BREAKING: Waterstones are offering 25% off preorders of my book Reds: A Global History of Communism - click on the link and use the code SUMMER26 - offer available until this Friday... www.waterstones.com/book/reds/pa...

If I could reinvent opera as a modern genre it would always be staged like this, even with under strength string sections and minimal sets it's better artistically than 90% of state subsidised opera in the UK. Same goes for Walkure last year

Offtopic but glorious - I was at #Longborough to see Tristan und Isolde yesterday and despite all the daft bow ties and stifling heat it was the best performance I've ever seen (and I'm lucky enough to have seen the greats at Covent Garden) kudos to Peter Wedd and Catherine Woodward #mildundleise ..

#OnThisDay 1953 workers in East Berlin begin two day uprising against Stalinist rule. More in Reds: A Global History of Communism www.amazon.co.uk/Reds-History...

Karl Marx was a humanist. More in my book Reds: A Global History of Communism ...

Just finished a 3-hour stint on BBC World Service and can never resist a selfie with the patron saint of anti-authoritarian left wing journalism ... great working with @hannahluci.bsky.social @krupapadhy.bsky.social and @samiraahmeduk.bsky.social

Who invented communism? Not Marx & Engels...

People saying "surely they won't vote for him now?" miss the point of far right radicalisation: the point is to transgress - doesn't matter what they say - they're breaking the rules of decency to shatter our civil society 1/2 ...

#OnThisDay 1871 - Paris Commune's Committee of Public Safety reinstates the revolutionary calendar of 1792. It is now "15th Floreal, Year 79". More in Reds: A Global History of Communism geni.us/Redscovrev

#OnThisDay 1926 - first full day of the British General Strike. In Reds: A Global History of Communism, I show how - in the aftermath of its defeat - the Comintern lost touch with reality, declaring revolutions, wars and "social fascism" imminent... geni.us/Redscovrev

NEW! Postcapitalism and Agentic Artificial Intelligence - what LLMs mean for the left wing project and Utopias based on work. An update to the thesis of my 2015 book Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future (link here www.academia.edu/166164916/Po... )

Sorry this is driving me mad! Who are these two movie stars?

#OnThisDay 1927 - Chiang Kai-Shek begins massacre of Shanghai workers movement. Stalin predicted Chiang could be "squeezed like a lemon and discarded" - instead thousands died and the CPC began its turn to the peasants... more in Reds: A Global History of Communism. Order now... geni.us/Redscovrev

Smells like victory? Not really. As Trump announces maritime operation to take control of the Strait, I still lean towards strategic failure... open.substack.com/pub/htsf/p/s...

#OnThisDay 1919 - Munich's Revolutionary Workers' Council declares the Bavarian Soviet Republic... more in Reds: A Global History of Communism... geni.us/Redscovrev

#OnThisDay 1976 - hundreds of thousands assemble in Tiananmen Square to mourn Zhou Enlai - holding posters criticising the Gang of Four - at nightfall CPC clears the wreaths and begins crackdown... geni.us/Redscovrev

#OnThisDay 1871 - Louis-August Blanqui is arrested - one day before his followers launch the uprising that will begin the Paris Commune - in Reds I restore Blanqui to his rightful place as the central figure in 19c communism www.bloomsbury.com/uk/reds-9781...

#OnThisDay 1917 - Tsar Nicholas III abdicates. Duma Committee takes power with Soviet support. A single Bolshevik cadre, Elena Stasova, sets up a table outside the Tauride Palace to register members delegated ...More in Reds... geni.us/Redscovrev

#OnThisDay 1917 - soldiers force the Petrograd Soviet to issue Order No 1 - setting up soldiers’ committees that will operate a dual power structure within the Army until its dissolution between December and January 1918. More in Reds: A Global History of Communism geni.us/Redscovrev

#OnThisDay 1917 - as soldiers mutiny, journalists in Petrograd take over a Tsarist newspaper and rename it Izvestia (The News of the Soviet of Workers' Deputies). More in Reds: A Global History of Communism - out 27/Aug here and 13/Oct USA... geni.us/Redscovrev

#OnThisDay in 1917 the left-wing Mezhrayonka group hired an airplane to drop leaflets over Petrograd calling for the formation of a soviet. With the Kresty prison on fire, and mutinous soldiers on the streets Tsarist was doomed... more in Reds: A Global History of Communism... geni.us/Redscovrev

Calling Labour MPs and activists ✊🚩🇬🇧 switch off the 24/7 far right griftathon and start acting like a mass party of the working class - pass it on!

My cover story for this week's The New World

As the sun goes down on 2025...

Just seen glorious Singin' in the Rain at @rxtheatre.bsky.social - bit of a contrast to the first ever performance I saw here

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The Socialist Case for Rearmament 1