Monthly Review Press

WATCH: Commune or Nothing!

February 20, 2024

This virtual panel examined the commune and communal organizing as part of the project of revolutionary social transformation. The speakers addressed how socialist communes can be used to abolish capitalism’s logic, based on the exploitation of the human being and the expropriation of nature, along with the range of oppressions (including racial, gender, sexual, and colonial oppression) in capitalist society. The speakers – Kali Akuno, John Bellamy Foster, Chris Gilbert, and M.E. O’Brien – drew from various theoretical perspectives and practical experiences.

“A lasting tribute to meticulous journalism” (The Hidden History of the Korean War: New Edition reviewed in ‘Asian Affairs’)

February 20, 2024

Stone, as always working from open-source materials, condemned the continuation of the bombing of the north even though there were no viable military targets left…These days, the Stone’s ‘Hidden History,’ while still viewed with hostility in certain quarters, is regarded as one of his best works. But given that it appeared long before the archives were open and while the conflict in Korea continued, is there merit in republishing it? The answer is yes. Stone may not have got everything right, and occasionally lapses into conspiracy theories, but his broad picture was accurate enough at the time and remains so. It is a lasting tribute to meticulous journalism.

Offering hope to the left (Until We Fall reviewed in ‘Morning Star’)

February 20, 2024

Already in the early 1980s if not before: “It was clear to most of us that socialism couldn’t survive without radical democratisation … it had to be based on consent.” Nevertheless, for Sheehan as for many of us on the left, the demise of the socialist bloc represented a defeat and the restoration of capitalism. It was “the most dramatic upheaval, politically and psychologically,” Sheehan says.

A history which is far from over (The War Against the Commons reviewed in ‘Counterfire’)

February 20, 2024

Capital’s war against the commons continues today in the Global South, as does resistance to it. The removal of the people from the land to work in industrial cities is also part of the mechanism which creates the metabolic rift, one of the reasons for capitalism’s inherent environmental destructiveness. The route to overcoming this does not lie in individuals or communities returning to an idealised communal past. As Angus says, this has been the expectation of utopian communal groups since the Diggers established themselves on St George’s Hill in 1649…

On Izzy Stone and his analysis of Korean peace negotiations(The Hidden History of the Korean War in ‘Al’s Substack’)

February 20, 2024

As Tim Beal and Gregory Elich tell us in their excellent introduction to the new 2023 edition of the book, by closely examining various sources, Stone found inconsistencies that challenged the official narrative of how and why the war started. Most prominently, Stone found considerable evidence suggesting that U.S. and South Korean officials had probable foreknowledge of the North Korean offensive, which they chose not to try to prevent…

NEW! Commune or Nothing! Venezuela’s Communal Movement and its Socialist Project by Chris Gilbert (Excerpts)

NEW! Commune or Nothing! Venezuela’s Communal Movement and its Socialist Project by Chris Gilbert (Excerpts)

February 20, 2024

Commune or Nothing! Venezuela’s Communal Movement and its Socialist Project
by Chris Gilbert
$23.00 / 208 pages / 978-1-68590-023-6

Author’s Note

Karl Marx wrote that theory becomes a material force when it grips the masses. He should have added that theory usually grips the masses because it connects with ideas, projects, and dreams they have developed themselves. This is what generally happens in revolutions, and it is certainly the case for the idea of the communal project in Venezuela.

In 2009, ten years after the Bolivarian Process began, Hugo Chávez proposed the communal path to socialism in a historic television program. That project had solid bases in the thought of Marx and István Mészáros, yet it would have been dead in the water if the idea of replacing a society dominated by the logic of capital with one based on communal relations had not connected with aspirations and values already alive and operating in Venezuelan society.

As it turned out, self-organized communities around the country seized on the communal project, which resonated both with values shaped over the longue durée in Venezuela—through its enduring campesino, Indigenous, and Afro-Venezuelan traditions of self-governance

Novel as biography (Radek reviewed in ‘Against the Current’)

February 20, 2024

In his 1995 novel Radek, published in English translation for the first time last year by Monthly Review Press, Stefan Heym portrays Karl Radek as not only a man of the world but a perpetual outsider — a socially awkward contrarian with stereotypically Jewish features, thick glasses and a big mouth. In this, Heym likely saw in Karl Radek something of a kindred spirit.

Newsletter sign-up

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