In Letters Of Blood And Fire

Karl Marx remarked that the only way to write about the origins of capitalism is in the letters of blood and fire used to drive workers from the common lands, forests, and waters in the sixteenth century. In this collection of essays, George Caffentzis argues that the same is true for the annals of twenty-first-century capitalism. Information technology, immaterial production, financialization, and globalization have been trumpeted as inaugurating a new phase of capitalism that puts it beyond its violent origins. Instead of being a period of major social and economic novelty, however, the course of recent decades has been a return to the fire and blood of struggles at the advent of capitalism. Emphasizing class struggles that have proliferated across the social body of global capitalism, Caffentzis shows how a wide range of conflicts and antagonisms in the labor-capital relation express themselves within and against the work process. These struggles are so central to the dynamic of the system that even the most sophisticated machines cannot liberate capitalism from class struggle and the need for labor. Themes of war and crisis permeate the text and are given singular emphasis, documenting the peculiar way in which capital perpetuates violence and proliferates misery on a world scale. This collection draws upon a careful rereading of Marx’s thought in order to elucidate political concerns of the day. Originally written to contribute to the debates of the anticapitalist movement over the last thirty years, this book makes Caffentzis’s writings readily available as tools for the struggle in this period of transition to a common future.

Based on long-term fieldwork, six vivid ethnographies from Colombia, India, Poland, Spain and the southern and northern U.S. address the dwindling importance of labor throughout the world. The contributors to this volume highlight the growing disconnect between labor struggles and the advancement of the greater common good, a phenomenon that has grown since the 1980s. The collection illustrates the defeat and unmaking of particular working classes, and it develops a comparative perspective on the uneven consequences of and reactions to this worldwide project. Blood and Fire charts a course within global anthropology to address the widespread precariousness and the prevalence of insecure and informal labor in the twenty-first century.

An uneducated youth, William Booth left home in 1849 at the age of twenty to preach the gospel for the New Methodist Connexion. Six years later he founded a new religious movement which succeeded to such a degree that the Salvation Army (which it became) is now a worldwide operation with massive membership. But that is only part of Booth's importance and heritage. In many ways his story is also that of the Victorian poor, as he and his wife Catherine made it their lives' work to battle against the poverty and deprivation which were endemic in the mid- to late 1800s. Indeed, it was Catherine who, although a chronic invalid, inspired the Army's social policy and attitude to female authority. Her campaign against child prostitution resulted in the age of consent being raised and it was Catherine who, dying of cancer, encouraged William to clear the slums -- In Darkest England, The Way Out. Roy Hattersley's masterful dual biography is not just the story of two fascinating lives but a portrait of an integral part of our history.

Blood and Fire, Tsar and Commissarexamines the Salvation Army's first attempt to establish itself in Russia during the early decades of the twentieth century. It is a stirring story of faith, determination and endurance of a would-be-law-abiding organization struggling (despite police raids, death by epidemic and other catastrophes) to work in a place where, prior to the revolutions of 1917, it did not officially exist.

On July 22, 1946 six members of the Irgun, a Jewish underground group headed by future Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin, entered the basement of Jerusalem’s King David Hotel and planted seven milk churns filled with explosives underneath the wing housing the headquarters of the British Mandatory Government of Palestine. The ensuing explosion killed ninety-one Britons, Arabs, and Jews, in roughly equal numbers, at the time the greatest death toll in any single act of terrorism. The bombing was a pivotal moment in Israeli and Palestinian history, and was one of several dramatic attacks that eventually persuaded the British to leave Palestine. Clarke’s minute-by-minute account of the attack is thrilling, and his narrative brings the perpetrators and victims vividly to life.

Secrets of the past combine with voodoo, vampires, and everlasting love to create this gothic novel. Newlyweds have just moved to Baton Rouge. One evening while exploring River Road, they are invited into a plantation house, "The Cottage" in the midst of what appears to be a costume ball with Civil War era formals. The next day they return to find that the house is in ruins - since a fire in 1960. The home's history shows a dangerous link to the new bride. The author lives in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and takes his inspiration from local history.

In this book, historian Nigel Scotland examines ten powerful revival movements that hugely impacted the social life and culture of large sections of America and the British Isles. Revivals represent a high point of Christian experience, renewing and empowering the life and worship of Christian communities. In consequence they draw large numbers of new people to personal faith in Christ, which in turn brings lasting and positive change to social life and culture. In this book special attention is given to the ways in which vibrant Christian faith challenged racism, fought and overcame slavery, helped to birth trade unions, campaigned for temperance, led to a rapid growth in education, from Sunday schools to universities, provided equal opportunities for women, and renewed family life and relationships.