Category: Monthly Review Press Blog

Re-Organizing Labor: CounterPunch looks at “Tell the Bosses We’re Coming”

February 20, 2024

U.S. labor is in bad shape. Unions have long been on the decline, and the Supreme Court rules against them regularly. So do lower courts. Much of the problem, writes Shaun Richman in his newly published Tell the Bosses We’re Coming, is that labor law is rooted in the Commerce Clause. … But, Richman argues, it has not succeeded. Employers love to have their grievances moved to the courts and this happens regularly. So now unions are stuck with decades of lousy court decisions and a playing field sharply tilted against them…

Stephanie Urdang remembers anti-apartheid activist Jennifer Davis on KPFA’s “Africa Today”

February 20, 2024

Jennifer Davis, champion of majority rule in South Africa and leader in the anti-apartheid movement in the United States, died last November at the age of 85. On Saturday, July 11 (11:00a.m. EDT), she will be remembered in a memorial sponsored by AllAfrica, a news aggregator of voices by, and about Africa. On July 6, Stephanie Urdang, Jennifer’s lifelong friend and author of a memoir, Mapping My Way Home: Activism, Nostalgia, and the Downfall of Apartheid South Africa, as well as several books on African independence struggles, talked with Walter Turner, host of Africa Today on radio station KPFA…

Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature–John Bellamy Foster via Cosmonaut

February 20, 2024

“The Cosmonaut team inaugurates the ecology series by discussing John Bellamy Foster’s seminal book Marx’s Ecology on its twentieth anniversary. Join Niko, Ian, Matthew, and Remi as they discuss the context of this work, and how it started a rediscovery of Marx’s ecological politics. They discuss how ecology informed Marx’s understanding of the world since his doctoral thesis, the relationship between Marx, Darwin, and Malthus and the concept of metabolic rift.”

Roots of Slavery, Black Lives Matter, Defund Police: Gerald Horne talks to Radio KZSZ

February 20, 2024

John Malkin, host of Transformation Highway on radio KZSC/88.1FM Santa Cruz, talks to Dr. Gerald Horne, author of the recently published The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century about the roots of slavery, current Black Lives Matters uprisings, and calls to defund the police…

Gerald Horne back on Diaspora Music, via Black Power 96 Radio…

February 20, 2024

Historian and prolific author Gerald Horne talks with host Norman “Otis” Richmond (aka Jalal) about a wide range of current topics, and his most recent book, The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century. The book is a riveting revision of the “creation myth” of settler colonialism and how the United States was formed…

Making an ecological worldview: International Socialism reviews “The Return of Nature”

February 20, 2024

Since John Bellamy Foster published Marx’s Ecology in 2000, the idea that Karl Marx had little to say on environmental issues has become untenable. Marx’s Ecology has rightly become a classic. Beginning with Marx’s doctoral thesis on ‘The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature’, and tracing the development of his thought throughout his life, Foster’s book demonstrated the way that ecological questions were at the heart of Marxism—a ‘broad ecological worldview’…

Gerald Horne on “Another World Is Podible”

February 20, 2024

Radical historial and prolific author Gerald Horne talks with Peter Bloom, public expert on the future of Economy, Society, and Politics, Professor at the University of Essex, and host of Another World is Podible, about the “plastic, elastic” intersections of race, class, and Horne’s latest book, the Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century… when “whiteness” morphed into “white supremacy,” and allowed England to co-opt not only religious minorities but also various nationalities throughout Europe….

Via The Intercept: Gerald Horne on the Revolutionary Life of Paul Robeson, Antifascist Singer, Artist, & Rebel

February 20, 2024

Jeremy Scahill, host of Intercepted, a podcast series sponsored by The Intercept, looks to the life of artist and communist thinker Paul Robeson, as a lodestar to guide us through these crisis times. Robeson’s lifelong devotion to empowering workers and overthrowing fascists around the world was connected to the liberation of Black people in the United States. Professor Gerald Horne, author of Paul Robeson: The Artist as Revolutionary and, more recently, The Dawning of the Apocalypse joins Scahill to help elucidate Robeson’s vision and radical contributions…

Five days that shook Seattle: Real Democracy Movement reviews Cal Winslow’s history of the General Strike

February 20, 2024

“Over a century ago a historic general strike took place in Seattle on the Pacific North-West coast the like of which had not been seen before in the United States and it is fair to say, not since. In fact, this kind of total shut down verging on revolution has happened a mere handful of times anywhere….”

Samir Amin’s Swansong Does Not Disappoint: Marx & Philosophy on “Only People Make Their Own History”

February 20, 2024

For many of us the later writings of a great thinker offer a particular allure—the mature reflections on a life’s work, the winnowing of major themes and long-term passions, the admissions of mistakes or the elation of being proved right all along. Sometimes these swansongs disappoint, but not this one! For those of us who have studied and gained much from Amin’s many writings over the years, the opportunity to have in one relatively compact volume some final thoughts on the key arguments advanced and elaborated over a long and productive career is extremely valuable….