Monthly Review Press

“Marxists are best placed to write an autobiography”: Helena Sheehan explains why “Navigating the Zeitgeist” is more than a memoir

“Marxists are best placed to write an autobiography”: Helena Sheehan explains why “Navigating the Zeitgeist” is more than a memoir

Why write an autobiography? Who do I think I am? Why should anybody be more interested in my life than anyone else’s life? … I’m not a celebrity. I haven’t starred in Oscar-winning movies getting reviews of mesmerising performances…. ¶ I’ve lived a life that was not headline-making, but not totally obscure either, as an activist, academic and author…”

Ian Angus on the Politics of Ecosocialism, via REBEL

Ian Angus on the Politics of Ecosocialism, via REBEL

Marx and Engels were deeply concerned about capitalism’s destruction of the natural world, including river and urban pollution, and the degradation of the soil that all life depends on. For them, the word ‘socialism’ included those concerns and the need to overcome them. But in the 20th Century, most socialist organisations treated such matters as secondary…

New! “Value Chains: The New Economic Imperialism”

New! “Value Chains: The New Economic Imperialism”

Winner of the 2018 Paul M. Sweezy – Paul A. Baran Memorial Award for original work regarding the political economy of imperialism, Intan Suwandi’s Value Chains examines the exploitation of labor in the Global South. Focusing on the issue of labor within global value chains—vast networks of people, tools, and activities needed to deliver goods and services to the market and controlled by multinationals—Suwandi offers a deft empirical analysis of unit labor costs that is closely related to Marx’s own theory of exploitation.

How Jazz Survived White Supremacy: Gerald Horne talks to Truthout about “Jazz and Justice”

How Jazz Survived White Supremacy: Gerald Horne talks to Truthout about “Jazz and Justice”

Certainly, being a ‘jazz’ musician in the first decades of the 20th century was probably the most dangerous profession in the arts and, along with coal mining, one of the most dangerous jobs of all. Inhaling cigarette smoke in dank clubs, being plied with alcohol and other controlled substances by unscrupulous bosses of clubs and record labels alike, being attacked violently by racist ‘fans’