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We Make Our Own History rethinks humanist Marxism as a theory of collective action, including the ways in which social movements from below can develop from localised struggles over individual issues to far-reaching projects for social change (a welfare state, an end to patriarchy, an ecologically sustainable society). It also looks at the history of movements from above – those which can draw on the resources of capital, the state or cultural power to impose themselves.

If the ideologists of neoliberalism want to present it as the natural order of humanity, a more sober historical assessment points out that it has lasted about as long as Keynesianism did before it – a few decades – and is just as vulnerable to the collapse of the alliances which sustain it.

The Latin American pink tide demonstrated US inability, for the first time in a century or more, to impose its will (in military, foreign policy or economic terms) on its Latin American “backyard”. The planned “long war on terror” is basically over, with the original strategy for a rolling series of attacks on rogue states buried in the sand and political support for US wars collapsing not only among US elites, but also their European and Arab allies under the impact of the anti-war movements of 2003 in particular. This has fed into a broader weakness in relation to control of the strategically crucial Middle East and North African region manifested in the “Arab Spring”, in particular events in Egypt, and subsequent failure to secure support for war in Syria. Meanwhile, the Wikileaks and Snowden affairs have highlighted the legitimacy crisis of the supposedly all-powerful surveillance state.