Category: Monthly Review Press Blog

Henry Giroux interviewed on Greed for Ilm podcast

Henry Giroux interviewed on Greed for Ilm podcast

Henry Giroux is the author of America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth, published recently by Monthly Review Press. He is interviewed by Walid Darab for the Greed For Ilm podcast, discussing his book, “casino capitalism,” three examples of the war on youth, his recent appearance on Bill Moyers, and more.

Registering Class reviewed in The Spokesman

Registering Class reviewed in The Spokesman

The Socialist Register 2014 is the 50th edition of the journal which was founded by Ralph Miliband and John Saville in 1964 to advance socialist analysis and discussion. It was an offshoot of the New Left, but reflected a different approach from that of the New Left Review editors, Perry Anderson and Tom Nairn. Over the years, it has produced a rich collection of contributions on socialist ideas.

Save Our Unions reviewed in Labor Notes

Save Our Unions reviewed in Labor Notes

Reading Save our Unions: Dispatches from a Movement in Distress is like sitting in on a seminar on the modern labor movement—with Steve Early playing the role of opinionated professor. Research has confirmed that we learn best when we are hearing stories. So the prolific Professor Early wisely builds his Save Our Unions seminar around case studies of labor’s triumphs and tragedies, past and present.

Back in Print! Value and Crisis: Essays on Marxian Economics in Japan by Makoto Itoh

Back in Print! Value and Crisis: Essays on Marxian Economics in Japan by Makoto Itoh

Value and Crisis opens with a long and highly informative essay on the development of Marxian economics in Japan, and contains a number of the author’s important and original contributions to this stream of thought. Itoh discusses the major points of view on Marx’s theory of value, on theories of crisis, and on problems of Marx’s theory of market value. The essays demonstrate a wide-ranging familiarity with all the major theoretical schools of Marxist thought. In dealing with theories of crisis, for example, Itoh succinctly summarizes and criticizes the points of view of Tugan-Baranovsky, Hilferding, Bauer, Kautsky, Bukharin, and Luxemburg, as well as Grossman, Sweezy, and the Japanese Marxist Kozo Uno, together with the relevant parts of Capital. The book includes a section on the 1930s Great Depression in the context of the theoretical discussion about crisis theory.

Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War against Apartheid reviewed in The Washington Socialist

Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War against Apartheid reviewed in The Washington Socialist

As the world was saying goodbye to Nelson Mandela in early December, I had my nose in Alan Wieder’s well-researched new biography Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War Against Apartheid (Monthly Review, 2013). First, Slovo and Mandela were part of an ensemble of revolutionary comrades who together reshaped South Africa from the 1950s to the end of apartheid in 1991. The book is full of these and other familiar characters in a level of detail that would impress the most ardent Talmudic scholar. Wieder’s research involved hours and hours of interviews and immersing himself in court records, other documents and the personal papers of Slovo, First and others from the apartheid era.

Read an excerpt from An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital in Recomposition

Read an excerpt from An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital in Recomposition

When Marx took up a comprehensive critique of political economy at the end of the 1850s, he also intended to write a book on the state. Marx planned a total of six books: on capital, landed property, wage-labor, the state, foreign trade, and the world market. In terms of range of content, the three volumes of Capital approximately comprise the first three books. The planned book on the state was never written; in Capital there are only isolated references to the state.

Two MR Press Books named CHOICE Outstanding Academic Titles

Two MR Press Books named CHOICE Outstanding Academic Titles

We’re pleased to announce that An Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx’s Capital by Michael Heinrich and Race in Cuba by Esteban Morales Domínguez have been named Outstanding Academic Titles by CHOICE, the magazine of academic libraries.

Grace Lee Boggs in NYC: 2/6, NYU; 2/7, Barnard

Grace Lee Boggs in NYC: 2/6, NYU; 2/7, Barnard

Join Monthly Review Press author, philosopher, and veteran activist Grace Lee Boggs for two special events in New York City: a conversation with Professor Melissa Harris-Perry and other guests at New York University and a screening of the film American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs at Barnard College.

Lettuce Wars reviewed by VOXXI

Lettuce Wars reviewed by VOXXI

Bruce Neuburger dedicated five years to write about his life as a farmworker in the fields of the rich Salinas Valley, California in his new book, Lettuce Wars, which takes readers on a unique voyage written by an activist who worked 10 years as a farmworker between 1970 and 1980… Lettuce Wars is one of the very few well-documented books recently published dealing with the farmworkers’ movement from a different perspective other than the “official story” published by the UFW, giving voice to the many anonymous workers and activists who fought for their dignity and a better life for them and their families.

It should be a mandatory reference for those who want to know more about those turbulent years and the life of farmworkers.