In 1215, King John I of England signed a document known as the Great Charter – Magna Carta. As a legal document, it has attained a near-legendary status as a symbol of the supposed power of the rule of law. Ben Glineicki looks at the significance of this 800-year-old document and examines the history of the law and class society.

For many today, it is clear what we are fighting against: corruption, crisis and austerity. But it can be harder to articulate or even picture exactly what we are fighting for. Ben Gliniecki examines: how might a new society work? In what way would our individual lives be affected? What will socialism look like?

Matthew Wood reviews Guns, Germs, and Steel, the 1997 Pulitzer prize winning book by geographer and anthropologist Jared Diamond, which provides a materialist analysis of the development of humanity from hunter-gatherers societies to agriculture.