Category: Monthly Review Press Blog

Confronting Black Jacobins author Gerald Horne interviewed on BLOCKREPORTRADIO.com

February 20, 2024

BlockReportRadio.com interviews author and professor Dr. Gerald Horne about his new book, Confronting Black Jacobins. We discussed the Haitian Revolution, the origins of the Dominican Republic, and the doubling in size of the United States. We talk about Haiti’s role in abolishing slavery in the western world. We talked about the role that Washington, London, Paris, and Madrid played in warring with the abolitionist nation. We talked about how Haiti and the U.S. both had plans to relocate U.S. Negroes to the Dominican Republic, at different times for different reason. We also talked about the dilemma that the U.S. was in, when it dealt with Haiti, and much much more…”

Imperialism in the 21st Century reviewed in Counterpunch

Imperialism in the 21st Century reviewed in Counterpunch

February 20, 2024

The world is in crisis. Capitalism, currently the only economic system in existence, is the cause of this crisis. It is a crisis that impoverishes millions more every year while enhancing the wealth of the rarefied few who conspire with politicians to make it so. It is a crisis that manifests itself in endless and meaningless wars. It is a crisis that dismantles schools, hospitals, roads, and other infrastructure in the name of private profit….This is the premise of John Smith’s newly-published work, titled Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century. It is an important, even crucial, work.

Paramilitarism & the Assault on Democracy in Haiti reviewed in HTN

Paramilitarism & the Assault on Democracy in Haiti reviewed in HTN

February 20, 2024

Jeb Sprague examines how Haitian and transnational elite groups sponsored paramilitary violence during the late twentieth and early twenty-first century in order to crush the democratic aspirations of Haiti’s popular classes and forestall democratic and redistributive reform…. As part of his research for the book, Sprague analyzed more than 11,000 documents accessed through Freedom of Information requests. He also conducted more than fifty interviews with various officials, victims, and death squad leaders, sometimes at considerable risk to his own safety as the introduction shows. In doing so, Sprague gives us a thorough account of how paramilitary forces have been developed in Haiti, and the networks that support them.

Confronting Black Jacobins reviewed in People’s World

Confronting Black Jacobins reviewed in People’s World

February 20, 2024

“In the introduction to his book, Confronting Black Jacobins, Gerald Horne writes that the 1804 Haitian Revolution ‛was so profound, so important, so stunning, that it may require an entire school of historians to take its true measure.’ Arguably, he adds, this revolution—an affront to both slavery and white supremacy, bolstering revolt throughout the slave South—changed the course of history….”

A World to Build reviewed in COUNTERFIRE

A World to Build reviewed in COUNTERFIRE

February 20, 2024

The reason for socialists to have an interest in the situation in Latin America today is simple; the most significant political advances in the world today are taking place in Latin America. The Chilean revolutionary Marta Harnecker’s book A World to Build is perhaps the most important English language attempt so far to analyse and to move forward the discussion on the left internationally around these changes.

Race to Revolution reviewed in Journal of American History

Race to Revolution reviewed in Journal of American History

February 20, 2024

Gerald Horne’s latest book is an ambitious transnational history of the United States and Cuba from the 1700s to the 1959 Cuban Revolution. It focuses on the shared and interconnected histories of slavery, the slave trade, Jim Crow, and the struggles against these oppressive systems in the two regions.

Marx’s Ecology reviewed by the Freedom Socialist

Marx’s Ecology reviewed by the Freedom Socialist

February 20, 2024

Many environmentalists disdain the ideas of Karl Marx. Some tout the spiritual virtues of environmental ‛ideals.’ Some argue for individual solutions like recycling, reduced consumption and “going back to the land.” Anti-communists claim that the ecological crimes of the Stalinist-era USSR flowed from Marxism itself. John Bellamy Foster’s Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature counters all these ideas. It is a dense and intricate analysis of Marxist theory, its historical and scientific foundations, and how central ecological concerns are to it.

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