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Randy Martin, ed. The Routledge Companion to Art and Politics (London: Routledge, 2015), 348 pp., $240.

Randy Martin, a professor at New York University who founded and chaired the program in Arts Politics, died on January 28, 2015. The Routledge Companion to Art and Politics appeared shortly before his death, marking one of the last installments of his lifelong engagement with its subject matter. This volume shows key aspects of his orientation to intellectual life, his politics, his wit and spirit, his unceasing utopian hopefulness.

Paul Le Blanc, Leon Trotsky (London: Reaktion Books, 2015), 220 pp., $16.95.

Lecia Rosenthal, ed. Radio Benjamin (London, NY: Verso, 2014), 394 pages,  $29.95

Esther Leslie, trans. Walter Benjamin’s Archive: Images, Texts, Signs (London, NY: Verso, 2015), 311 pages, $19.95

Slavoj Žižek, Absolute Recoil: A New Foundation of Dialectical Materialism (London: Verso, 2014), 436 pp., $19.95

We remain convinced the people of Cuba would be best served by genuine democracy, where people are free to choose their leaders, express their ideas, practice their faith; where the commitment to economic and social justice is realized more fully; where institutions are answerable to those they serve; and where civil society is independent and allowed to flourish. -- Secretary of State John Kerry, at the re-opening of the US Embassy in Havana, August 14, 2015

What man would follow art - one of the most uncertain and unremunerative professions - who hadn’t a deep faith in the social value of his vision. -- Rockwell Kent

Introduction

Democratic republicanism has been central to major events like the French Revolution or the Spanish Republic, and now inspires changes underway in Venezuela, Bolivia and Ecuador. The socialist movement, like Jacobinism, is part of the republican heritage that includes struggles for democracy and the political concept of fraternity; reciprocity under conditions of equality is freedom.

The Cuban socialist project is in a period of transition. This transition is unfolding in conditions dictated by an underdeveloped economy, a persistent domestic economic crisis even though the economy is in the process of recovering, and hostility on the part of successive U.S. administrations. With the Barack Obama administration, some expectations of change arose. The agreement to re-establish diplomatic relations announced on December 17, 2014, and the steps toward rapprochement that have followed are opening a qualitatively different era in these relations.

‘It is true that to be free, may mean freedom to starve, to make costly mistakes or to run mortal risks.’ -- Friedrich von Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty