This spellbinding novel paints a vivid and enthralling picture of contemporary Mumbai, ranging from the utterly chronic corruption of the Indian state to the desperation of millions shut out of the ‘economic miracle’. But Chandra is no dour realist: his prose is a delight and carries the densely epic plot with an elegance that offers moments of uproarious hilarity inseparably mixed with heartbreak. Police, gangsters, far-right Hindu nationalists and secret service operatives engage in a kaleidoscopic power struggle with minimal democratic interference. The analytical perspective is liberal rather than left-wing, but reading Sacred Games is a thrilling and fantastic experience. AB
Faber and Faber; 2007; 960 pages
While billed as a succinct introduction to Karl Marx’s philosophy, this book is a dense and challenging read. For one thing it assumes a solid prior knowledge of Marx’s key concepts and their deployment throughout his major works. Nevertheless there is a wealth of stimulating material here. Particularly interesting are sections on commodity fetishism, the notion of progress and evolutionism, ideology and subjectivity (which also examines the meaning of ‘human rights’). What emerges is the complexity and often contradictory character of Marx’s thought, a richness that can’t be boiled down to any banal formulation or reduced to an outmoded determinism. SS
A unique and fascinating perspective on the effects of the recent economic trends on America’s ‘fly-over’ states. Sociologists Patrick Carr and Maria Kefalas move to a small town in rural Iowa to investigate parallel and symbiotic phenomena: ‘brain drain’, a cycle of encouraging the best and brightest to fulfill their potential by leaving the small town in favour of larger cities with more opportunities; simultaneously, as unskilled labour moves from the American heartland to countries such as China and Mexico in order to increase profits for shareholders, entire ‘brain-drained’ communities collapse overnight, leaving families without income and workers without options. MEL
Comparing economic theory to psychology and CIA torture, Klein argues that neoliberalism’s rise was intimately intertwined with the notion of ‘shock’, of exploiting populations reeling from man-made or human disasters to implement reforms beneficial to capital. Klein charts the global progress of such ‘shock treatments’ and argues a new form of economy has arisen in recent years: disaster capitalism. It’s a neat formulation but it’s ultimately unconvincing; many of Klein’s examples actually undermine her thesis. Nevertheless, with her customary tight prose the ‘No Logo’ author marshals an impressive array of facts which serve to make this a frequently fascinating history. SS
This collection, as timely as it is readable, offers an excellent account of this key site of class struggle and hums with insight, anger and strategic perspective. Glynn in particular is passionate but never romantic, and remains firmly rooted in a class analysis of the aggressive global intensification of market relations since the 1980s. Whilst not all the contributions achieve her rigour, the internationally comparative breadth is admirable. But tenants never become merely passive victims of cutbacks, and possibilities for workers’ resistance are as prominent as the mad and inhuman outcomes of commodified solutions to the human need for shelter. AB
This is a superb primer on the economic crisis of 2009 for anyone who wants to get a better handle on the immediate causes of the financial meltdown that at one stage threatened to plunge the world into another great depression. Mason, economics correspondent for the BBC’s Newsnight, begins with a colourful first-hand survey of the day-by-day drama of the crisis from what he saw on Wall Street and Washington. He identifies the deeper roots of the crisis in financialization, the ‘subprime’ housing boom and, ultimately, neoliberal economics. His prescriptions are somewhat weak, however; he recommends merely a revamped Keynesianism. SS
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