?
A review of The Dawn of Everything: A New History of Humanity by David Graeber and David Wengrow and an explanation of why the concept of primitive communism is mistaken. The way in which we imagine the first human societies is intimately connected to our current political beliefs. Conservatives believe in repression, the need for […]
William Carlos Williams’s poetry was of and for the proletariat
‘It’s as if no other poet except Williams had really seen America or heard its language’, wrote Robert Lowell in 1962, near the end of the elder bard’s life: ‘His flowers rustle by the superhighways and pick up all our voices.’ Some decades earlier, Mike Gold, the editor of New Masses magazine, predicted that ‘[w]hen […]