Category: Monthly Review Press Blog

The Point Is to Change It: Dollars & Sense reviews Yates’s “Can the Working Class Change the World?”

February 20, 2024

Yates begins with a detailed description of the world-wide working class. Who they are: most wage laborers, the reserve army of labor (unemployed, involuntary part-timers and discouraged workers), unpaid reproductive workers, and most peasants and laborers. How many: several billion spread across the globe. According to Yates, there are more people in the working class than many might suppose….

Las Vegas Democratic Socialists of America review “What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism”

February 20, 2024

Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster’s excellent 2011 book, What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism, is essential reading for ecosocialists and environmentalists of any political tendency. At 160 pages, the book does an exceptional job of describing how capitalism is directly connected to ecological degradation and why its abolition is necessary in preventing ecological catastrophe. This review will attempt to summarize the fundamental arguments of the book and its case for ecosocialism. The book goes over more than discussed below, so make sure to read the whole thing for more useful information and details….

New! “The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century”

February 20, 2024

August 2019 saw numerous commemorations of the year 1619, when what was said to be the first arrival of enslaved Africans occurred in North America. Yet in the 1520s, the Spanish, from their imperial perch in Santo Domingo, had already brought enslaved Africans to what was to become South Carolina. The enslaved people here quickly defected to local Indigenous populations, and compelled their captors to flee. Deploying illuminating research, The Dawning of the Apocalypse is a riveting revision of the “creation myth” of settler colonialism and how the United States was formed….

Senior Women Web reviews “Mythologies of State and Monopoly Power” by Michael E. Tigar

February 20, 2024

This is a law book written for a general audience. Tigar has been a law professor most of his life; in these pages one can learn much from his vast legal and historical knowledge. ¶ Multiple chapters are spread out over five “mythologies”: Racism, Criminal Justice, Free Expression, Worker Rights and International Human Rights. ¶ His discussion of these mythologies is not neutral; he has a point of view and it’s generally from the left….

Gerald Horne: The History of Police in the U.S. & Connections to Slavery

February 20, 2024

Gerald Horne, whose book The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century is just out, talks to Margaret Prescod, host of Sojourner Truth Radio, about the legacy of policing in the U.S. How did it start? What impact did its history have on what’s happening in policing today? And what is the inter-relationship between the legacy of slavery and genocide against Indigenous people, policing and mass incarceration practices of today?

JONUS, Journal of Nusantara Studies, reviews “Can the Working Class Change the World?”

February 20, 2024

Can the Working Class Change the World? is not written suddenly. Throughout the last decade, capitalism has been increasingly discussed and debated, both by the right and left wing. This is because many people are struggling with economic downturn, wide income gap, unemployment, poverty and environmental crisis. The Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008, almost brought down the global financial system. Later in 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement began and spread to several countries to protest against the 1%. And in 2018, Ray Dalio, a multibillionaire who is also the founder of Bridgewater Associates, himself admits that capitalism does not function for most people. Today, the assets of the 26 richest individuals in the world is equivalent to the assets of half the world’s citizens (Elliott, 2019). But, if capitalism now has failed, the question is: who fix it?

“The pornography of violence ensnaring Black men”–Gerald Horne talks to Katie Halper & Matt Taibbi

February 20, 2024

Historian Gerald Horne, author of dozens of books, including the just-out The Dawning of the Apocalypse, talked recently with Matt Taibbi and Katie Halper on their Rolling Stone podcast, Useful Idiots, in an effort to contextualize the current race protests through a historical lens…

Gerald Horne on Black Power 96 Radio’s “Diasporic Music”

February 20, 2024

On June 14, Norman “Otis” Richmond (aka Jalal), producer/host of Diasporic Music on Black Power 96 Radio, talked to Dr. Gerald Horne, historian and author of dozens of books, most recently, The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century…

KPFK’s “Freedom Now” talks to author Gerald Horne

February 20, 2024

Brandon Sankara, host of radio station KFPK’s “Freedom Now,” talks to “everyone’s favorite living library,” Dr. Gerald Horne, author, most recently, of The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century, about international responses to the murder of George Floyd and the condition of African Americans today in general..

Gerald Horne talks with Walter Turner, via KPFA’s “Africa Today”

February 20, 2024

Scholar, author, journalist, and host of KPFA Radio’s “Africa Today,” Walter Turner talked recently with Dr. Gerald Horne, historian and author of several books, most recently, The Dawning of the Apocalypse, about–among other things–embedded questions of class in America’s long history of racism. Listen, below, or at Africa Today