Monthly Review Press

WATCH! MR Conversations: “Extraordinary Threat,” with Emersberger, Podur, Wilpert and Paez-Victor

WATCH! MR Conversations: “Extraordinary Threat,” with Emersberger, Podur, Wilpert and Paez-Victor

In their new book “Extraordinary Threat,” Joe Emersberger and Justin Podur delve into the critical questions: What is the nature of Venezuela’s government? Is it a dictatorship? Are Venezuela’s problems due to misgovernment, or are they due to U.S. interference? What would happen if Venezuela fell to U.S. imperialism? How has the U.S. been able to get away with this? And above all: Taking Venezuela as a case study, how does regime change propaganda work?

Bondage and the invented bond of “Whiteness” (The Real Democracy Movement reviews “The Dawning of the Apocalypse”)

Bondage and the invented bond of “Whiteness” (The Real Democracy Movement reviews “The Dawning of the Apocalypse”)

In the early 1600s, new settlers, were uniting across class and even religious lines, and what united them was their “whiteness”. The settlements had become a kind of joint European enterprise. Religious differences, that had so hampered the Spanish invasions, fell away as the white invaders came together “to bludgeon indigenes and batter Africans”.

“Tells the Bosses We’re Coming” breaks out of the box (New Solutions)

“Tells the Bosses We’re Coming” breaks out of the box (New Solutions)

“….Don’t read ‘Tell the Bosses We’re Coming’ expecting to find a “how to” list of the steps you must take to build power in your union or you’re likely to be disappointed. Instead, read it to be challenged to explore the ways your union, your Central Labor Council, your state federation, and the whole labor movement is narrowing the avenues for worker power in the United States. And then start working to broaden them.”

The teeth in the Labor Law trap (Marx & Philosophy Review of Books reviews “Tells the Bosses We’re Coming”)

The teeth in the Labor Law trap (Marx & Philosophy Review of Books reviews “Tells the Bosses We’re Coming”)

….not concerned to diagnose the cause of workers’ problems, Richman’s analysis implicitly centers work law as the principal culprit responsible for the labour movement’s predicament. He makes a strong case that labour law, rather than balancing the power disparities between employees and employers and protecting worker rights, has instead become a ‘trap’ favoring bosses and impeding worker organization. He deftly analyzes the teeth in the trap…

Horne, on the occasion of a gruesome “anniversary:” The bigger picture (Listen: By Any Means Necessary)

Horne, on the occasion of a gruesome “anniversary:” The bigger picture (Listen: By Any Means Necessary)

“And so when we take these things into account, it underscores the necessity, the obligation, of internationalizing the struggle and — not seeing 74-75 million people voting for Trump in November 2020 as some sort of aberration, but as an abomination — that it is, that calls for more stringent measures, more stringent measures that I’m afraid to say, are now being bogged in the U.S Congress…”

A bold call for reorganising the global working class (Global Labour Journal reviews “Can the Working Class Change the World?”)

A bold call for reorganising the global working class (Global Labour Journal reviews “Can the Working Class Change the World?”)

Throughout ‘Can the Working Class Change the World? ‘Yates demonstrates that “Capitalism is a system of stark individualism.” Only radical thinking and acting, he argues, “have any chance of staving off accelerating levels of barbarism.” Therefore, in the last part of the book, Yates offers suggestions about what organisations can do in the class struggle, pointing out that “the ‘I’ must be suppressed and the ‘We’ must come to the fore”…

“Facing the Anthropocene,” in one’s hometown

“Facing the Anthropocene,” in one’s hometown

“He is currently working on another book focusing on the underlying drivers that cause human society to conflict with nature and create rifts in the metabolic cycles of the planet.”

“The Return of Nature,” an analysis which captures Marx’s social milieu (Counterfire)

“The Return of Nature,” an analysis which captures Marx’s social milieu (Counterfire)

“This is a complex array of themes to pursue, particularly given that the scientific and social dimensions of sexual politics in the lives of many of these figures is highly relevant as well. Bellamy Foster rightly emphasises the importance of such issues within the overall picture, as a genuinely dialectical understanding of society and nature could hardly avoid confronting the alienated character of gender relations in class societies….”