MARY CONWAY revels in a powerful reminder that human lives are not defined by physical perfection
Dream Lovers: The Gamification of Relationships
By Alfie Bown
Pluto Books £16.99
THERE’S a lot in this book, much of it alarming, some of it alarmist. Alfie Bown’s focus on the love industry’s hook-up with the gaming behemoth begins with a chaste kiss and fast forwards to hardcore data rape.
Yes, the intimate data making up dating sites is empowering, a cause for corporate and superpower mud-wrestles for control.
Of deeper concern is the manipulation of human desire and desirability; libido’s preconscious vulnerability to the stealthy algorithm like a wandering lamb to the salivating wolf.
ALEX HALL is fascinated by a lucid and historically convincing account of how rent has dominated capitalist economies from feudalism to modernity
RICHARD SHILLCOCK examines an enjoyable, but philosophically conventional book, and urges Marxists to employ their capacity to embrace the totality in any explanation
ANDREW MURRAY recommends a volume of essays that nail the visionless, racist and neoliberal character of policy under Starmer’s Labour Party
SALEEM BADAT and VASU REDDY introduce a new book about an outstanding interpreter of the world, and an activist scholar committed to changing society


