Trigger Warnings is a brave book, best read as a call for the left to re-examine its strategies during a period of immense danger, to take stock of its key resources and to align itself with the experience of ordinary people without lessening its focus on sexism, racism or homophobia.

An indication that something has gone awry for our rulers is the resurgence of interest in socialism, particularly among young people, that neoliberals worked so hard to make anathema. As with different leftist formations overseas, the Victorian Socialists are one attempt to respond to the world we now find ourselves in.

There is a long history of urban communities and neighbourhoods fighting vested interests over competing visions of what the city might look like and how it provides access to housing, transport and other amenities. Cities are one of those important sites for contrasting ideas about how a society should be structured and organised. In the 1970s and again in the 1990s, the area around Alexandra Parade has been the location of struggle over the building and extension of the Eastern Freeway into inner northern suburbs.

Berman broadened our idea of modernism, making connections hitherto unseen, showing how the artistic visions of writers as diverse as Goethe, Baudelaire and Dostoyevsky were inspired by, and helped give shape to, the large transformations their societies were undergoing. A focus on the dialectic of modernism and modernisation and how this formed an integral part of the historical experience of modernity would be a continuing concern. In Berman’s typically dialectical mode, he sought not just to add to a Marxist understanding of modernism, but show also how Marx’s own creative vision was itself modernist.