The year 2023 saw one of the latest genocides in modern times - that of the people of Palestine by Israel. People born in the last or this century find it difficult to understand how such genocides in the past were allowed to take place at all, so barbarous an action this is. Yet the current genocide continues unabated, despite the millions of people around the world demanding an end to it. This exposes the real nature of capitalism and imperialism. It is in this situation that issue no 7 of The Kenya Socialist focuses on the Palestine Question. Articles include The Palestine Question, Claim to be Pan-Africanist? Until Everyone is Free, Zionism and the Myth of Democracy. The title of the Editorial is ‘We are all Palestinians’. Another article examines why ‘the struggle for Palestine is the struggle of working people worldwide’, showing the class and imperialist background to the genocide. The issue ends with solidarity statements from Kenyan organisations and a book review. It carries a number of illustrations on the struggle.

The Kenya Socialist is published by Vita Books, Nairobi and is edited by Shiraz Durrani and Kimani Waweru. It aims to encourage free flow of information, knowledge and discussion which can lead to a better understanding of socialism. It seeks to promote socialist ideas, experiences, and world outlook and to increase awareness of classes, class contradictions and class struggles in Kenya, both historical and current. The latest issue (No. 6, August 2023) carries articles on class struggle in Kenya, primitive accumulation of capital and an essay on understanding socialism through literature. Other articles are on the history of UMOJA and the role of trade unions as a force for resistance in Kenya. A Kiswahili section is also included, as is a section on ‘Remembering Pio Gama Pinto’. A short Poems section ends this issue.

The path towards democracy in Kenya has been long and often tortuous. Though it has been trumpeted as a goal for decades, democratic government has never been fully realised, largely as a result of the authoritarian excesses of the Kenyatta, Moi and Kibaki regimes. This uniquely comprehensive study of Kenya's political trajectory shows how the struggle for democracy has been waged in civil society, through opposition parties, and amongst traditionally marginalised groups like women and the young. It also considers the remaining impediments to democratisation, in the form of a powerful police force and damaging structural adjustment policies. Thus, the authors argue, democratisation in Kenya is a laborious and non-linear process. Kenyans' recent electoral successes, the book concludes, have empowered them and reinvigorated the prospects for democracy, heralding a more autonomous and peaceful twenty-first century.

The official records of the proceedings of the Legislative Council of the Colony and Protectorate of Kenya, the House of Representatives of the Government of Kenya and the National Assembly of the Republic of Kenya.

An international cast of contributors (Americans, former East Germans, and former West Germans) take the reader on a journey from the view of science policymakers, to the construction of "socialist" institutions for science, to the role of espionage in technology transfer, to the social and political context of the chemical industry, engineers, nuclear power, biology, computers, and finally the career trajectories of scientists through the vicissitudes of twentieth-century German history."--BOOK JACKET.

The Kenya Socialist exists to: Promote socialist ideas, experiences and world outlook; Increase awareness of classes, class contradictions and class struggles in Kenya, both historical and current; Expose the damage done by capitalism and imperialism in Kenya and Africa; Offer solidarity to working class, peasants and other working people and communities in their struggles for equality and justice; Promote internationalism and work in solidarity with people in Africa and around the world in their resistance to imperialism; Make explicit the politics of information and communication as tools of repression and also of resistance in Kenya. This first issue covers several areas that remain neglected in public discourse in Kenya. The study of class remains one such topic and Kimani Waweru’s article, Class and Class Struggle in Kenya, fills this gap. Waweru also contributes a briefing on ideology as a weapon of oppression or liberation. He will continue his theoretical explorations in the next issue with an article on gender and women’s oppression and liberation. History is never far from any liberation struggle. Nicholas Mwangi looks at Mau Mau and the origin and meaning of the term ‘Mau Mau’. Njoki Wamai’s contribution is her presentation at the All African Peoples’ Conference in Accra in 2018. Linking up with the launch of the Ukombozi Library, the question arises, ‘What is the role of information in liberation?’ Shiraz Durrani answers some question from Julian Jaravata on various aspects of information. Finally, Durrani looks at the challenge by Wakamba wood carvers to the information embargo under President Moi.

In a compelling history of the Jewish community in New York during four decades of mass immigration, Tony Michels examines the defining role of the Yiddish socialist movement in the American Jewish experience. The movement, founded in the 1880s, was dominated by Russian-speaking intellectuals, including Abraham Cahan, Mikhail Zametkin, and Chaim Zhitlovsky. Socialist leaders quickly found Yiddish essential to convey their message to the Jewish immigrant community, and they developed a remarkable public culture through lectures and social events, workers' education societies, Yiddish schools, and a press that found its strongest voice in the mass-circulation newspaper Forverts. Arguing against the view that socialism and Yiddish culture arrived as Old World holdovers, Michels demonstrates that they arose in New York in response to local conditions and thrived not despite Americanization, but because of it. And the influence of the movement swirled far beyond the Lower East Side, to a transnational culture in which individuals, ideas, and institutions crossed the Atlantic. New York Jews, in the beginning, exported Yiddish socialism to Russia, not the other way around. The Yiddish socialist movement shaped Jewish communities across the United States well into the twentieth century and left an important political legacy that extends to the rise of neoconservatism. A story of hopeful successes and bitter disappointments, A Fire in Their Hearts brings to vivid life this formative period for American Jews and the American left.

Many observers of Kenya’s complicated history see causes for concern, from the use of public office for private gain to a constitutional structure historically lopsided towards the executive branch. Yet efforts from critics and academics to diagnose the country’s problems do not often consider what these fiscal and political issues mean to ordinary Kenyans. How do Kenyans express their own political understanding, make sense of governance, and articulate what they expect from their leaders? In For Money and Elders, Robert W. Blunt addresses these questions by turning to the political, economic, and religious signs in circulation in Kenya today. He examines how Kenyans attempt to make sense of political instability caused by the uncertainty of authority behind everything from currency to title deeds. When the symbolic order of a society is up for grabs, he shows, violence may seem like an expedient way to enforce the authority of signs. Drawing on fertile concepts of sovereignty, elderhood, counterfeiting, acephaly, and more, Blunt explores phenomena as diverse as the destabilization of ritual “oaths,” public anxieties about Satanism with the advent of democratic reform, and mistrust of official signs. The result is a fascinating glimpse into Kenya’s past and present and a penetrating reflection on meanings of violence in African politics.

Pio Gama Pinto was born in Kenya on March 31, 1927. He was assassinated in Nairobi on February 24, 1965. In his short life, he became a symbol of anti-colonial and anti-imperialist struggles in Kenya and India. He was actively involved in Goa's struggle against Portuguese colonialism and in Mau Mau during Kenya's war of independence. For this, he was detained by the British colonial authorities in Kenya from 1954-59. His contribution to the struggle for liberation for working people spanned two continents - Africa and Asia. And it covered two phases of imperialism - colonialism in Kenya and Goa and neo-colonialism in Kenya after independence. His enemies saw no way of stopping the intense, lifelong struggle waged by Pinto - except through an assassin's bullets. But his contribution, his ideas, and his ideals are remembered and upheld even today by people active in liberation struggles. This book does not aim or claim to be a comprehensive record on Pio Gama Pinto, just the beginning of the long journey necessary to record the history of Kenya from an anti-imperialist perspective. It introduces readers to voices of many people who have written about Pinto to build up as clear a picture of Pinto as possible. In that spirit, it seeks to make history available to those whose story it is - people of Kenya, Africa and progressive people around the world.