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henryglaws.bsky.social
Henry Laws
@henryglaws.bsky.social
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henryglaws.bsky.social
So today I finished reading the book Visions of Council Democracy: Castoriadis, Lefort, Arendt by Benjamin Ask Popp-Madsen. You can read my thoughts on it in the comments below.
Image description: Picture of the book cover, which consists of the book’s title around an artistic depiction of a workers’ uprising on top of a red background.
November 11, 2025 at 6:52 AM
henryglaws.bsky.social
So yesterday I finished reading the book Work, Politics, and Power: An International Perspective on Workers' Control and Self-Management by Assef Bayat. You can read my thoughts on it here: hezzashottakes.substack.com/p/thoughts-o...
Image description: Picture of the book cover, which consists of the book’s title on top of a white and yellow background.
November 5, 2025 at 7:42 AM
henryglaws.bsky.social
So today I finished reading the book Seeing Through the Eyes of the Polish Revolution: Solidarity and the Struggle Against Communism in Poland by Jack M. Bloom. You can read my thoughts on here: hezzashottakes.substack.com/p/thoughts-o...
Image description: Picture of the book cover, which consists of the book’s title on top of a book on table, with the book, the table and the background coloured in red.
October 29, 2025 at 6:42 AM
henryglaws.bsky.social
So today I finished reading the PhD thesis Oil, Labour and Revolution in Iran: A Social History of Labour in the Iranian Oil Industry, 1973-1983 by Peyman Jafari. I have written my thoughts on it here: hezzashottakes.substack.com/p/thoughts-o...
Image description: Picture of the cover of the PhD thesis, which consists of the thesis title above an artistic depiction of oil workers striking during the Iranian revolution.
October 22, 2025 at 6:35 AM
henryglaws.bsky.social
So today I finished reading the book What Went Wrong? The Nicaraguan Revolution - A Marxist Analysis by Dan La Botz. I’ve written my thoughts on it here: hezzashottakes.substack.com/p/thoughts-o...
Image description: Picture of the book cover, which consists of the book’s title on top of a picture of a dark blue book.
October 2, 2025 at 8:16 AM
henryglaws.bsky.social
This article is good in highlighting the limits of the Council of Trade Unions' current tactics and strategy to oppose the right-wing convergence government's new restrictions on pay equity settlements... iso.org.nz/2025/09/20/w...
Image description: Picture of a gender strike in Spain with the following text above the picture: "Women workers deserve a stronger union response to pay equity cuts Eleanor Pollard 20 September 2025"
September 22, 2025 at 10:23 AM
henryglaws.bsky.social
An extremely thought-provoking article on how a multi-criterial socialist economy could be organised in the 21st century. static1.squarespace.com/static/59821...
Image description: Picture of the following text: "Aaron Benanav Beyond Capitalism—2 Institutions for a multi-criterial economy How might a modern economy work if it were driven by multiple social goals instead of the pursuit of private profit? The first part of this contribution discussed the ways the classical socialist tradition addressed this question, from the nineteenth-century utopians to the crash industrializers of Soviet Russia, the planners of Red Vienna, the guild socialists of Edwardian Britain and the architects of the postwar welfare state.footnote1 A major problem they failed to resolve was how to design the institutions through which multiple democratically determined aims could be articulated and composed, with resources allocated accordingly. Early ideas of a simple community-regulated economy could not survive the growing differentiation of economic and social structures thrown up by capitalist development from the 1870s on, which had created complex, layered processes of production and correspondingly specialized, sometimes mutually unintelligible forms of knowledge and world outlooks. New social struggles—feminist, anti-colonial, anti-racist—advanced competing, perhaps incompatible values: autonomy, equality, recognition. Imposing a uniform plan overrode broader aims in pursuit of maximized output and ignored real local differences, with perverse results. Organizing an economy around multiple goals dramatically increases the complexity of decision-making. Enduring ethical and political disagreements will persist. Even if broad consensus were achieved, material and technical constraints would mean that not all ambitions could be realized, requiring negotiated trade-offs. Besides, irreducible uncertainty about the future means we can never wholly predict the consequences of our decisions or anticipate new wants and needs; course correction"
September 22, 2025 at 10:04 AM
henryglaws.bsky.social
So today I finished reading the book Beyond the Vanguard: Everyday Revolutionaries in Allende's Chile by Marian E. Schlotterbeck. I have written down my thoughts on it here: hezzashottakes.substack.com/p/thoughts-o...
Image description: Picture of the book’s cover, which consists of the book’s title around a picture of the Chilean Leninist group the Revolutionary Left Movement/MIR.
September 20, 2025 at 9:24 AM
henryglaws.bsky.social
So tonight I finished watching Season 3 of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds. Some thoughts:

Pro's:

- Great performances by the main cast.
- Good CGI, cinematography and production design.
- Great soundtrack.
Overall, this is the weakest season of Star Trek: Strange New Worlds so far. 3/5
September 19, 2025 at 10:56 AM
henryglaws.bsky.social
So today I finished reading the book Workers and Revolution in Iran: A Third World Experience of Workers’ Control by Assef Bayat. I have written my thoughts on it here: hezzashottakes.substack.com/p/thoughts-o...
Image description: Picture of the book cover, which consists of the book’s title above a picture of a mass rally of Iranian workers around the Azadi Tower in Tehran during the 1979 Iranian Revolution.
September 16, 2025 at 8:06 AM
henryglaws.bsky.social
So today I finished reading the book Famine in Cambodia: Geopolitics, Biopolitics, Necropolitics by James A. Tyner. I’ve written my thoughts on it here: hezzashottakes.substack.com/p/thoughts-o...
Image description: Picture of the book cover, which consists of the book title above a picture of Cambodian peasants at a food market.
September 10, 2025 at 8:14 AM
henryglaws.bsky.social
So today I finished reading the book A People’s History of the Portuguese Revolution by Raquel Varela. I have written some thoughts on it here: hezzashottakes.substack.com/p/thoughts-o...
Image description: Picture of the book cover, which consists of the book’s title surrounded by carnations, the symbol of the 1974-1975 Carnation Revolution.
September 4, 2025 at 8:41 AM
henryglaws.bsky.social
An informative pamphlet on the contemporary relevance of the theories developed by French-Greek libertarian socialist Cornelius Castoriadis. libcom.org/article/shor...
Image description: Picture of a human face with a maze inside of it with the following text below it: "Short Introduction to the Political Legacy of Castoriadis Yavor Tarinski Edited and Prefaced by Mark Mason"
August 31, 2025 at 8:36 AM
henryglaws.bsky.social
So today I've finished reading the two books May Made Me: An Oral History of the 1968 Uprising in France and More May Made Me: Additional Elements of an Oral History of the 1968 Uprising in France by Mitchell Abidor. I've written some thoughts on both here hezzashottakes.substack.com/p/thoughts-o...
Image description: Picture of the book cover, which consists of the book title above an image of protestors engaging in street battles with French police in the streets of Paris during the French May 1968 uprising.
August 27, 2025 at 8:46 AM
henryglaws.bsky.social
As promised, I have uploaded all of the short book reviews that I have written with the merits/issues structure since August 2023, which comes to over 70 reviews, onto my Substack: hezzashottakes.substack.com Enjoy!
Image description: Picture of the front page of my newsletter Hezza's Hot Takes.
August 23, 2025 at 2:17 AM
henryglaws.bsky.social
So today I finished reading Communist Czechoslovakia, 1945-1989: A Political and Social History by Kevin McDermott. I have written my thoughts on it here: hezzashottakes.substack.com/p/thoughts-o...
Image description: Picture of the book cover, which consists of the book’s title on top of a picture of Czechoslovak workers greeting a train with a portrait of Joseph Stalin on it.
August 18, 2025 at 8:26 AM
henryglaws.bsky.social
After being asked to do so for several years, I've decided to create a Substack! Going forward, all my book reviews and articles will be published there. Eventually I'll post all my previous book reviews here: hezzashottakes.substack.com
Image description: Picture of the front page of my Substack newsletter Hezza's Hot Takes.
August 18, 2025 at 8:19 AM
henryglaws.bsky.social
So today I finished reading the book Workers’ Self-Management in Algeria by Ian Clegg. libcom.org/article/work...
Image description: Picture of the book cover, which consists of the book’s title below an artistic depiction of Algerian workers and peasants riding camels on top of a pink and dark yellow background.
August 12, 2025 at 8:31 AM
henryglaws.bsky.social
So today I went to a screening of the documentary Nuclear Savage: The Islands of Secret Project 4.1. I'd highly recommend it, as it details how between 1946 and 1958 the US government used the Marshall Islands as a test site for nuclear weapons... avplayer.lib.berkeley.edu/Video-UCBOnl...
Image description: Picture of the poster of Nuclear Savage: The Islands of Secret Project 4.1, which consists of the documentary's title next to a picture of a US scientist examining a Marshall Islander suffering from radiation poisoning with the following text: "A poignant, provocative, and deeply troubling look at the lingering and lasting effects of nuclear disaster..." - Counterpunch"
August 9, 2025 at 9:19 AM
henryglaws.bsky.social
So today I finished reading the book The Origins of the Cuban Revolution Reconsidered by Samuel Farber. uncpress.org/book/9780807...
Image description: Picture of the book cover, which consists of the book’s title around a picture of the Cuban flag on top of a red background.
August 5, 2025 at 8:15 AM
henryglaws.bsky.social
An informative article on the forms of workers' control that were developed in Czechoslovakia before and during the 1968 Prague Uprising. socialistregister.com/index.php/sr...
Image description: Picture of the following text: "The discussion about workers' control or the general extension of industrial democracy raises for most socialists some fundamental problems of power in society; but not, it should be noted, for some of the more recent advocates of the idea. When Anthony Wedgwood Benn, for example, came forward last year with his contribution he was quite explicit in his view that "real workers' control" would fit comfortably within the existing relations of power : Certainly there is no reason why industrial power at plant or office level should be exclusively linked to ownership of shares, than that political power should have been exclusively linked to the ownership of land and other property as it was in Britain until the "voters control" movement won its battle.1 When European managements, increasingly challenged by their trade union movements, insist that "Involvement is the key to industrial relation" and when Robert Cam talks about the men and women in industry wanting "greater involvement in the decisions which affect their everyday working lives, we do not, of course, expect them to question ownership rights. Commenting, however, on what he terms Mr. Benn's "fairly full-blooded form of workers' control" a Times leader writer puts his finger on the dilemma of power : Mr. Benn does not pause to consider the implication of that for the provision of capital, innovation, and restructuring of industry.4 When we turn to the debates among socialists, although the realities of power in capitalist society are at least explicitly recognized, there is often some confusion about the objectives of workers' control demands. The starting point for all, and the end for some, is the assumption that "once we have socialism all will be different". As Bill Jones wrote in a discussion published in Marxism Today: It is only when the workers win political power that we will see an end to our profit society and its replacement by a service s…
August 3, 2025 at 9:46 AM
henryglaws.bsky.social
So today I finished reading the book Hungary 1956 by Bill Lomax. archive.org/details/hung...
Image description: Picture of the book cover, which consists of the book title with a picture of Hungarian revolutionary working-class youth.
July 31, 2025 at 9:04 AM
henryglaws.bsky.social
An insightful article on how the Algerian government's promotion of workers' self-management was influenced by Titoist Yugoslavia and on the relationship between the two governments that was formed after Algeria achieved independence: thefunambulist.net/magazine/alg...
Image description: Picture of the following text: "“You Are Beautiful like a Comité de Gestion”: Self-Management in Algeria and Yugoslavia Contributors: Muriam Haleh Davis. Shortly after the Revolution, Algeria’s ties with Yugoslavia allowed for socialist practices to be implemented in Algerian farms and factories, in particular “auto-gestion” (workers’ self-management). Importantly, as Muriam Haleh Davis explains in this text, Yugoslavian models of socialism also allowed for a valorisation of religious practice, as opposed to Soviet and Chinese paradigms."
July 29, 2025 at 9:05 AM
henryglaws.bsky.social
An informative article on how the Algerian government initially promoted workers' self-management after achieving independence from France but class struggle between the Algerian bourgeoisie, proletariat and peasantry led to a military coup to suppress it. jacobin.com/2023/02/alge...
Image description: Picture of the following text: "After Independence, Algeria Launched an Experiment in Self-Managing Socialism By Hall Greenland After the end of French colonial rule, Algeria’s first government began to promote workers’ self-management in the “Mecca of Revolution.” But a backlash by conservative elements led to a military coup that established the regime still in power today."
July 29, 2025 at 8:58 AM
henryglaws.bsky.social
So last night I finished reading the book The East German Revolution of 1989 by Gareth Dale, the final book in his trilogy on East Germany. manchesteruniversitypress.co.uk/9780719074783/
Image description: Picture of the book cover, which consists of the book’s title below a picture of one of the protests that was part of the 1989 East German Revolution.
July 27, 2025 at 3:38 AM