Monthly Review Press

Read an excerpt from The Endless Crisis on Utne.com

Read an excerpt from The Endless Crisis on Utne.com

February 20, 2024

The increasing trend of monolithic companies taking over large shares of industry has created a “financialization-stagnation trap” that’s negatively affecting economies across the world, particularly in the Global South. That’s John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney’s argument in The Endless Crisis: How Monopoly-Finance Capital Produces Stagnation and Upheaval from the USA to China (Monthly Review Press, 2012). In this excerpt from the book’s introduction, Foster and McChesney explain how understanding the rise of financialization stagnation is essential to understanding global class struggle.

The Socialist Alternative reviewed by Radical Notes

February 20, 2024

This book is part of Michael Lebowitz’s larger project of demonstrating the ever-existing necessity of a socialist transformation as the revolutionary resolution of class struggle in capitalism. It builds a theoretical foundation for such revolutionary praxis in the specific objectivity of the 21st century. Lebowitz’s previous book, Build it Now, captured and described the specificities of socialist praxis and possibilities in the Bolivarian experience of Venezuela. The Socialist Alternative can be seen as building a coherent model of an alternative by gathering and arranging the elements that are found scattered in that experience.

Video interview with Jeb Sprague

Video interview with Jeb Sprague

February 20, 2024

Watch Jeb Sprague, author of Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti, interviewed by David Zlutnick in San Francisco for Upheaval Productions. The conversation focuses on paramilitarism and its consequences in Haiti, but also touches on the roles of outside powers and their influence, Haiti’s vibrant social movements, and the country’s most recent developments.

Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital reviewed on Counterfire

Introduction to the Three Volumes of Karl Marx's Capital reviewed on Counterfire

February 20, 2024

There are an increasing number of helpful introductions to Capital to make it more accessible for those reluctant to jump in feet first. The German Marxist Michael Heinrich wrote this introduction in 2004, and it is very welcome that it is now available in English. One aspect of Capital that could well seem daunting is the number of terms with quite precise meanings, such as the various concepts of value, their distinction from price, or surplus value, which is not quite the same thing as profit, or even further, the various specific forms of capital. An understanding of these is not in fact difficult to acquire and Heinrich’s short book is a crisp and clear introduction to all the relevant concepts, and the very exact ways in which Marx uses them.

Steve Brouwer events in November

Steve Brouwer events in November

February 20, 2024

Join MR Press author Steve Brouwer as he discusses his book, Revolutionary Doctors: How Venezuela and Cuba are Changing the World’s Conception of Health Care, in Ithaca, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Madison.

NEW! Socialist Register 2013: The Question of Strategy edited by Leo Panitch, Greg Albo, and Vivek Chibber

NEW! Socialist Register 2013: The Question of Strategy edited by Leo Panitch, Greg Albo, and Vivek Chibber

February 20, 2024

Socialist Register 2013 seeks to explore and clarify strategy for the Left in the light of new challenges and new opportunities. Socialists today have to confront two realities: that they cannot avoid the question of reforms and a gradualist path out of capitalism, and that the organizational vehicles for socialism will most likely have to abide by different structures and principles than those that dominated left politics in the 20th century. Though solutions are not obvious, Socialist Register 2013 interrogates these dilemmas and critiques some unhelpful radical thinking that obstructs the reconsideration of socialist strategy for the 21st century.

Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti reviewed in The Bullet

Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti reviewed in The Bullet

February 20, 2024

Drawing upon first-hand interviews with both paramilitaries, elites and their victims, and with corroboration provided by thousands of U.S. State Department documents (obtained through Freedom of Information Act document requests), Sprague’s incisive contribution to the historical record makes it all too clear how the U.S. government and a collection of local elites have consistently undermined democracy in Haiti – from the nineteenth century right through to the present day.

The Endless Crisis reviewed in The Progressive Populist

The Endless Crisis reviewed in The Progressive Populist

February 20, 2024

The Great Recession has ended, unlike slow/no growth. For a deeper sense of why, get a copy of The Endless Crisis: How Monopoly-Finance Capital Produces Stagnation and Upheaval from the USA to China by John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney. The duo of scholars and professors connect the dots in a radical critique of modern-day capitalism. Theirs is a rigorous analysis, empirical and theoretical, of the twin trends of slowing growth and growing tumult.

NEW! Faces of Latin America: Fourth Edition

NEW! Faces of Latin America: Fourth Edition

February 20, 2024

Faces of Latin America has sold more than 50,000 copies since it first appeared in 1991, and is widely considered to be the best available introduction in English to the economies, politics, demography, social structures, environment and cultures of Latin America. This fourth edition updates the book for 2012 and covers the most pressing issues facing Latin America today.

NEW! Walter A. Rodney: A Promise of Revolution, edited by Clairmont Chung

NEW! Walter A. Rodney: A Promise of Revolution, edited by Clairmont Chung

February 20, 2024

This book presents a moving and insightful portrait of the great scholar and revolutionary Walter Rodney through the words of academics, writers, artists, and political activists who knew him intimately or felt his influence. These informal recollections and reflections demonstrate why Rodney is such a widely admired figure throughout the world, especially in poor countries and among oppressed peoples everywhere.

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