Category: Monthly Review Press Blog

Thoughts on Nelson Mandela by Alan Wieder, author of Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War against Apartheid

Thoughts on Nelson Mandela by Alan Wieder, author of Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War against Apartheid

February 20, 2024

Long-time South African educator and President of the New Unity Movement, R. O. Dudley had a quote that he used when speaking of various iconic South African struggle leaders: He “had arms, not wings.” It is a phrase that we should remember when speaking of the late Nelson Mandela, but unfortunately, press coverage in the United States as well as throughout the world has turned Madiba into a Hallmark greeting card figure. And while Mandela’s role as a freedom fighter and the major force for reconciliation in the new democratic South Africa should be honored and celebrated, we must remember that we are talking about a complex revolutionary, and also a complex politician.

A Freedom Budget for All Americans in the Washington Post

A Freedom Budget for All Americans in the Washington Post

February 20, 2024

As two excellent new books about the march and the men and women who made it happen — “The March on Washington” by William P. Jones and “A Freedom Budget for All Americans” by Paul Le Blanc and Michael D. Yates — make clear, the march was initially conceived in late 1962 primarily to spotlight the growing unemployment, underemployment and job discrimination plaguing African Americans in northern cities. Only when all hell broke loose in Birmingham, Ala., in the spring of 1963 — with Bull Connor loosing attack dogs on black schoolchildren demonstrating for equal access to public accommodations — did the focus of the march expand to the civil rights demands with which it is linked in popular memory today.

Hell’s Kitchen and the Battle for Urban Space reviewed by Resolute Reader

Hell’s Kitchen and the Battle for Urban Space reviewed by Resolute Reader

February 20, 2024

In the period this book considered, Hell’s Kitchen, or “Manhattan’s Middle West Side” was considered by many commentators to be an area of poverty, corruption, crime and unsavoury types. In reality of course it was a home to thousands of working class people who carved their own lives out of the limited opportunities that they had … Subtitled, Class Struggle and Progressive Reform in New York City, 1894-1914, Joseph J. Varga’s new book is a detailed examination of the development of this district in New York, but more importantly, an attempt to understand, using the concept of the “production of space” how that urban space was shaped and, in turn, shaped those who inhabited it.

Paul Le Blanc and Michael D. Yates on "Black America and A New Freedom Budget" in Truthout

Paul Le Blanc and Michael D. Yates on "Black America and A New Freedom Budget" in Truthout

February 20, 2024

“A Freedom Budget for All Americans,” published in 1966 by the A. Philip Randolph Institute, demanded that the federal government put in place policies and programs that would eliminate poverty within ten years. Its authors demonstrated with clear and realistic assumptions about government taxes and revenues that this could be accomplished easily. The “Freedom Budget” was a direct descendant of the historic 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. The organizers of the march and the architects of the “Freedom Budget”—people like A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin and Martin Luther King Jr.—understood that ending poverty, achieving full employment, guaranteeing incomes, winning higher wages and providing good schools, national health care and decent housing would not happen without tremendous struggle, one that challenged not only the federal government but the basic structure of a capitalist economy. Their sensibility was democratic and socialist; it envisioned a society both egalitarian and controlled by the people themselves

Michael A. Lebowitz on "Contested Reproduction and the Contradictions of Socialism" in The Bullet

Michael A. Lebowitz on "Contested Reproduction and the Contradictions of Socialism" in The Bullet

February 20, 2024

(Michael Lebowitz is the author of The Contradictions of “Real Socialism”.) Why did ‘real socialism’ and, in particular the Soviet Union, fall? Let me note a few explanations that have been offered. With respect to the Soviet Union, one very interesting explanation that has been suggested is that it’s all the fault of Mikhail Gorbachev. And not simply the errors of Gorbachev but the treachery. Those who offer this explanation rely in particular upon a document which is sometimes described as his confession.

Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War against Apartheid reviewed in Z Magazine

Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War against Apartheid reviewed in Z Magazine

February 20, 2024

Ruth and Joe, white secular Jews in apartheid South Africa, did not have to fight against that society of skin-color privilege. Yet they did because that social system doomed scores of people to lives of misery and poverty. We discover the complexities of place, space, and time in Ruth and Joe’s lives among those with and without name recognition to overthrow white-minority rule in South Africa.

A Freedom Budget for All Americans reviewed in Library Journal

A Freedom Budget for All Americans reviewed in Library Journal

February 20, 2024

Socialist intellectuals (e.g., Bayard Rustin) and radical labor leaders (e.g., A. Philip Randolph) were trusted advisers and allies of Martin Luther King Jr. Their social-democratic economic ideas … embodied in the “Freedom Budget” … called for the elimination of poverty by 1976 through programs to create full employment, eliminate slums, and ensure a minimum standard of living for all. The book ends with a proposed updated version of the Freedom Budget; the budget includes federal programs for full employment, a restructuring of education and job-training systems, and more. … Invaluable for restating the influence of the American left on King’s views and enriching the historical record.

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