Absolutely Essential: Bioethics and the Rules-Based International Order. Jonathan D. Moreno. The MIT Press. 2025.

What happens to science when the global system that has defined the boundaries of its use and abuse begins to unravel? This is the question Jonathan D. Moreno tackles in Absolutely Essential: Bioethics and the Rules-Based International Order. As the post-World War II liberal international (or “rules-based”) order enters crisis, so too does the ethical framework governing medicine and the life sciences (or “bioethics”). Deeply rooted, for Moreno, in Enlightenment values such as individual rights and the consent of the governed, bioethics is inseparable from the political order that shaped it. This is the book’s central argument.

Moreno warns of a crisis not only for science itself, but also for the relationship between science and the state.

As with his previous work, Moreno’s book makes a distinctive and ground-breaking contribution. A number of scholars, such as Sheila Jasanoff, Jennifer Hochschild, and Henk ten Have, have explored the political debates surrounding bioethics, and Annie Jacobsen’s Biological War: A Scenario (2026) takes the reader inside a biological attack. Moreno’s book, however, brings bioethics squarely into the study of international politics and international politics into bioethics.

Antagonism between science and the state

Moreno warns of a crisis not only for science itself, but also for the relationship between science and the state. Bioethics, he shows, has always been both a moral and a political project. It has helped legitimise scientific authority while sustaining a tacit bargain between the state and the life sciences: scientists enjoy broad autonomy as long as they do not “embarrass” political authorities or jeopardise national security. As the rules-based order weakens, Moreno argues, both scientific authority and the state-science relationship face growing uncertainty.

Scientific autonomy depends not only on expertise, but also on public confidence and institutional legitimacy.

Recent debates in the United States suggest that these tensions are already visible. The highly politicised scrutiny of Anthony Fauci – who invoked the Fifth Amendment over 100 times before a GOP-led Senate committee investigating COVID-19’s origins – reflects a growing strain between scientific experts and political authorities. Rising vaccine scepticism points to a broader erosion of trust in scientific institutions. Together, these debates reveal the fragility of the bargain Moreno describes. Scientific autonomy depends not only on expertise, but also on public confidence and institutional legitimacy.

Nuremberg and the history of bioethics

If Moreno’s book is a story of collapse, it is the collapse of an unfinished construction. It is the story of a system that gave rise to bioethics while never fully institutionalizing its principles. The history Moreno recounts was shaped by lofty ideals and the heroic efforts of individuals like Leo Alexander, the psychiatrist who helped expose Nazi Germany’s medical atrocities and drafted the ethical principles, including informed consent, that became the foundation of the Nuremberg Code. But it was also shaped by outsized egos, self-serving bureaucracies, and the overprioritisation of national security. Much of the responsibility lies with the very actors credited with building the postwar order. Yet blaming them alone misses a larger point: bioethics is not a purely Western project, and its future cannot depend on Western states alone.

The contradictions were present from the very birth of modern bioethics. The Nuremberg Trials produced the Nuremberg Code, which established voluntary consent and the protection of human subjects as fundamental principles for scientific research. However, these principles were never fully embedded in the international system. The same powers that prosecuted Nazi physicians for atrocities committed in the name of science made strategic compromises elsewhere. After World War II, the United States granted immunity to Japanese physicians involved in the Imperial Japanese Army’s biological warfare program, including the infamous research facility Unit 731, in exchange for access to their research. Many of these scientists escaped prosecution because Washington viewed their findings as valuable during the emerging Cold War. Many later assumed influential positions in Japan’s medical and public health establishment, including at the National Institute of Health, where some served for decades.

The challenge of global bioethics

The problem was not only selective accountability. It was also the failure to create a genuinely universal bioethical order. Although Moreno does not discuss the 1949 Khabarovsk Trial, in which Soviet authorities prosecuted Japanese officials for biological warfare crimes, the episode suggests that alternative approaches to accountability existed, or at least were attempted. During the Cold War, however, the United States viewed the Soviet Union primarily as a strategic rival rather than as a partner in shaping shared scientific or ethical norms. Geopolitical divisions, along with the West’s reluctance to recognise alternative sources of ethical authority, prevented such experiences from contributing to a broader international conversation.

Rather than evolving through a genuinely global conversation, bioethical principles remained anchored largely in Western institutions and assumptions.

In this sense, the postwar order missed the kind of dialectical exchange across political and cultural boundaries that Nobel laureate economist and philosopher Amartya Sen describes adaptation, and the refinement of ideas as essential to mutual critique. Rather than evolving through a genuinely global conversation, bioethical principles remained anchored largely in Western institutions and assumptions. By failing to cultivate wider international ownership, the “rules-based” order asked others to accept norms they had little role in shaping.

None of this absolves other states of responsibility. Moreno shows how countries with different political systems have struggled to reconcile scientific ambition with bioethical constraints. Moscow’s state-driven biological research and controversies surrounding its COVID-19 vaccine development reveal how political priorities shape scientific practice. China’s experience with human subjects research in genetics highlights similar tensions. The case of He Jiankui, the Chinese scientist whose 2018 CRISPR experiment resulted in the birth of gene-edited children, demonstrates the challenges of enforcing ethical boundaries amid intense scientific competition. He was sentenced to three years in prison, but the episode exposed broader questions about oversight, accountability, and the pressures driving biomedical innovation.

A framework for the next frontier of science

The challenge, then, is not simply to preserve a Western-created bioethical order. It is to build a genuinely universal one: a system capable of confronting past failures while strengthening commitments to human dignity, accountability, and responsible scientific advancement.

Perhaps what most constrains global bioethics is not the system’s erosion or failure, but its partial success. It created a workable consensus without fully building the institutions needed to sustain it. In an era when biotechnology is becoming central to global competition, a “good enough” bioethics will not be enough. The moment demands a more ambitious vision: one that moves beyond preserving past achievements to creating a truly global framework capable of guiding science’s next frontier.

Such a goal may appear lofty, even unrealistic. Yet history shows that ambitious visions can inspire agency. The Nuremberg Code itself was born from a seemingly impossible aspiration: to transform the horrors of wartime medical experimentation into universal principles governing scientific responsibility. The lesson is that a grand vision is not a barrier to change but often a necessary condition for it.

Note: This review gives the views of the interviewer and author, not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Nonauthoritarian Authority: Cities, Materiality, and the Aesthetics of Power. Julian Brigstocke. LSE Press. 2026.

Defining authority

We are living in a moment marked by the challenged legitimacy of traditional authorities and the emergence of new forms of authority exercised by market actors, social media influencers, algorithms, and other non-human agents. Authority at once a deeply contested yet indispensable part of contemporary political and social life. Julian Brigstocke’s Nonauthoritarian Authority intervenes into this issue. It brings a spatial sensibility to contemporary debates and redirects them away from familiar oppositions between anti-authoritarian and neo-authoritarian perspectives.

The book offers a wide empirical and historical range, from 19th-century Paris to 20th-century Hong Kong to contemporary Brazil, alongside other contemporary urban everyday life, and develops an account of authority as embodied, dispersed, and affectively constituted. In so doing, the book engages in and extends debates on non-coercive forms of authority, exemplified by works including The Notion of Authority by Alexandre Kojève(1942), Authority by Richard Sennett (1980), Quasi-things: the paradigm of atmospheres by Tonino Griffero 2017 and others.

The book pluralises authority by widening both the range of entities considered capable of exerting it and the methodological repertoires through which it can be perceived and analysed.

In her 1961 work Between Past and Future, Hannah Arendt distinguished between authority and coercion, violence, or force and insisted that authority should not be conflated with “authoritarianism” in its popular sense. Brigstocke takes this conceptual clarity as a key point of departure. He further develops a sustained rethinking of authority through dialogue with speculative philosophy to reinterpret the totality of experience, feminist new materialist theory to foreground material relationality, decolonial aesthetics to challenge the authority of the colonial order through aesthetic resistance, and emerging work in authority studies to rethink how authority is constituted, negotiated, ad transformed. In doing so, the book pluralises authority by widening both the range of entities considered capable of exerting it and the methodological repertoires through which it can be perceived and analysed. This includes a mixed-methods approach that combines archives, interviews, and ethnographic observation with experimental methods, including biosensor data, to trace dispersed and emergent forms of authority.

Theorising non-authoritarian authority

Adopting a playful yet rigorous approach, Brigstocke draws on a range of theoretical traditions and methodological perspectives to develop a positive account of authority in the present. The book’s central ambition is to experiment with ways of thinking about authority beyond singular, hierarchical logics, exploring the possibility of an egalitarian “non-authoritarian authority” compatible with a plural and heterogeneous world. Across empirical, conceptual, and temporal terrains, the author explores how authority can coordinate socio-spatial relations through forms of voluntary deference grounded not only in trust, respect, and expertise, but also in augmentation, attunement, and attention, in both conscious and unconscious ways. Building on this argument, the author reconceptualises authority as a relational and spatial achievement rather than a fixed or sovereign form of power.

Brigstocke illustrates how authority emerges through everyday interactions, mutual recognition, and shared expectations rather than formal enforcement

Deriving from the Latin augere (“to augment”), authority is defined by its capacity to enlarge shared life through voluntary guidance that preserves agency. Distributed across human and nonhuman actors, it is embodied, affective, and enacted through habits, care, and repetition, while remaining provisional and open to revision. This perspective highlights how authority is produced through spatial practices that create, sustain, and reshape the commons, the shared relations, spaces, and experiences that make collective life possible. For example, at the contested borders of favelas, authority is enacted through care, where the emotional labour of de-escalating tension coordinates collective life without relying on coercion. In a very different setting, the Bristol and Bath Railway Path, Brigstocke illustrates how authority emerges through everyday interactions, mutual recognition, and shared expectations rather than formal enforcement.

Agency beyond the human

Brigstocke subverts the conventions of academic writing through a self-reflexive style that continually questions its own authority. The text also draws readers into the practice of lectio divina, an ancient Christian tradition of contemplative reading, inviting them to use the text to explore their relationship with life. In a further departure from anthropocentric enquiry, the author dares to conduct an interview with sand, reclaiming the etymological sense of the interview as a mutual “glimpse of one another” and, in doing so, contesting the assumption that humans alone constitute social and political life.In chapter nine, Brigstocke invites the reader to adopt the perspective of sand itself, a striking imaginative move that can be applied in other contexts.

The author’s invitation to give voice to sand expands the field of agency beyond the human, fostering an attunement to a range of nonhuman “lures” understood as aesthetic and relational modes of engagement with nonhuman temporalities. However, the authority of nature apparent in disasters like disease outbreaks, earthquakes, or hurricanes, it is relatively straightforward to recognise something like an authority of nature, yet such phenomena more commonly lead us to scientific expertise rather than to an acknowledgement of a non-authoritarian authority exercised by non-human agents. While this framework offers a powerful way of decentring human exceptionalism and foregrounding relationality, it risks flattening ontology in which human beings are not accorded distinctive moral standing relative to other entities. This point that lies at the heart of broader debates on new materialism: different entities operate through distinct material and causal mechanisms, and that human action is distinguished by purposive consciousness, reflexivity, intentionality, and causal efficacy.

Overall, the book shifts the discussion of authority away from ontological and epistemological registers toward an aesthetic one. Brigstocke argues that what is at stake is not primarily the nature of reality or the limits of knowledge, but rather how reality presents itself to the senses, including a “sense for reality” that shapes what becomes available for selection, judgement, and evaluation. An aesthetics of authority is, at its core, an ethos of creativity and experimentation: both in how authority is followed and practised, and in how the very composition of the “we” is continually formed and re-formed.

Being uncomfortable in the world

Chapter seven develops this argument through an experimental methodology that combines urban fieldwork with quantitative measures of electrodermal activity (EDA), used to register the activation of the sympathetic nervous system in situ revealing the embodied experience of authority through emotional states such as fear, stress, and comfort in the favelas of Rio de Janeiro. Crucially, the chapter shows that authority does not necessarily depend on explicit consent; instead, it often operates through nonconscious and affective registers of responsiveness. This complicates standard distinctions among coercion, manipulation, and voluntary agreement, while offering a complementary account of how authority is sensed and lived.

Discomfort fosters heightened attentiveness and becomes central to a renewed spatial practice of non-authoritarian authority, one that may also resonate with our shared condition of not fully feeling at home in the world.

Overall, the book contributes to a reconceptualisation of authority as provisional and experiential, challenging Weberian notions of authority as legitimate domination. The book pushes beyond understandings of authority as institutionalised command grounded in rational-legal, traditional, or charismatic legitimacy, and closely associated with bureaucracy, coercion, and discipline as sources of power. It extends this line of thought by presenting non-authoritarian authority as an emergent form grounded in what is described as “a practice of being uncomfortable in the world” (53).

Such discomfort, the author suggests, fosters heightened attentiveness and becomes central to a renewed spatial practice of non-authoritarian authority, one that may also resonate with our shared condition of not fully feeling at home in the world. This powerful and deeply critical engagement with authority literature will appeal to scholars seeking new horizons across the social sciences and humanities, as well as readers drawn to experimental and speculative modes of academic thought and writing. It will also be an inspiring read for scholars of the commons and commoning, offering a fresh perspective on authority as a relational and collective practice.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

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Liberal Fascisms. Slavoj Žižek. Bloomsbury Academic. 2026.

The exhausted vocabulary of fascism

In the decade since the first Trump presidency, the charge of “fascism” has become both politically indispensable and analytically exhausted. From Timothy Snyder’s On Tyranny, Jason Stanley’s How Fascism Works, and Madeleine Albright’s Fascism: A Warning to a steady stream of magazine essays, the term has become the default liberal vocabulary for describing Trumpism, Modi’s India, Putin’s Russia, and beyond. Yet the more reflexively it circulates, the less analytical purchase it retains.

The book’s most provocative claim is not that Trump is a fascist, but that liberalism itself harbours the ideological and structural resources from which contemporary authoritarianism emerges

As Jake Scott noted on LSE Review of Books, Liberal Fascisms is the third volume in Žižek’s Bloomsbury trilogy of collected essays. It enters the fascism debate by turning the accusation back on the liberal centre that deploys it so readily. The book’s most provocative claim is not that Trump is a fascist, but that liberalism itself harbours the ideological and structural resources from which contemporary authoritarianism emerges. Žižek is not primarily arguing with right-wing intellectuals; he is confronting the liberal-democratic mainstream that has framed post-2016 discourse. His target is the comforting reflex that treats authoritarian developments as intrusions from outside the liberal world.

What is “liberal fascism”?

The title deliberately inverts Jonah Goldberg’s 2009 conservative polemic Liberal Fascism, which located fascism in American progressivism. Žižek’s counter-thesis is more unsettling: contemporary authoritarianism is not liberalism’s external adversary but one of its latent internal possibilities. Trump, on this view, embodies the “fascist liberal” – a figure in whom market absolutism, libertarian rhetoric, intensified state coercion, and emerging corporate-feudal power structures converge. The argument builds on a clear intellectual lineage, most notably Domenico Losurdo’s Liberalism: A Counter-History (2011), which documented the liberal tradition’s long entanglement with imperialism, racism, and exclusion. Where Losurdo provided historical and philosophical scaffolding, Žižek radicalises this insight for the present political moment.

Organised around a Hegelian triad of global predicament, regional turbulences, and Trump’s America, the book applies “liberal fascism” comparatively to regimes as varied as Modi’s India, Putin’s Russia, and Erdoğan’s Turkey. Enzo Traverso has argued in The New Faces of Fascism (2019) for the more cautious term “post-fascism,” precisely because these movements remain embedded within the neoliberal order rather than fully rupturing it. Žižek’s broader concept of “liberal fascism” captures the breadth of the crisis more effectively, though sometimes at the expense of analytical sharpness. At times, the term risks becoming less a delimited category than a charged interpretive atmosphere.

The title deliberately inverts Jonah Goldberg’s Liberal Fascism. Žižek’s counter-thesis is that contemporary authoritarianism is not liberalism’s external adversary but one of its internal possibilities. Trump becomes the “fascist liberal”: a figure who lets the market operate “at its most destructive” while treating ethical limits on sexism and racism as socialist constraints. Here, market freedom and coercive power converge rather than contradict one another.

Alberto Spektorowski approaches the same problem from the opposite direction. In Intellectual Post-fascism? (2025), he reconstructs a coherent and ideologically dense post-fascist formation around figures on the contemporary radical right. Both Spektorowski and Žižek refuse to treat contemporary authoritarianism as mere populist noise. But the direction of the argument is different. For Žižek, it is liberalism’s internal shadow: a possibility generated by liberalism’s own contradictions.

Žižek excels at diagnosing crisis and liberalism’s internal pathologies but is thinner on questions of political form and institutional design.

Žižek’s quarrel with the liberal-democratic left

The book’s most contentious element is not its diagnosis, but the political alternative it gestures toward. Žižek calls for a “realist utopia” involving a tacit coalition between a pragmatic conservative establishment and a new “Leninist elite” prepared to confront ecological, military, and technological catastrophes. This places him in a current of the left impatient with liberal-democratic proceduralism and open to exceptional forms of authority. The position is uneasy even on its own terms. Žižek sustains a critique of right-wing authoritarianism while invoking Alain Badiou’s defence of the political function of the Master – in The Impasses of Today’s Radical Politics (2014), he quotes Badiou’s claim that “one has to renew the position of the master,” before concluding that “a new figure of the Master is needed” – and sketching a politics of urgency in which even coercive measures may appear justified by existential stakes. (36.) He seeks to distinguish emancipatory authority from demagogic domination, yet the distinction is more often asserted than carefully elaborated.

Compared with Matt Sleat’s recent work, Post-Liberalism (2026), Žižek’s limitations become apparent. Sleat takes the critique of liberalism seriously while probing whether post-liberal thought can be institutionalised under conditions of deep pluralism. Appeals to the common good, Sleat notes, do not dissolve moral disagreement; they frequently displace it into struggles over authority and institutional control.

Žižek excels at diagnosing crisis and liberalism’s internal pathologies but is thinner on questions of political form and institutional design. His endorsement of New York’s new mayor Zohran Mamdani as a model of “heresy that can work” is therefore striking – and somewhat at odds with the broader thrust. Žižek’s point is that the contemporary Left has so far failed to stage a genuinely heretical break with global neoliberalism; disturbingly, he suggests, it was Trump who enacted such a rupture from the right. Yet Mamdani exemplifies patient, democratic-socialist coalition-building within liberal institutions, while the “Leninist elite” evokes something closer to vanguardist rupture. The book does not fully reconcile these visions, leaving readers to discern which Žižek ultimately privileges.

Žižek insists that the most disturbing possibilities of our time are not alien intrusions but futures already gestating within liberalism’s contradictions.

Žižek diagnoses liberalism’s drift toward authoritarianism more incisively than he charts a convincing path beyond it. That, ultimately, marks both the book’s achievement and its limit. Few contemporary thinkers refuse the comforting binary between liberal democracy and its supposed external enemies as resolutely as Žižek. He insists that the most disturbing possibilities of our time are not alien intrusions but futures already gestating within liberalism’s contradictions. Yet forcing the debate onto this harder ground is itself a significant contribution – one Žižek, characteristically, makes with intellectual force and stylistic verve.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science. 

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Science of Science: Understanding the Foundations and Limits of Science from an Interdisciplinary Perspective. Alexander Krauss. Oxford University Press. 2024.

Why understanding science matters 

Science shapes modern life, from medicines to everyday technologies. Yet, as Alexander Krauss argues in Science of Science, we still lack a clear understanding of how science itself works. The book’s central message is simple but important: to improve science, we must understand its foundations, drivers, and limits. Krauss, a researcher in philosophy addresses this by integrating insights from multiple disciplines of sociology, economics, history. Rather than viewing science through a single lens, he proposes a framework explaining how knowledge is produced and how scientific progress occurs. Contrasting with paradigm-driven (Kuhn), socially constructed (Latour), and methodologically flawed (Ioannidis) views of science, Krauss foregrounds methodological tools as the central engine of scientific progress. The book is analytical yet accessible, offering an evidence-based perspective on what drives science.

Science is not a unified activity, but a complex system shaped by multiple forces.

A key contribution of the book is its recognition that science is not a unified activity, but a complex system shaped by multiple forces. Different disciplines emphasise different aspects: economists emphasise incentives and funding, sociologists examine social influences, and philosophers focus on theories and knowledge claims. While each perspective provides valuable insights, none captures the full picture. This leads to fragmented understanding and what Krauss called “blind spots” in how we study science. Researchers often work within disciplinary boundaries, limiting cross-field integration and preventing a holistic understanding of scientific progress.

How methods drive scientific progress 

At the heart of the book is the claim that scientific progress is driven primarily by methods and tools rather than theories or individual genius. Krauss introduces the idea of a “methodological toolbox”, the set of techniques and instruments that scientists use to observe, measure, and experiment. These include tools such as microscopes, statistical models, and computational methods which determine what scientists can study and how they interpret the world. This perspective shifts attention away from traditional explanations of science. Thomas Kuhn’s theory of paradigm shifts focuses on changes in scientific theories, while Karl Popper emphasises falsifiability as the defining feature of science. Krauss acknowledges these contributions but argues that they do not fully explain how science advances in practice. Instead, he suggests that new methods expand the boundaries of knowledge by allowing scientists to observe previously inaccessible phenomena. For example, the development of microscopes enabled the study of cells, while statistical techniques improved the reliability of experimental findings. In this sense, methods are not just tools rather they are the engines of scientific discovery.

 To illustrate this idea, Krauss introduces the “tower of science” model evoking how science builds cumulatively, with each new method extending our capabilities and opening new areas of inquiry. The invention of key tools in the 17th century such as the microscope, telescope, and calculus led to major scientific breakthroughs and expanded the scope of inquiry. The model also highlights an important insight on how the limits of science are closely tied to the limits of our tools.

Evidence from interdisciplinary research

A major strength of the book is its integration of evidence from multiple disciplines. Krauss draws on cognitive science, sociology, economics, history, and statistical methodology to explain how scientific knowledge is produced. This interdisciplinary orientation reflects a growing consensus in science studies that no single discipline can adequately explain the dynamics of scientific progress.

Scientific progress emerges from the interaction of cognitive capacities, social structures, institutional incentives, and, critically, the methodological tools available to researchers. 

Cognitive research shows that human reasoning is shaped by systematic biases and heuristics, influencing how scientists interpret data and form theories. Sociological studies highlight that scientific knowledge is socially embedded, shaped by norms, institutional practices, and networks of collaboration. Economic analyses demonstrate the role of incentives, funding structures, and reward systems in directing research and shaping scientific output. Historical and philosophical work shows that scientific development emerges from complex interactions between ideas, tools, and institutional contexts rather than linear theoretical progress. Advances in statistical methods have improved reliability while exposing issues such as publication bias and questionable research practices. Taken together, these perspectives support Krauss’s argument that scientific progress emerges from the interaction of cognitive capacities, social structures, institutional incentives, and, critically, the methodological tools available to researchers. 

Science’s limits and potential

Krauss addresses the question of the limits of scientific knowledge by arguing that science is constrained by the tools used to observe and measure phenomena. What scientists can know is inseparable from how they know it. This aligns with the view of a long-standing tradition in the philosophy of science that emphasises the theory and instrument inclusive observation. From this perspective, scientific knowledge is not a direct reflection of reality but is mediated by instruments, models, and conceptual frameworks. Measurement tools from telescopes to statistical algorithms, not only extend human perception but also shape the kinds of questions that can be asked and answered. As a result, the boundaries of science are not fixed epistemic limits but contingent on available technologies and methodological sophistication.

Science is embedded within fields of power, where access to resources, legitimacy, and authority influences what knowledge is produced and validated

However, these limits are dynamic. Scientific boundaries expand through methodological innovation, enabling access to previously unobservable domains. This aligns with historical accounts showing how advances such as microscopy, experimental design, and computational modelling have repeatedly transformed the scope of scientific inquiry. Contemporary debates in epistemology and uncertainty further reinforce this view. Scholars like (Cartwright, Mitchell)  argue that scientific knowledge is inherently provisional and shaped by models that simplify complex realities. The recognition of uncertainty, whether in the form of probabilistic reasoning, model dependence, or unknowns, highlights both the power and the limitations of scientific explanation. While Science of Science offers an innovative framework, it has limitations. Its interdisciplinary scope, though valuable, may challenge readers unfamiliar with multiple domains. Integrating insights from cognitive science, sociology, economics, and philosophy requires navigating diverse terminologies and epistemological assumptions, which can reduce accessibility.

How power shapes science 

The emphasis on methods may underplay the role of power, politics, and institutional structures in shaping scientific knowledge. Sociological and critical traditions have long argued that science is embedded within fields of power, where access to resources, legitimacy, and authority influences what knowledge is produced and validated. Similarly, research on the political economy of science highlights how funding priorities, corporate interests, and policy agendas can direct scientific inquiry in particular directions. Relatedly, the “new-methods-drive-science” thesis remains largely conceptual and would benefit from more systematic empirical validation. While Krauss draws on illustrative examples and interdisciplinary evidence, the framework could be strengthened through quantitative studies, longitudinal analyses, or comparative investigations across scientific fields. This is particularly important given ongoing concerns about reproducibility and methodological robustness in contemporary science. Additionally, the framework may overstate the independence of methods by underestimating the co-evolution of theories and tools. As Kuhn argued, scientific progress often emerges from complex interactions between conceptual paradigms and technological capabilities.

Despite these limitations, the book makes a significant contribution by shifting attention from theories and individual genius to the methodological infrastructures underlying knowledge production. It opens new avenues for understanding science as a dynamic and evolving system. Its insights have important implications beyond academia. For policymakers, the emphasis on methods suggests prioritising investment in tools and techniques. This aligns with emerging discussions in science policy and innovation systems. For researchers and educators, it highlights the importance of interdisciplinary training and methodological awareness in scientific practice.

Overall, Science of Science is an ambitious and thought-provoking book that explains how science works and how it can improve. Its central argument – that scientific methods drive progress – offers a fresh perspective. By integrating insights from multiple disciplines, Krauss provides a comprehensive account of science and makes a valuable contribution to furthering our understanding scientific knowledge.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Islam: A New History from Muhammad to The Present. John Tolan. Princeton University Press. 2025.

Islam’s beginnings and evolution 

What are the roots of Islam, and how has it been interpreted and practiced in different ways across time and place since its inception? Islam: A New History from Muhammad to the Present by John Tolan, surveys a wide range of defining historical episodes and movements from the time of the Prophet Muhammad in the 6^th century through to today. Tolan’s historicising approach focuses not only on events, but highlights the diverse contributions of caliphs, travellers, Sufi saints, merchants, and Islamic reformers in shaping Islamic societies across regions and eras.  

From the spiritual legacy of Rabia al-Adawiyya, the 8th-century Muslim saint, to contemporary interpretations of Islam, the tradition has continually transformed, adapted, and evolved since its inception. During the life of the Prophet Muhammad, Islam remained unified under his direct guidance and the presence of his companions. However, the significant doctrinal and political developments emerged following his death in 632 CE. The first caliph was chosen by Abu Bakr al-Siddiq (632-634) and unifying the Arabian Peninsula and combating early waves of apostasy. The question of succession – specifically who would lead the Ummah (believers of Islam) – marked a decisive moment in Islamic history and led to the emergence of sectarianism such as Sunni and Shi’a. 

Tolan reveals how early political rivalries were transformed into lasting sectarian cleavages within the Islamic tradition.

Tolan draws attention to Nana Asmau, Uthman ibn Fodio’s daughter, a distinguished scholar, poet, Sufi, and reformer, who exercised significant intellectual and political influence during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In the modern period, figures such as African American Imam Amina Wadud – who converted from Christianity to Islam – have continued this tradition of reinterpretation. In her work Qur’an and Woman (1999), Wadud argues that each generation of Muslims must retain the freedom to reread and reinterpret the Quran, underscoring Islam’s dynamic and evolving engagement with history, and society. Further, Tolan highlights how Muslim scholars, organisations, and leaders have politically mobilised Muslim communities across the world and their contribution of proliferations of Islam especially in the Middle East, the USA and Europe. He discusses figures from an Egyptian author Gamal al-Banna to the brother of Hassan al-Banna and from Malcolm X to Mahmud Muhammad Taha and Bilali Muhammad.  

The Quran and sectarianism

Tolan  episodic historical approach zones in on key events in Islam, particularly those surrounding the compilation of the Quran and the struggle for political authority after the Prophet Muhammad’s death. The Quran was first full text compiled in written form during the caliph of Uthman ibn Affan, a process that later became a source of sectarian controversy. Certain Shi’a scholars such as Ibn Abil Hadid and Yasir al-Habib have argued that portions of the original revelation were concealed, alleging that Ali ibn Abi Talib as the rightful successor were omitted, and that some Quranic materials were destroyed during the standardisation of the text. 

Tolan further situates these theological disputes within the larger political conflicts between emerging Sunni authorities and Shi’a factions during the Umayyad period, followed by the Abbasid era, when competing claims to the caliphate continued to shape Islamic governance. He demonstrates how the institution of the caliphate became a source of deep and enduring division within Islam. For instance, Tolan discusses accusations directed at Ali in relation to the assassination of Caliph Umar, including claims that Ali protected and facilitated the escape of the assassin, Piruz Nahavandi – a Persian captive taken during the Battle of Al-Qadisiyya (25). Through these episodes, Tolan reveals how early political rivalries were transformed into lasting sectarian cleavages within the Islamic tradition. 

Islam’s spread and divisions 

Initially, Islam expanded its dominance from Damascus (634 CE) to Antioch (637 CE) and Jerusalem (638 CE). By the time of Caliph Umar’s death in 644 CE, the Islamic empire spanned from Libya to Afghanistan and from Azerbaijan to Yemen. Later, Tolan briefly discusses the rise of Islam most continents of the world through battles, merchants, and Sufi’s spirituality. Tolan notes that how the first Fitna or civil war stated in the 7^th century in Islam which gave to rise new sectarian divisions such as Sunnis, Shi’a, and Kharijites. These sects started to practice Islam in their own ways. For instance, Shi’a believed that Ali was first Caliph of Umma and Sunnis believed Abu-Bakr, and some Muslim rulers imposed a Jizya (tax) on Christians, Jews, Jains, Buddhists and Hindus. 

Movements including Deobandi, Wahhabi, Ahmadiyya and Faraizi emerged that created identity-based segregation and emphasised strict adherence to the Quran and Hadith, rejecting some traditional practices among Muslims

Tolan highlights the significance of Ibn Battuta’s Rihla (1959) in understanding the global spread and lived diversity of Islam. Battuta’s travels from Mecca to Mali, India, Mauritius, and China – illustrate how Islam adapted cultures across regions. Serving as a qadi (a Muslim judge) in India under Muhammad bin Tughlaq and later as an envoy to China, Battuta offers detailed observations on governance, economy, and international relations. His vivid, experiential narrative enriches Islamic history, particularly through contributions such as his writing of hadith (corpus of sayings or traditions of the Prophet Muhammad) in Arabic at the request of Muhammad ben Aydin, Sultan of Birki (Birkin) (125). 

Colonial influence and modern Islam 

In the chapter “Colonization and Its Discontents, 1798-1918,” Tolan traces the history of European colonisation in Muslim societies from the late 18th to the early 20th century. He examines how India came under the control of European powers such as the East India Company, the Portuguese, and the Dutch, who established colonial regimes across different regions. Tolan highlights how the Dutch East India Company (DEIC) employed Muslims to codify Islamic law in matters of inheritance, marriage, and divorce, at Masulipatnam (Andhra Pradesh), Malabar Coast (Kerala) Gujarat, and some part of Bengal, while the British East India Company similarly institutionalised Islamic (Sharia) law for Muslims in Bengal, Madras, Bombay presidencies and later all over India as part of its colonial governance strategy (168).  

Movements including Deobandi, Wahhabi, Ahmadiyya and Faraizi emerged that created identity-based segregation and emphasised strict adherence to the Quran and Hadith, rejecting some traditional practices among Muslims. For instance, the Deobandi Movement founded in 1866, went against modern western education and promoted traditional studies (Quran, Hadith, Fiqh). Contrastingly, Sir Syed Ahmad founded Muhammadan Anglo-Oriental College in 1875, to modernise education with Islamic values. Later, these movements spread not only across the Indian subcontinent but also to the Middle East, South Asia and Europe.   

Overall, Tolan’s book is a comprehensive account of key Islamic events and historical developments; however, some of his arguments are insufficiently substantiated. For instance, the claim that Shi’a Muslims believed that Ayesha (wife of Muhammad) concealed Quranic verses proving Ali’s rightful succession is presented with limited evidentiary support. The book also overlooks the significant role of Sufi traditions in the spread of Islam in the Indian subcontinent, particularly the contributions of key figures. Nonetheless, Tolan’s work offers a broad historical perspective on Islam’s evolution, transformation, and the emergence of diverse sects across regions. The book focuses primarily on political events in Islamic history and their role in the making and unmaking of Islam. In so doing, it makes a meaningful contribution for Islamic scholars, academicians and individuals to understand the evolution of Islam from Muhammad to present.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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From Subordination to Revolution: A Gramscian Theory of Popular Mobilisation. John Chalcraft. University of California Press. 2025.

John Chalcraft’s From Subordination to Revolution offers a compelling case for a new theorisation of popular mobilisation, which Chalcraft defines loosely as the dynamics through which subordinated groups overcome social domination. His theory is grounded in the writings of Italian philosopher and revolutionary advocate Antonio Gramsci. The book, while building on the living Gramscian tradition, situates a Gramscian theory of popular mobilisation within the dominant discourse of mobilisation scholarship.

Chalcraft taps into the unease of the current global political and social climate, drawing on examples from diverse struggles and instances of groups mobilising across the world to develop a new approach to understanding popular mobilisation. This approach examines dominant critiques of liberalism, conservatism, and Marxist traditions within contemporary scholarship. Throughout, Chalcraft analyses in detail the critical phases of popular mobilisations: where they falter, succeed, or are co-opted by dominating forces while providing insight into how popular mobilisation can resist authoritarianism. At a time when social movements and instances of resistance are profuse but often inadequate, Chalcraft’s work offers critical lessons for those engaged with these struggles. 

Understanding popular mobilisation  

The book is comprised of six core chapters, over the course of which Chalcraft develops his Gramscian theory of popular mobilisation. In the first chapter, he justifies the need for this novel approach and renewed reading of Gramsci, situating his argument within core critiques of conservatism, liberalism, rationalism, and critical approaches to mobilisation. Chalcraft defines popular mobilisation as the various ways in which subordinate groups arrange and reconfigure their relationships to overcome social domination.  

Chalcraft argues that conservative theories of popular mobilisation are largely uncritical of forms of hegemony, instead reproducing the domination of subordinate groups.

Chalcraft argues that conservative theories of popular mobilisation, such as those aligned with thinkers like Burke and Le Bon, are largely uncritical of forms of hegemony, instead reproducing the domination of subordinate groups. Within these theories, subordinated groups are divided and set against one another to preserve hegemonic dominance.  

By contrast, Chalcraft argues that liberal and rational theories of popular mobilisation, which are dominant in activist discourse and social movement scholarship, fall short in effectively conceptualising popular mobilisation. These approaches often undertheorise dynamic power struggles that produce and maintain hegemony, which limits their ability to understand how popular mobilisation might transcend it. Additionally, their movement-centric focus can remain detached from the intersectional identities and concerns of subordinate groups, allowing for their continued marginalisation or abstraction altogether.  

Finally, Chalcraft draws on critical approaches including feminism, Marxism, critical race theory, decolonial thought, and intersectionality to situate his Gramscian approach within existing scholarship surrounding mobilisation. Chalcraft does not reject these traditions; instead, he uses Gramsci to address their limited engagement with revolutionary politics and civil society. Central to this is the development of a coherent theory of praxis – the bringing together of theory and practice, enabling a concrete connection between practices of popular mobilisation and the struggles of subordinate groups to overcome social domination.  

The architecture of mobilisation 

In the remainder of the book Chalcraft details four key analytical phases of popular mobilisation: domination, autonomy, consent, and revolution. These phases are neither fixed nor linear. Instead, they can be overlapping, partial, regressive or transcendent. Starting with domination, Chalcraft argues that a central Gramscian question asks how subordinate groups can construct emancipatory projects. He employs the Gramscian notion of praxis, explaining that for subaltern groups, praxis is not a binary condition; rather, it is a process of becoming. In struggles at the margins, subordinate groups challenge the common sense that has justified their domination, engage in aspirational utopian thinking towards rebellion, and negotiate the complexity of their identity and their cause. It is here that a new ground can be laid for further action central to overcoming domination.  

In struggles at the margins, subordinate groups challenge the common sense that has justified their domination

Chalcraft also addresses the assertion of autonomy and the cultivation of consent as critical to popular mobilisation. Subordinate groups assert autonomy in the process of mobilisation through self-activity and efforts towards self-determination. While a Gramscian approach values autonomy, it rejects autonomism or an idolization of autonomy, which can lead to political isolation and impede the collaboration necessary to overcome hegemony and advance a new society.  

The search for consent is another preparatory phase for revolution. In a Gramscian sense, consent springs forth from autonomy, yet seeks to extend beyond autonomous self-activity toward a broader politics. This phase involves the practice of constructing social force necessary to challenge hegemony while avoiding regression into elitist or authoritarian tendencies. Chalcraft emphasises that this phase requires theoretical renewal while addressing questions of leadership and the expansion of collective will. He warns against both radicalisation and vanguardism, instead arguing, through Gramsci, for the creation of an organic party which retains a democratic formation while foreshadowing a new society prior to revolution. The organic party is a collective that emerges from the lived experiences and struggles of subaltern groups. Rather than being an imposed political party organised around a single leader, the organic party remains a collective force aimed at creating a new social and political formation.  

The final chapter addresses the question of revolution. Chalcraft’s Gramscian approach challenges prominent views that equate revolution with large-scale demonstrations, protests, or popular uprisings. Instead, he emphasises the importance of both the war of manoeuvre and the war of position. While the war of manoeuvre involves direct confrontation, the war of position is strategic, encompassing the previously discussed phases and cultivation of civil society. In this approach, a phase of revolution is not immediate nor solely confrontational. Instead, it builds on the groundwork laid in the assertion of autonomy and search for consent, which create counter-hegemonic forms and build counter-hegemonic forms and build the foundation for a new society.  

A Gramscian alternative

The conclusion addresses the implications of the Gramscian approach the book has developed and articulates its application to both theory and practice. Central to this approach is the plurality inherent within subordinate groups, presented as a point of synthesis for the construction of a new hegemony. Chalcraft’s emphasis on this plurality allows for engagement with diverse struggles and an examination of their relations to power, autonomous actions, and formations of social force.  

Valuable for activists, scholars, and those engaged in mobilisation and movement studies, this is a book that is more pressing than ever in the current global socio-political moment.

Chalcraft’s framework can be operationalised beyond the cases that he draws upon, though the Gramscian language may prove difficult for readers not well versed or comfortable with political theory. There are moments where the analysis or reading of Gramsci and his contemporaries can feel abstract. However, Chalcraft grounds these more abstract theoretical instances in tangible, illustrative cases that make these complex concepts more accessible and further demonstrate the applicability of his approach (i.e. the Rojava Revolution, the Indignados Movement). Additionally, the book addresses the tensions inherent in popular mobilisation, highlighting unresolved questions and limitations left open for further study.  

Though theoretically and philosophically demanding at times, From Subordination to Revolution offers a critical reading, articulating powerful ways to make use of the Gramscian tradition. The book presents an opportunity to rethink our understanding of popular mobilisation by addressing key limitations and inefficacies in current scholarship. Valuable for activists, scholars, and those engaged in mobilisation and movement studies, this is a book that is more pressing than ever in the current global socio-political moment.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Against Progress (2024) and Zero Point (2025). Slavoj Žižek. Bloomsbury.

Reading the prose of Isaiah Berlin was said to be like witnessing fireworks lighting up the darkened vista of the past, illuminating forgotten sites, if only for a second. By contrast, Slavoj Žižek writes with the explosive force of a firework show in broad daylight: we can already see the terrifying state of the world; he is merely bringing it to our attention with the shock we need. And just as a firework display disorients the watcher with flashes coming from all corners, so too does Žižek’s writing tend to disorient as he jerks us from Marx to magicians, from shame to social media, from Lacanian psychoanalysis to Hegelian dialectics. But for the reader prepared to persevere through the disorientation, Žižek has much to offer.  

For many political theorists, Žižek has a status something close to a rock star: he is deeply intellectually confident, highly proficient, and has an original, distinctive style. When it was announced that he would be publishing a trilogy of essays with Bloomsbury – Against Progress (AP), Zero Point (ZP), and the forthcoming Liberal Fascisms (LF) – it felt a little like an arena-headlining world tour. AP and ZP are, in many ways, a summary of Žižek’s recent interventions into politics in general and leftist politics in particular. With the trilogy incomplete, judging its overall impact is impossible, but examining the two parts we have so far feels worthwhile in its own right. 

Challenging “Progress” with a capital P

 “Against progress” (a very Žižekian phrase) seems to be a shot across the bow at progressives. But AP is built on a simple premise: progress is not inevitable, and that which seems inevitable is not always progress. As Žižek makes clear, in the opening chapter, the collection of essays is against Progress, with a capital P: “this no way implies we should abandon progress – we should rather redefine it” rather than retain a “blind commitment to an intentionally adopted idea of what ‘progress’ looks like” (AP, 3-5).  

There is no inevitable forward march of history, and in recognising that, we are called to realise the potential progress in every moment we have.

Why? Because progress is “never a linear approximation to some pre-existing goal since every step forward that deserves the name ‘progress’ implies a radical redefinition of the very notion” (AP, 8). There is no inevitable forward march of history, and in recognising that, we are called to realise the potential progress in every moment we have.   

Like the firework show we’ve come to expect, Žižek bounces from topic to topic – from psychoanalysis to quantum mechanics. At times he does this deftly, at times less so, but always with a completeness of thought that leaves the reader with the sense that while this may not be the “correct” answer, it has certainly ruled out the wrong ones. Whether that is “accelerationism” as a means to push the current paradigm to its (il)logical conclusions (AP, Ch. Three, ‘Accelerationism’), or the belief that ecological disaster can be averted that rests on “the vague faith that ‘people will act’ before it is too late” despite those very people “struggling with a cost of living crisis, bombarded by conflicting information on global warming” (AP, Ch.10, ‘From Bad to Worse’). 

Hypocrisy of the right and left 

A particularly stark moment in AP comes with Žižek tells the Left – progressive or otherwise – to stop, essentially, self-flagellating. As he writes in Chapter Six, “Worsting”, there is an irreconcilable hypocrisy in the New Right’s “four central motifs: opposition to ‘excessive’ environmental worries, immigration and LGBTQ+ rights, and advocating a passionate patriotism” – and yet resisting the “Muslim fundamentalists” that agree with them on these four motifs. But there is a hypocrisy yawning beneath the Left: and “instead of constantly worrying about being accused of ‘Eurocentrism’, the task of the Left should be to rediscover the emancipatory potential of the European tradition” (AP, 45).  

Žižek wants us to remember that there is no single definition of progress, and every vision offered (thus far) is exclusionary in some way. Instead, the constant renegotiation of the term is essential to it, and today’s progressives should not become tomorrow’s conservatives.  

Freedom and authority 

The longest chapter, and the core of the book, “Authority” (Ch. nine), weaves into the tapestry of AP a reflection on the nature of authority at a time when authority itself seems in question. A tour-de-force of Žižek’s knowledge and understanding of Lacanian psychoanalysis, Hegelian dialectics, Adornian critique and, of course, Kierkegaardian existentialism. Typical of Žižek’s writing, the most important chapter is simultaneously the most dense and complex. But throughout there is a pertinent message: in a world where “since the more we act freely the more we get enslaved into the system, we need to be ‘awakened’ from this ‘dogmatic slumber’ of fake freedom from outside, by the push of a Master figure” (AP, 83). Authority is essential, but it must be immanent and authentic.  

With a deep intake of breath, the reader moves from the tactical retreat of AP and into the base camp of Zero Point. Žižek shifts gears, in ZP, leaning into the Lacanian psychoanalytic role he is more comfortable with; diagnosing the world’s psychodramas, almost as if he is setting the entire globe down on a therapist’s couch. 

A call to regroup and retry 

While AP points out where the forays up the mountain have been follies, in ZP, Žižek takes inspiration from VI Lenin’s 1922 note ‘On Ascending a High Mountain’. Students of history will take the point with all the subtlety of a nuclear bomb: Lenin’s famous New Economic Policy that replaced the exhausted war communism system saw minor concessions to capitalists, and was roundly criticised by ideological hardliners as an admission of failure, and evidence of lack of commitment to the revolution, as Alexander Barmine wrote in 1921: “We felt as though the revolution had been betrayed and it was time to quit the party.”  

If progress has led you to a position more perilous than beneficial, that progress is not sustainable. Better to retreat, regather, and retry

Yet “On Ascending” has an important lesson: if progress has led you to a position more perilous than beneficial, that progress is not sustainable. Better to retreat, regather, and retry. If the “progress” of recent decades has led to a world that is boiling alive, as far-right activists sweep populists into power, and the gap between the haves and the have-nots grows so wide they are no longer bound by the same rules, can it be called as such?  

With the re-election of Donald Trump, Žižek says, “(what remains of) the Left has reached its zero point: it will have to reinvent itself thoroughly or it will perish”. In fact, Žižek directs a fiery rebuttal to Kamala Harris’s concession speech in which she told the United States it’s going to be “okay”: “No, everything is NOT going to be OK, we should NOT trust that progress will win out and history will somehow restore balance” (ZP, 5-6). There must be a way forward for the Left, he insists, and that way forward cannot be left up to some vague notion of “progress”.  

Knowing when to speak up 

Yet as much as ZP is a diagnosis and attempted prognosis of the Left’s current strategic position, attempting to open up avenues for forward motion, the second half of the book is a combination of politico-psychoanalysis and profound personal reflection. Assembled in light of a talk Žižek was requested to give to the 75th Frankfurt Book Fair – a talk that was interrupted several times with accusations levelled at Žižek of antisemitism and asking the audience to consider the plight of Palestinians – the second half of the book is a series of dated notes with reflections on those interruptions and clarifications. The section’s title “When is the right time to speak?…” is taken from a note penned on the 24 May 2024, which goes on: “we often hear people exclaim in frustration ‘Don’t just talk, take action!’, but in this context, it is just as important if not more to name things by their right names and to tell the truth” (ZP, 97). 

Against Progress and Zero Point are essential reading for anyone interested in where the Left ought to proceed from its apparent point of no return.

This insight is nestled among these fragmentary notes strung together by a single theme: what are we talking about? That theme encapsulates Žižek’s whole attempt here – to force the Left to ask questions like, “what do we mean when we say ‘progress’?”, “are modern populists really far-right?” “Is Trump really a fascist?” Žižek may have his answers, but they are folded into a series of carefully considered statements on the complexity of the current state of the world – the Left’s zero point. 

Advancing from the point of no return 

Žižek is not without his faults. At times, he makes bold statements (“perhaps the best characterisation of Trump is that he is a kind of liberal, namely a Liberal Fascist”, ZP 6) that he then goes on to contradict (“one should be very careful when characterising Trump as a Fascist”, ZP 40). Clarity may be forthcoming in the next book Liberal Fascisms, but this feels like a gap a little too wide to ignore. Likewise, in the chapter ‘Death Cramps’, Žižek claims that the EU is “slavishly obeying American instructions even when it is clear that they run contrary to Europe’s own economic interests” (ZP, 49). But ‘the EU’ cannot be cast as a monolithic bloc and is increasingly internally divided over relations with the US. 

Nevertheless, Against Progress and Zero Point are essential reading for anyone interested in where the Left ought to proceed from its apparent point of no return. Alongside comparably daring works like Chantal Mouffe’s For a Left Populism (2018), Nancy Frazer’s The Old is Dying and the New Cannot be Born (2019) and Wendy Brown’s In the Ruins of Neoliberalism (2019), Žižek’s latest foray into the state of the politics, the world, and (what remains of) the Left is a fascinating read that prompts keen anticipation of the third instalment.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

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Radical Abundance: How to Win a Green Democratic Future. Kai Heron, Keir Milburn and Bertie Russell. Pluto Press. 2025.

In our time of polycrisis, the literature about a more equal and sustainable world grows. Among many accounts of the current state of affairs and desirable visions of the future – from Zeitgeist movement to the “alternative hedonism” – few of them deal with what is to be done here and today. Radical Abundance comes as a notable exception, offering practical steps to a post-capitalist future, 

Bullshit jobs, and everything else 

“The authors set the scene from the outset: “We live in a world of bullshit abundance. A world where we have too much of what we don’t need and too little of what we do.” Frequently using the word “bullshit”, the authors seem to be implicitly continuing David Graeber’s analysis of the nebulousness of white-collar jobs; however, this is a more extensive, materialistic analysis of both production and consumption. Radical Abundance  begins with the authors presenting capitalism as a dialectic between the abundance of bullshit and artificial scarcity. By this they mean that, on the one hand, there is too much of what is harmful – microplastics, traffic congestion, carbon emissions – as well as consumer choice. 

The mirror image of capitalism’s bullshit abundance, radial abundance names a world where everyone has what they need to live and flourish

On the other hand, there is too little of what is needed: decent job opportunities, access to a healthy diet and environment, infrastructure, even of time itself, (see Hartmut Rosa‘s detailed analysis), which harms people and nature. It is not an inevitable scarcity, but one imposed on some people for the economic benefit of others. The entire book, and especially the first of its two parts, explains the inseparability of bullshit abundance and artificial scarcity. This inseparability occurs in almost every market: “Under capitalism our lives are diminished and our access to the fruits of our collective labour restricted” (3). 

From imposed scarcity to radical abundance 

If bullshit abundance is the thesis, what is the antithesis? The “radical abundance” of the book’s title. As “the mirror image” of capitalism’s bullshit abundance, it names a world where everyone has what they need to live and flourish. “Instead of bullshit abundance of pollutants, traffic jams, and greenhouse gases, radical abundance regenerates ecosystems and pursues reparations for peoples – usually racialised, Indigenous, and working class – who have had their lands stolen, polluted, or turned into zones of extraction” (15). 

True change can never be delivered by capitalist means, the authors contend, hence their choice of the word “radical” which distinguishes the book from Abundance, written by liberal advocates of cosmetic changes to the system. Its key word is “transition”. In Chapter Two, the authors present the historical context and a theory of transition, drawing from Marxist thinkers such as the economist Michael A. Lebowitz, sociologist Marta Harnecker and philosopher István Mészáros. This theoretical context  is essential to understand why the challenge of transition, as the authors argue, partly overlooked by the Left (Green New Deal, degrowth economies, half-earth socialism, etc.). 

Those who have benefitted from the status quo have constructed both theory and practice of transition that ensures nothing will fundamentally change. Heron, Milburn and Russell differ, presenting concisely the theory and prerequisites for the transition, as well as the institutional form to support it. 

Necessary features of a transition 

The authors argue that overthrowing capitalism is not enough; we need to abolish capital as a relationship, as a system based on the imperative of accumulation. This, after all, is why the USSR collapsed: the failure to “outcapitalise” the capitalists, instead of devising alternative, non-capitalist relations between humans and nature. The book calls for collective democratic participation, through processes of democratic social and ecological planning. Granted, transition is difficult, uncertain and dependent on geographical, historical and social context. Nevertheless, there are “invariant” features of transition, regardless of time and space.  

Democratic participation and planning constructs popular “protagonism” – a new, powerful collective agent and the first invariant feature of transition. Popular, because it is exercised by the working/popular classes in their differentiated unity: workers in industry, services, unwaged workers, peasants, and so on. The essence here is that emancipation of the working classes must be led by the working classes themselves. This must be done by learning through acting, and by building institutional forms.  

From the idea that transition is a period in which incompatible and antagonistic social metabolisms (socio-economic formations) coexist and collide stems the second prerequisite for transition – contested reproduction. This is a democratically planned production, determined by the associated producers, which is not based on the logic of capital. The purpose is to gradually replace capital’s metabolic control with a shared metabolic system.  

The most pressing problems of our time are secular stagnation (the stubbornly low rate of economic growth) and global warming. Both stem from a pernicious relationship between the state and private capital

The authors point out the mistakes of numerous mass mobilisations after 2008. Although they were progressive (Indignados), massive (Occupy Wall Street) or even part of the political milieu (Syriza), these projects have waned, without articulating political demands and/or building transformative institutions for the development of popular protagonism and contested reproduction. They point to five examples of the “institutionalization of the revolution” – the seeds from which greater forms of resistance can develop. None of them use the same conceptual language to organise their struggles, nor are they illustrative of an already formed and cohesive global movement. Yet from Hernani Burujabe’s experiments with radical planning in the Spanish Basque Country to Venezuela’s communes, as the authors write, all of which aim to drive “a shift from a culture in which citizens beg the state to solve their problems to a culture where citizens implement, control, and manage things themselves”. They call for this to be the objective and method of 21^st century socialism. 

From public-private to public-common partnerships 

The most pressing problems of our time are secular stagnation (the stubbornly low rate of economic growth) and global warming. Both stem from a pernicious relationship between the state and private capital, where states, using taxpayers’ money, subsidise and de-risk private companies’ investments. “The derisking state”, the authors state, “is defined by the practice of enlisting ’private capital’ into achieving public policy priorities by tinkering with risk/returns on private investments in sovereign bonds, currency, social infrastructure and, most recently, green industries.

If the state can derisk private capital, it could start derisking commons, instead.

This relationship – from British laborists’ securonomics to the American democrats’ Bidenomics – takes the form of public-private partnerships. Adverse economic and institutional consequences of these partnerships have been researched by Mariana Mazzucato. But where she sees the “entrepreneurial state” as a victim of private capital, the authors point to its complicity. The real victims of such insidious practices are citizens and nature. They argue that, if the state can derisk private capital, it could start derisking commons, instead. By combining mass mobilisation and concerted strategies, workers and citizens can convince them to do that. In the book’s second part, the authors sketch an institutional strategy to achieve this called “public-common partnership” (PCP). 

The last three chapters are dedicated to areas in which different forms of PCPs (as well as Joint Enterprises and Common Associations) have managed to take root: urban development, pharmaceuticals, and agriculture. The authors emphasise that PCPs are not universal solutions and do not represent a participatory mechanism for including civilians in the management of a public enterprise. Nor are they another model of modern-day cooperatives. They are a transitional, consciously directed and expansive movement of decommodification, which aims to bring an increasing proportion of our reproductive activity within a communal mode of provision.  

Undeniably, the challenge is great, and meeting it involves all of us “exhausted of the Earth“ taking action. In overemphasising employed workers, the book makes what might be its strongest point: PCPs are primarily the expression of a struggle over production. By suggesting the forms that cannot be incorporated into workplace and trade union activities, the authors avoid the risk of supporting subcultural political practice or spaces of economic otherness incapable of confronting capital’s control. Among many things we learn from this compelling guide, the most fundamental is the knowledge that we are all in one, indivisible class struggle.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image: The Harvesters by Pieter Bruegel the Elder (1565), open access courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York and the Rogers Fund (1919).

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The Revolution to Come: A History of an Idea from Thucydides to Lenin. Dan Edelstein. Princeton University Press. 2025.

What do we mean when we say “revolution”? Scientists are working to bring about the “energy revolution” that will save the planet. Revolutionary venture capitalists “disrupt” the market by introducing new business models. Progressive groups promise all sorts of revolutionary palingenesis. Paraphrasing historian Keith Michael Baker, in our times “everywhere one looks, one finds the term invoked, generously and indiscriminately, to cover an ever-broader variety of changes” (204). But precisely because of the overuse of the word, as St. Augustine remarked of time, if we are asked what revolution is and try to explain, we are baffled (264). Stanford professor Dan Edelstein has come to our aid. The Revolution to Come attempts to answer the question by recovering the shifting meaning of the idea of revolution through time, from Periclean Athens to Bolshevik Moscow, and beyond. How did key thinkers in classic and modern times understand and employ the word revolution? What does this entail for the way we use the term today? Only a long-range genealogy, Edelstein suggests, can give us a clue to this riddle. 

A long view of revolution as an idea

The Revolution to Come is an expansion of his previous work, and particularly of Scripting Revolution (2015), which he edited with K. M. Baker. Its extensive timeline departs from other recent contributions to the field, particularly Enzo Traverso’s Revolution: An Intellectual History (2021). Traverso focuses on 19th and 20th century Marxism, adopting a cultural lens. In contrast, Edelstein’s “big picture” approach connects it to works in the history of ideas that deal with specific terms through vast swaths of time, such as Martin Jay’s The Virtues of Mendacity (2010), Jacob Soll’s Free Market: The History of an Idea (2022), or Darrin M. McMahon’s Equality: The History of an Elusive Idea (2023). 

The Jacobins take a new understanding of revolution to its extreme consequences […] it must keep going until heaven on earth is achieved in the fastest possible way, i.e., it must become ‘permanent.’

The book is structured in four major blocks following a chronological timeline. The first part, “Fortune’s Revolution,” explores Greek and Roman thought, but the main bulk of the book revolves around the modern period: Part II, “Constitutions and Revolutions in the British World” examines the English and American revolutions. Part III, “Modern Times,” focuses on the Enlightenment and the French Revolution and forms the axis around which the text rotates. And the fourth and final section, “Progress of Revolution” traces the global spread and transformation of revolution in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. 

From cyclical to deliberate change 

Edelstein opens with Thucydides, Plato, Aristotle, and Cicero. But the main protagonist of this initial section is Polybius and his concept of anacyclosis, the natural revolution that political systems undergo through time. Much like planets rotating in their orbit, different forms of government grow, stabilise, and decline, finally falling back to their point of departure. Crisis and decay cannot be avoided, but only slowed down by adopting what Polybius sees as the best of political regimes, a mixed constitution like that of the Roman Republic. Revolution is an inescapable fact of politics, but one that should be curbed, not evoked (58). 

According to Edelstein, it is in the 16^th century that European intellectuals begin to translate anacyclosis with “revolution” (62). The sense of the term is still negative, but its hidden catalyst is now Machiavelli’s “Fortuna” (fate) rather than simply nature. This new meaning of “revolution” is later inherited by the protagonists of the Glorious Revolution in the 17^th century. They too reaffirm the Polybian ideal of mixed government against the whims of Fortune’s wheel. However, at this point, a subtle but significant semantic shift also takes place. Thinkers like Sidney and Locke begin to treat revolution as a deliberate act, albeit with a conservative aim: a return to the “ancient constitution” against the expansionist ambitions of a tyrant (86). The American Revolution follows suit, prioritising stability over change. For Edelstein, this episode belongs to a revolutionary tradition that still sought to rebalance an upended order, rather than creating a new one. 

Towards a better future 

Although 1789 is the first instance of a revolution with a “future-facing identity,” 1793 marks the point at which the term undergoes its final redefinition (180). The Jacobins take a new understanding of revolution to its extreme consequences. In the wake of the philosophies of Condorcet and Voltaire, this new conception of the word has become inextricably wedded to the idea of progress. Revolution is no longer a painful but necessary means to reestablish a lost political harmony. On the contrary, it is a positive and sought-after occurrence that accelerates the march towards a better future. It follows that revolution must keep going until heaven on earth is achieved in the fastest possible way, i.e., it must become “permanent.” According to Edelstein, with Robespierre and Saint-Just the authority and legitimacy of revolution stops resting on popular will. It now stands on its own, and the path of blood that it leaves behind is justified by the promise of final and complete human redemption – what Edelstein calls the logic of “prospective retrospection” (235).  

The final part of The Revolution to Come follows the trail of this new understanding of revolution across two different strands. On the one hand, Napoleon uses it to reconfigure and spread modern liberalism by combining individual rights with limited popular sovereignty and a strong government. On the other, Marx, and later Lenin, emphasise radical transformation and the dictatorship of the proletariat. In both, democratic mechanisms are sidelined in favour of top-down, centralised control. However, while the communist dispensation has now exhausted its strength, Edelstein seems to suggest that liberalism continues to harbour a problematic compatibility with authoritarian governance (209). 

Understanding history in context 

The Revolution to Come impressively blends erudition and breadth of vision with readability. By combining historical method with literary criticism and political theory, Edelstein manages to convey a central insight, namely that if we really want the past alive, we need to understand what words and concepts meant in their own time and context, and to what effect they were used. Without this type of effort, history remains a sealed book.  

Edelstein seems to suggest that liberalism continues to harbour a problematic compatibility with authoritarian governance

Edelstein does not meddle too much with questions of methodology, staying away from the theoretically heavy approach common to many intellectual historians, especially in the so-called “Cambridge School” spearheaded by Quentin Skinner and JGA Pocock, or Rheinhardt Kosellek’s Begriffsgeschichte approach, which focused on mapping concepts over time. This certainly makes for an easier read and will hopefully attract a broader audience outside of academia. But it also leaves certain questions open, especially around how ideas get transmitted across time and what ultimately shapes them – material conditions or intellectual efforts. Are we supposed to derive a normative lesson from the book? Certain sections, particularly the one on liberalism, and parts of the conclusion seem to hint at that, but leave the final answer suspended. 

All in all, this is a necessary read and not just for those interested in intellectual history. Edelstein puts some order around an overused and often misunderstood concept, providing both a solid basis for more in-depth research and a more nuanced understanding of our language.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image: NaughtyNut on Shutterstock.

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City of Equals. Jonathan Wolff and Avner de Shalit. Oxford University Press. 2023.

Jonathan Wolff and Avner de-Shalit’s recent collaboration, City of Equals, is a love letter to the city. The city has long been an unloved creature, its dwellers depicted as alienated and rootless. City of Equals rebuts this tale of woe by exploring the forms of egalitarian rootedness and place-making that can flourish within the city. Combining analytic philosophy with qualitative research methods, and drawing on urban studies, sociology, and political geography, it will be of interest to scholars working across disciplines, urban planners and policymakers, and those who call cities home. While there are works that examine justice within the city and the injustices that are specific to cities, Wolff and de-Shalit have produced a novel account of egalitarianism for the city.

What makes a “city of equals”?

Wolff and de-Shalit set out to discover what it means for a city to embody the egalitarian spirit – what constitutes a “city of equals.” Material equality is one obvious answer; but, Wolff and de-Shalit note, cities with significant income inequality, such as Berkeley, California can nevertheless qualify as egalitarian in spirit. There must be, they surmise, something more to egalitarianism than the distribution of resources. Instead, the authors are moved by relational accounts of equality, “less interested in making sure that everyone has the same amount of anything that ca n be distributed among them, but rather that each person has good reason to regard each other as an equal, and be regarded as an equal by them” (13).

What does it mean to have the sense that you are being treated as an equal? Wolff and de-Shalit turn to 182 semi-structured interviews conducted between 2015 and 2019 by stopping “city-zens” – those who reside within the city boundaries (15) – in Amsterdam, Rotterdam, Berlin, Hamburg, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, London, Oxford, New York City, and Rio de Janeiro. They do not explain the choice of cities other than to note that these cities range in size, significance, dominant religion, and national political context (20). The authors concede this is not a representative sample, locally or globally; however, they treat interviews as a trampoline that “enables you to gain an elevated viewpoint, thus freeing yourself from the solid ground of your position,” (18) and providing sight of questions and ideas not visible from the ground. The interviews therefore expand the authors’ point of view even when they do not provide an expansive or representative perspective (18).

Securing a sense of place

Wolff and de-Shalit provide an account of a “city of equals” which, at heart, is a city that “offer[s] each individual a secure sense of place.” The concept of a “sense of place” emerges from attachments to a particular setting or place, which can arise from one’s direct personal and family biography, or be mediated through collective narratives that imbue a place with meaning, for example, for cultural, religious or ethnic identities. We have a sense of place for a particular location, then, because it is where we fell in and out of love, where a religious figure was martyred, or where an ancient battle was lost. This sense may be shared or communicable, but it need not be universal; it is a changing set of relations with the artefacts, facilities, and people in a particular location. A component of one’s identity, a sense of place contributes to one’s wellbeing, and enables other components of wellbeing, including the capacity to be tolerant of others and thereby enable their sense of place.

Cities are home to most of the world’s population, are responsible for nearly 80 per cent of states’ GDPs, and increasingly dictate national politics

Wolff and de-Shalit identify four core values that engender a sense of place: 1: access to municipal services is not marketised; 2: there is equal opportunity to achieve a sense of a meaningful life; 3: diversity and social mixing in the absence of a monolithic culture; and 4: inclusion that does not rely on deference or submissiveness, but instead is enjoyed as a matter of right. They conclude by proposing that these core values be used to form an index for cities to use as a self-audit: they can help a city to “understand its own trajectory, looking back over the months and years, and to consider what it needs to do in order to come closer to a city of equals” (171).

A “city of equals” in an unequal nation

City of Equals is a much-needed enquiry into egalitarianism in the city informed by interdisciplinary perspectives and innovative mixed methods. Wolff and de-Shalit do not see it as the final word so much as a starting point that establishes the city as its own site of enquiry. At its heart lies the belief that egalitarians should care about equality at the level of the city, and that equality at this level is a distinct enterprise. One reason to care about equality in cities is their sheer size and significance: as Wolff and de-Shalit note, cities are home to most of the world’s population, are responsible for nearly 80 per cent of states’ GDPs, and increasingly dictate national politics (5).

But that is not to say urban equality can represent equality more generally. Wolff and de-Shalit insist that the city is a different sort of political institution from the state, with different political functions and hence a different understanding of equality. Fair enough. However, if cities increasingly determine economic and political life at the national and global level, what equality means in the city may inevitably inform practices and conceptions of equality at the national level. For example, a “sense of place,” which is amorphous and varied, might be more apt for immigrants than the existing paradigm of national integration. This is not only because most immigrants move to cities; it is also because the integration paradigm presupposes a “community of value” that is often exclusionary, on grounds of race, religion, and class, for immigrants and citizens alike. A “sense of place” provides an alternative way of belonging and living together – one that also contributes to one’s wellbeing and identity, but without requiring conformity with a national culture or set of values. Equality in the city might therefore bleed into equality in the state in ways that are generative and inclusive.

Many Arabs in the east of Jerusalem feel that they live under occupation and that Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem experience the city in very different, and unequal, ways

In turn, inequality at the national level might infect the city. More than a third of Wolff and de-Shalit’s interviews are conducted in Israel, which Israeli and international organisations have since concluded maintains an apartheid regime, including in East Jerusalem. The authors describe how these inequalities impinge on the egalitarian possibilities there: they note that many Arabs in the east of Jerusalem “feel that they live under occupation” and that “Jews and Arabs in Jerusalem experience the city in very different, and unequal, ways” (86). But this raises some politically urgent questions: How do city-zens retain an egalitarian ethos amid pervasive inequalities? And how do egalitarians in the city protect everyone’s sense of a place against the inequities imposed from above?

As Wolff and de-Shalit note, cities are often politically progressive and can be engines of change in national and global politics. But this may require that city-zens, from cities embedded in deeply unequal states, to the “sanctuary cities” targeted by the Trump administration, to the cities with mounting unhoused populations, not be complacent about their egalitarian credentials. It may be that a “city of equals” can only exist in a nation of equals, and that it falls to city-zens, with a secure sense of place and a willingness to look one another in the eye, to realise both.

Note: This review gives the views of the author and not the position of the LSE Review of Books blog, nor of the London School of Economics and Political Science.

Main image: William Perugini on Shutterstock.

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