The British Library's show Taking Liberties - on the struggle for freedom and rights throughout 900 years of British history - is a welcome event, writes Peter Linebaugh. But, he wonders, is it possible to discuss liberty while excluding the crucial question of equality?

The English translation of Roberto Esposito's Bios appears to be an important contribution to the critical analysis of a politics of life, but can the book's claim to 'revitalise' politics really be thought from within the exclusive bounds of academic philosophy? Review by Erik Empson

A talk by Hillel Ticktin - organised by Mute

David Panos & Anja Kirschner's film, Trail of the Spider, allegorises the public-private land-grab known as ‘urban regeneration’ using the form of the Spaghetti Western. This is no shallow postmodern genre surfing, writes Neil Gray, but a passionate re-engagement with history for the sake of the present

Having been studiously ignored for decades, computer art's early history is finally receiving the attention it deserves. Catherine Mason's book on its British variant uncovers how mainframe computing and arts education came gloriously, if briefly, together. Review by Simon Ford

The recent resurgence of interest in African music arguably breaks with existing stereotypes only to replace them with new ones. But who is benefiting from African music's soaring popularity?

The Liverpool Biennial '08's strand of site-specific installations, MADE UP, promoted an engagement with fantasy and beauty over criticality. But, in the context of Liverpool's current City of Culture status and the epic regeneration this entails, we should wake up, not be put to sleep – write the Institute for the Art and Practice of Dissent at Home

Margarita Gluzberg's fascination with the fictions that sustain capitalism seems increasingly relevant as they start to unravel in the face of the financial crisis. Here the artist talks to Peter Carty about her recent show The Money Plot

Speculation and risk management, once the preserve of finance, have become defining traits of all facets of contemporary capitalism – from military planning to stem cell research. The Melancholic Troglodytes review two recent books exploring the expansion of this speculative logic

There are distinct ideological ties of continuity between these two contributions.

What's the difference between a commissar's propaganda and a Constructivist's poetics of production? Marco Deseriis reviews Gerald Raunig's 'Art and Revolution' and ponders some of the gaps in his aesthetic-political theory

There are books which are imbued with an anachronistic aura from their very release. Books whose untimely publication makes you wonder whether their moment has irrevocably gone by or is perhaps still yet to come.

By supporting NGOs, is the left suppressing a radical politics in Haiti and elsewhere?

Paolo Virno's latest book contends that the question of human nature – good or evil? – is suddenly topical, thanks to ‘immaterial labour'. But, if true, how useful is this insight?, asks Nina Power

The 19th century 'Great Game' rivalry between Britain and Russia for supremacy in Central Asia is seeing a resurgence, with America taking Britain's place. The stakes are higher than ever, argues Loren Goldner

A Mute Magazine talk

As the global ruling class finally admits that the 'financial' crisis has spilt over into the real economy, the fiction that the credit crunch is containable has been dispelled. Will resistance to capital's genocidal expansion now become equally uncontainable? Can anti-capitalists take advantage of the global system's instability, or will austerity measures and gloves-off geopolitics triumph?