The Chinese leadership refused to commemorate this year’s centenary of the overthrow of the last imperial dynasty. Obsessed with survival, will it allow challenges to its version of the past? Plus, a former Red Guard writes of new fears

I’ve always wanted to visit Karl Marx Stadt. Twenty years after it disappeared, I finally did

Marx is enjoying a revival. But it's his sidekick who would have seen the crunch coming

Phillip Blond's arguments may be eloquent, but heavy-handed government meddling is not the answer. Breaking up Tesco would make the recession worse than it's already going to be

Amartya Sen discusses his new book, in which he claims that the British approach to multiculturalism has undermined individual freedom

Communism is the only political system to have created its own international brand of comedy. The standard interpretation is that communist jokes were a form of resistance. But they were also a safety valve for the regimes and jokes were…