David Black's Blog

This November (2025) B.P.C. Publishing is pleased to release our latest paperback/ebook, !839: The Chartist Insurrection and the Newport Rising. David Black and Chris Ford (with foreword by John McDonnell M.P. and appendices by George Julian Harney and Edward Aveling). 340 pp. £9.99. ISBN 979-8270579333 This is a revised and re-edited edition of our book … Continue reading "New from B.P.C. Publishing 1839: The Chartist Insurrection and the Newport Rising"

“…it was already Hegel who, apropos of the medieval culture of alienation, spoke of the ‘barbarism of pure culture’ (Kulturbarbarismus). The fact that the greatest barbarism of our century (Nazism) took place within the nation which glorified its culture against the superficial civilization of its neighbours (Germany) is by no means accidental: there is ultimately … Continue reading "Timely Notes on ‘The Barbarism of Pure Culture’ for 2024"

Review by David Black Lyndal Roper’s book, Summer of Fire and Blood: The German Peasants’ War (Basic Books, 2025) is the product of decades of scholarly research, including treks all over Germany to trace the events and places she writes about.  Her approach is ‘to understand the world the peasants inhabited through uncovering the rich … Continue reading "The 1525 Summer of Fire and Blood"

T.S. Eliot’s Anti-Semitism – a Deadly Legacy Poetics and Propaganda – Then and Now David Black 8 May 2025 Emanuel Litvinoff (1914-2011) was born in Whitechapel, east London, to Jewish immigrants who had fled Tsarist pogroms in Odessa. That part of the city saw frequent running battles between Blackshirts and anti-fascists, which erupted even after … Continue reading "T.S. Eliot’s Anti-Semitism – a Deadly Legacy"

B.P.C. Books Catalogue Below are the covers of all B.P.C. titles -eleven in all – published to date (2022-2025) as paperback and ebook. To purchase a title, copy the text below each cover, go to Amazon and paste. *NEW* – March 2025 The Phantasmagoria of Capital: A Short History of the Commodity, the Spectacle and … Continue reading "Subversive Books – The B.P.C. Catalogue"

0 March 2025 B.P.C. books announce the publication of a new book The Phantasmagoria of Capital A Short History of the Commodity, the Spectacle and its DiscontentsDavid Black CONTENTS Part One Origins Tragedy, Philosophy and Money = A Warning from Greek Antiquity Cults, Myths and Money – Dionysus, Orpheus and Us Part Two ‘New Passions’ … Continue reading "New Book from BPC – The Phantasmagoria of Capital"

By David Black 2 January 2025 ‘When we have gone back to Homer, most scholars will think that we have touched the pillars of Hercules, and that we had better not pry into the prehistoric darkness, which the accidents of tradition have left blank. But the problem, why the Greeks believed that the Gods themselves … Continue reading "Cults, Myths and Money – Dionysus, Orpheus and Us"

Gillian Rose: Marxist Modernism: Introductory Lectures on Frankfurt School Critical Theory, Verso, London: 2024 After the Hungarian Soviet Republic succumbed to the Rumanian invaders in August 1919, George Lukács escaped into exile and moved to Vienna. In between walks around the city with a revolver under his coat, he studied the section in Marx’s Capital … Continue reading "History, Capital and Phantasmagoria"

Dave Wise pays tribute to Annie Le Brun (15 August 1942 – 29 July 20 French writer, surrealist, poet and literary critic. Although it could be said that in the 1960s the ideas of the Situationist International on ‘totality’ superseded Surrealism, in practise it didn’t quite work out like that. Although Surrealism had little profile … Continue reading "Annie Le Brun, French Surrealist 1942-2024"

Forms of culture (art, law, religion, technology) are created in historical time, but often attain an independent validity which may render them inaccessible to their creators