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Class act
MARTIN HALL welcomes a history of the European class struggle that demonstrates how the working class is the instrument of social change in capitalist society
Artists protest against the military dictatorship in February 1968. In the picture, Tonia Carrero, Eva Wilma, Odete Lara, Norma Bengell and Cacilda Becker [Arquivo Nacional/CC]

Radical Chains: Why Class Matters
Chris Nineham, Zer0 Books, £14.99

IT would be an understatement to say that Radical Chains: Why Class Matters is needed on the left.

Chris Nineham’s unequivocal message that the working class is both the instrument of social change in capitalist society and an objective social relation, rather than a sociological category or identity.

The book argues that class is the defining division in capitalism, and it shows that class struggle has played — and continues to play — a central role in history during the capitalist period, in spite of attempts across the political spectrum to efface or downplay these struggles.

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