Category: Monthly Review Press Blog

Marx & Philosophy on Michael Lebowitz’s The Socialist Imperative: From Gotha to Now

February 20, 2024

During the past two decades, economist Michael A. Lebowitz has written a number of books, proposing to build socialism as a practical alternative. Lebowitz’s new book, The Socialist Imperative from Gotha to Now, is a continued project about proposing the building of socialism in the 21st century…. Lebowitz’s book attempts to establish a theoretical vision of socialism and the lessons from the experience of ‘real socialism’…

Science & Society reviews Ian Angus’s A Redder Shade of Green

February 20, 2024

A Redder Shade of Green is a very welcome compilation of posts from Ian Angus’ website “Climate and Capitalism,” some original, others updated and revised. Ian Angus is a Canadian ecosocialist activist and scholar. This book follows two other earlier ones, the excellent critique of populationism/neoMalthusianism (with Simon Butler), Too Many People (Haymarket, 2011), and Facing the Anthropocene (Monthly Review Press, 2016), a splendid introduction to this subject….

Jeremy Kuzmarov talks to Paul DeRienzo on TrumpWatch

February 20, 2024

Jeremy Kuzmarov, author, with John Marciano, of The Russians Are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce, talks with Paul DeRienzo about the little-remembered history of Russia-United States relations.

Black Agenda Report interviews Marciano and Kuzmarov about their book, The Russians Are Coming, Again

February 20, 2024

Jeremy Kuzmarov and John Marciano: Our book provides a historical perspective on contemporary affairs by showing how the Russo-phobia that has been prevalent in our political discourse over the last four to five years has deep and long historical roots, and has often been used by government leaders to turn public attention away from domestic inequalities…”

The Russians Are Coming, Again … Jeremy Kuzmarov on Black Agenda Radio

February 20, 2024

Jeremy Kuzmarov talks with Black Agenda Radio host Glen Ford about how Democrats and war-hawks are reaching for ever-higher heights of anti-Russian hysteria, ascribing near super-powers to Moscow and Vladimir Putin. All this is déjà vu for many older Americans, who remember the Cold War days when Russians were thought to be under every bed…

“Trump Welcomes Immigrants, but Only if They Can Be Exploited” — David Wilson via Truthout

February 20, 2024

The US mainstream media had two competing events to cover the night of April 28: the annual White House Correspondents’ Dinner in Washington, DC, and a Trump rally in Macomb County, Michigan, a predominantly white working-class suburb of Detroit. Journalists mainly focused on the dinner, but the more important story may have been a remark President Trump made in the course of his 80-minute speech at the rally…

Michael Tigar on Law & Disorder Radio: “We have a Department that calls itself ‘Justice,’ but we know exactly what it’s doing…”

February 20, 2024

Internationally renowned human rights attorney Michael Tigar, author of the forthcoming Mythologies of State and Monopoly Power, talks to Law & Disorder host Michael Steven Smith and attorney Jim Lafferty about the growth of the national security state and the (further) decline of justice.

“Slavery and the Origins of Capitalism” — Counterpunch considers The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism

February 20, 2024

I had high hopes for Gerald Horne’s The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism for a couple of reasons…. ¶ My hopes were not only met, they were exceeded. Horne has written both a scholarly treatment enriched by primary sources excavated from archives three hundred years old but also a fierce polemic that hearkens back to those of CLR James and WEB Dubois….

Gerald Horne via Truthout: “Fighting Fascism & White Supremacy by Understanding History”

February 20, 2024

Gerald Horne: … I think that particularly with regard to students of African descent (but not exclusively students of African descent), it’s very important for them not to see Black people only in the role of slaves…. One of the many scandals of historiography in the United States is not dealing with that history, which I think leads to a misimpression that the slave population was inert, or as … Kanye West said, 400 years of slavery is “a choice.” Basically, I mean that kind of opinion comes clearly from this idea of presenting enslaved people as passive…”

New! India after Naxalbari: Unfinished History

February 20, 2024

Although the 1967 revolutionary armed peasant uprising in Naxalbari, at the foot of the Indian Himalayas, was brutally crushed, the insurgency gained new life elsewhere in India. In fact, this revolt has turned out to be the world’s longest-running “people’s war,” and Naxalbari has come to stand for the road to revolution in India. What has gone into the making of this protracted Maoist resistance?