Review of 'Hegemony How-To: A road map for radicals' by Jonathan Smucker

A nice, thoughtful book about strategy for socialists - well, he says 'radicals' in the title but he's mainly for self-described socialists. I think too much of it reads like it was written with one eye on an academic audience - he uses a lot of theoretical language, which I don't mind in principle but feel it doesn't add much. I liked the personal bits best. I'm also not sure how relevant it is to a UK audience. I think our left doesn't have a problem with the idea of hegemony, or of power, but has really bad ideas about how to achieve it. This book seems to be mainly an argument with the anarchists of Occupy, trying to persuade them that it's OK to organise to win things, and ultimately to win power; not such an issue here.