ABSTRACT
The most interesting contemporary writers are those who point to resources of hope which might enable us to avoid this diminished future. This chapter focuses on three of them, Julian Stallabrass, Mike Wayne and Ben Watson. Stallabrass, Wayne and Watson are by no means the only contemporary Marxist critics whose work is worth reading. Stallabrass published an important book on the phenomenon of Internet art. As before, Stallabrass is alive to the Net's capacity to recreate hierarchy: The Internet is the overarching network of the many public networks of connected computers. Mike Wayne is a historian of cinema and documentary maker. In Wayne's work there is a recurring defence of the university as a part of the public sector and subject to the same public service ethos as public sector broadcasting. Watson left the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) in 2003 and has recently been associated with a dissident group of ex-members who belong to the Association of Musical Marxists (AMM).
