Category: Monthly Review Press Blog

“Scandalous and needs to be talked about”: Big Farms Make Big Flu reviewed by Antipode

“Scandalous and needs to be talked about”: Big Farms Make Big Flu reviewed by Antipode

February 20, 2024

Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza, again. In the autumn of 2016, several cases of avian influenza H5N8 were detected across Europe. Some cases were dead wild birds, others were domestic birds. Several farms had to execute culls in the ten thousands…. A few days earlier, the US president Barack Obama visited Germany for the last time during his presidency. During his visit, in a joint paper with German chancellor Angela Merkel, he analysed the importance of transatlantic relations. One line stood out and was repeated throughout media headlines: ‘we will never return to a pre-globalization economy’. So what has that to do with dead birds? ¶ Everything–if you dare to read Rob Wallace’s new book.

New! Rethinking Revolution: Socialist Register 2017

New! Rethinking Revolution: Socialist Register 2017

February 20, 2024

Populated by an array of passionate thinkers and thoughtful activists, Rethinking Revolution reappraises the historical effects of the Russian revolution—positive and negative—on political, intellectual, and cultural life, and looks at consequent revolutions after 1917. Change needs to be understood in relation to the distinct trajectories of radical politics in different regions. But the main purpose of this Socialist Register edition—one century after “Red October”—is to look forward, to what might happen next.

“Trump’s Deportation Machine”: David L. Wilson in Jacobin

“Trump’s Deportation Machine”: David L. Wilson in Jacobin

February 20, 2024

In 2017, Monthly Review Press will publish the second, updated edition of The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers by David L. Wilson and Jane Guskin. Here, for Jacobin, David L. Wilson writes about Trump’s possible use of mass deportation to drive a wedge between workers:
“Like so much about the incoming administration, president-elect Donald Trump’s intentions for undocumented immigrants remain unclear. But he seems likely to go forward with a substantial program of ‘getting them out of our country.’…”

“An intellectual journey thru influenza and food systems”: Big Farms Make Big Flu reviewed in Lancet Infectious Diseases

“An intellectual journey thru influenza and food systems”: Big Farms Make Big Flu reviewed in Lancet Infectious Diseases

February 20, 2024

As evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin put it in 1992: ‘Asbestos and cotton lint fibres are not the causes of cancer. They are the agent of social causes, of social formations that determine the nature of our productive and consumption lives, and in the end, it is only through changes in those social forces that we can get to the root problem of health’. Why would it be different for emerging infectious diseases? Was the west Africa Ebola epidemic caused by Ebola virus or by the dismantling of public health infrastructure in the countries where it emerged, following years of structural adjustment? What’s the agent? What’s the cause?

Marx and the Earth, by John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett, reviewed in International Socialism

Marx and the Earth, by John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett, reviewed in International Socialism

February 20, 2024

Marxist analyses of the natural world have been the focus of intense debate recently, and the publication of any book that further explores what Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels thought about the subject is something to be welcomed. John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett have proven track records of writing some of the clearest books on the subject, and while Marx and the Earth is not a specific response to some of their recent critics, it is an important defence of Marx’s and Engels’s original work.

Survival Is the Question: Facing the Anthropocene reviewed by Against the Current

February 20, 2024

Critical ecology publications are finding a growing audience in the United States, as is evident in the success of Naomi Klein’s book This Changes Everything. Within this field there is also an increasing interest in ecosocialist thought, of Marxist inspiration, of which the two authors reviewed here are a part. ¶ One of the active promoters of this trend is Monthly Review and its publishing house. It is this group that has published the compelling book, Facing the Anthropocene by Ian Angus, the Canadian ecosocialist and editor of the online review Climate and Capitalism.

“Wisdom in the room”: Alan Wieder talks about Studs Terkel on WOMR-FM

February 20, 2024

In light of how the mass media got the U.S. populace all wrong covering the recent presidential election, Alan Wieder, author of Studs Terkel: Politics, Culture, but Mostly Conversation, talked to Ira Wood on radio station WOMR, 92.1 fm about Studs Terkel, and the art of being in touch with America.

Newsletter sign-up

Keep up to date with all the latest socialist news from MR