Monthly Review Press

The 2018 Socialist Register: Rethinking Democracy launches

The 2018 Socialist Register: Rethinking Democracy launches

February 20, 2024

On February 15, 2018, in Toronto, editor Leo Panitch moderated a panel discussion with four of the contributors to Rethinking Democracy, the latest edition of the Socialist Register. This 2018 volume was conceived as a companion to the 2017 SR, Rethinking Revolution. Central to both volumes, and to this discussion, is the premise that no revival of socialist politics in the twenty-first century can occur apart from founding radical new democratic institutions and practices.

New! The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in Seventeenth-Century North America and the Caribbean

New! The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in Seventeenth-Century North America and the Caribbean

February 20, 2024

Virtually no part of the modern United States—the economy, education, constitutional law, religious institutions, sports, literature, economics, even protest movements—can be understood without first understanding the slavery and dispossession that laid its foundation. To that end, historian Gerald Horne digs deeply into Europe’s colonization of Africa and the New World, when, from Columbus’s arrival until the Civil War, some thirteen million Africans and some five million Native Americans were forced to build and cultivate a society extolling “liberty and justice for all.” Horne provides a deeply researched, harrowing account of the apocalyptic loss and misery that likely has no parallel in human history. This is an essential book that will not allow history to be told by the victors.

Counterfire reviews A Redder Shade of Green

Counterfire reviews A Redder Shade of Green

February 20, 2024

Ecosocialism is often seen as something of throwaway buzzword on the left, with some commenting that today’s left, which at least acknowledges that environmental concerns are essential part of the criticism of capitalism today, doesn’t even need it. Ian Angus, a writer of books such as Facing the Anthropocene and Too Many People? Population, Immigration and the Environmental Crisis (Haymarket Books 2011), with Simon Butler, and maintainer of the blog Climate and Capitalism, feels that it is a term that means much more than just a passing nod of one movement to another….

ResoluteReader reviews Gerald Horne’s The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism

ResoluteReader reviews Gerald Horne’s The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism

February 20, 2024

In the introduction to his latest book historian Gerald Horne makes clear the consequences of European settlement in the Americas:
“Though disease spread by these interlopers is often trotted out to explain the spectacular downturn in the fortunes of indigenous Americans, genocide – in virtually every meaning of the term, including volitional acts by invading settlers – is the proximate cause of this towering mountain of cadavers. Thus, even when enslaved Africans chose suicide, which they were often forced to do, it would be follow to suggest that enslavers were guiltless….”

New! Culture as Politics: Selected Writings of Christopher Caudwell

New! Culture as Politics: Selected Writings of Christopher Caudwell

February 20, 2024

Considered by many to be the most innovative British Marxist writer of the twentieth century, Christopher Caudwell was killed in the Spanish Civil War at the age of 29. Although already a published writer of aeronautic texts and crime fiction, he was practically unknown to the public until reviews appeared of Illusion and Reality: A Study of the Sources of Poetry, which was published just after his death. A strikingly original study of poetry’s role, it explained in clear language how the organizing of emotion in society plays a part in social change and development. Culture as Politics introduces Caudwell’s work through his most accessible and relevant writing. Material is drawn from Illusion and Reality, Studies in a Dying Culture, and his essay, “Heredity and Development.”

Socialist Review considers Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism

Socialist Review considers Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism

February 20, 2024

This fascinating book builds on the work of Marxists such as John Bellamy Foster to argue that Karl Marx’s thought is central to understanding that humanity’s destruction of the planet is due to the capitalist mode of production. It is a further blow against the perception that Marx was a naive Promethean—someone who believed that simply increasing production will solve all humanity’s ills and that therefore Marxism has nothing to say about ecological crisis….

“The militarized identity politics that was ‘whiteness’”: Marxism-Leninism Today on The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism

“The militarized identity politics that was ‘whiteness’”: Marxism-Leninism Today on The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism

February 20, 2024

Gerald Horne introduces his book about 17th century English colonial aggression in the Caribbean and North America by mentioning a three-part ‘Apocalypse.’ He indicates that its ‘three horsemen’—slavery, capitalism, and white supremacy—were present and sowing grief at the formation of the United States. But the first two play only supporting roles in his narrative. They give rise to conflicts and crises that provoke white supremacy, his third protagonist, into existence….

Why Black Lives Don’t Matter: Gerald Horne & Paul Coates Radically Reinterpret Black History

Why Black Lives Don’t Matter: Gerald Horne & Paul Coates Radically Reinterpret Black History

February 20, 2024

Hear historian Gerald Horne, author, most recently, of The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism and Storming the Heavens, and Paul Coates, founder of the Black Classic Press, in conversation on the past and present of Black Lives in the United States
Baltimore, Wednesday, April 18
6:30pm (doors open at 6:00)
THE REAL NEWS NETWORK
231 Holliday Street
Baltimore, MD 21202

Gerald Horne on the Centrality of Race, via WORT Community Radio

Gerald Horne on the Centrality of Race, via WORT Community Radio

February 20, 2024

Allen Ruff, a host of A Public Affair on radio station WORT (89.9FM, Madison, WI), interviews the irrepressible African-American historian Gerald Horne, author of numerous titles exploring the centrality of race and class for understanding the contemporary world. His most recent book is The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in Seventeenth-Century North America and the Caribbean

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