Monthly Review Press

Dispelling folkloric stories of “spitting” soldiers (from the co-author of Dissenting POWs)

February 20, 2024

There is no evidence that Vietnam veterans were spat on. Nor could they have been, at least not in the manner described in the most often told stories. Those stories tell of landing at San Francisco Airport and being met by groups of spitters, often hippies. But flights from Vietnam landed at military airbases like Travis outside San Francisco; protesters could not have gotten on the airbase, much less near deplaning troops.

An invaluable warning against the State as a neutral tool (Beyond Leviathian reviewed by ‘Counterfire’)

February 20, 2024

The state cannot be ‘reformed’ since it is not, despite what liberal theory would insist, a neutral institution. The state historically developed in order to enshrine class power, and so traps us ‘within the paralyzing confines of the hierarchical and antagonistic framework of the political/military domain’. This can only be broken through a ‘radical transformation’ in ‘our social metabolism’, that is in the relations of production of capitalism.

NEW! SOCIALIST REGISTER 2023 (EXCERPTS)

NEW! SOCIALIST REGISTER 2023 (EXCERPTS)

February 20, 2024

The 59th annual volume of the “Socialist Register” examines the growth of corporate power and other important organizational trends in global capitalism. Rejecting such notions as “stakeholder capitalism,” it reviews the organization and strategies of unions and the left as it searches for new routes to socialism. Read on for excerpts from the likes of Adam Hanieh, Patrick Bond, Charmaine Chua and Spencer Cox…

“A lofty dream” (Work Work Work reviewed in ‘Dissident Voice’ and ‘Countercurrents’)

“A lofty dream” (Work Work Work reviewed in ‘Dissident Voice’ and ‘Countercurrents’)

February 20, 2024

‘Work Work Work’ sounds similar for working boys in many countries. Anyone can find them at any hub of exploitation and profit making. A visit to the Tipu Sultan Road or the Dolaai Khaal or Taatee Bazaar area in the capital city of Dhaka, a visit to automobile repair shops around Dhaka or to the marine vessel making yards along the Buriganga near Dhaka will find them. Boys picking torn papers, discarded plastic pieces of innumerable shapes and sizes from street sides, tearing down old posters from walls of the city buildings, looking for whatever is saleable in garbage heaps, selling kitchen items or flowers from morning to night, until may be 10 or 11 PM….

“So much drama, infighting, passion” (Radek: A Novel reviewed during #Germanlitmonth)

February 20, 2024

Admittedly he was Lenin’s man rather than Stalin’s. He was a passenger on Lenin’s famous sealed train. He made the mistake, however, of aligning himself for ideological reasons with Trotsky after Lenin died, a decision he never really recovered from. I got the impression, from Heym’s telling, that Stalin played cat to Radek’s mouse ever afterward.

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