Category: Monthly Review Press Blog

Steve Brouwer interviewed by NACLA [video]

Steve Brouwer interviewed by NACLA [video]

February 20, 2024

Since the creation of the Venezuelan health mission Barrio Adentro, thousands of Cuban medical professionals have provided quality health care for some of Venezuela’s poorest communities. In Revolutionary Doctors: How Venezuela and Cuba Are Changing the World’s Conception of Health Care, author Steve Brouwer highlights the revolutionary health care practiced by Venezuela and Cuba. Brouwer lived in Venezuela in 2007-08 where he witnessed the results first hand.

Oliver Villar interviewed in Asia Times Online

Oliver Villar interviewed in Asia Times Online

February 20, 2024

What has been your main motivation to spend 10 years of your life to the subject of the drug trade?

Oliver Villar: The main motivation goes sometime back. I think it has to do firstly with my own experiences in growing up in working class suburbs in Sydney, Australia. It always has been an area that I found very curious and fascinating just to think about how rampant and persuasive drugs really are in our communities, and just by looking at it in more recent times how much worse the drug problem has become, not just in lower socio-economic areas, but everywhere. But from then on, when I finally had the opportunity to do so, I actually undertook this as a PhD thesis. I spent my time carefully looking at firstly what was written on the drug trade, but as coming from Latin America, I was very interested in particular in the Latin American drug trade as well.

Mexico's Revolution Then and Now reviewed in The Progressive Populist

February 20, 2024

In Mexico’s Revolution Then and Now (Monthly Review, paperback, 2010), James D. Cockcroft provides a window to the past and present of the US neighbor. A speaker of English and Spanish, Cockcroft is also a prolific author of books on Mexico, with over a half-century of experience and study there. His new book published a century after the Mexican Revolution arrives at a crucial time, as pundits and politicians “talk loud and say nothing” about the struggles of common people in Mexico.

Social Structure & Forms of Consciousness Vol. II reviewed on Counterfire

February 20, 2024

The central aspect of Mészáros’ argument is the impossibility of understanding structure except through history. Furthermore, the denial of history (which is more or less explicit in structuralism and its progeny) is the necessary result of a failure to understand the dialectic of structure and history. Associated with this problem are a whole range of issues, first of all of course, the use of the Marxist concept of base and superstructure. There are also such matters as the relationship between individual and society, as exemplified, in a problematic sense, in Jean-Paul Sartre’s attempts to reconcile existentialism and Marxism. While both Sartre’s and Lévi-Strauss’ work is seen ultimately in terms of failure, Sartre is regarded with considerable respect. In contrast, Mészáros has little patience with Lévi-Strauss, for whom history in itself was a problem.

Class Dismissed reviewed in CHOICE

Class Dismissed reviewed in CHOICE

February 20, 2024

Writing as en engaged public intellectual, Marsh (English, Pennsylvania State Univ.) argues that education, from preschool through graduate school, should not be viewed as a panacea for America’s economic and social ills. Instead, he calls for a drastic decrease in poverty and inequality as a more potent elixir. Marsh marshals ample historical and empirical evidence to bolster his case.

MR Press author Jeb Sprague w/ Selma James and Danny Glover

February 20, 2024

Join Jeb Sprague, author of the forthcoming book Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti, for a teach-in with Selma James, Danny Glover, and others, at the Southern California Library in Los Angeles on Saturday, March 24.

Wisconsin Uprising reviewed in Labor Notes

Wisconsin Uprising reviewed in Labor Notes

February 20, 2024

As a lifelong Wisconsin resident and union thug, almost every aspect of my life has been changed by the series of events that began with the election of Scott Walker. Everyone around me has felt the impact of his regime, personally and at work. We’ve seen a long list of losses: wages, benefits, clean government, environmental protections, collective bargaining rights, and more. But we also gained a collective voice, evidenced by the mass rallies and a million signatures on petitions aimed at recalling Walker.

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