June 1, 2024
In this month’s “Notes from the Editors,” MR editors confront the Tower of Babel that has emerged over Marx’s early “Prometheanism” and later “degrowth communism.” This ahistorical interpretation has engendered further critique of ecosocialism and degrowth on the part of self-identified productivist writers, who attempt incorrectly to paint degrowth as a Malthusian project, rather than a realistic effort to live within Earth’s planetary capacities.
June 1, 2024
Originally published in the German journal Widerspruch, Arman Spéth interviews John Bellamy Foster about the growing interest in degrowth thought and the importance of incorporating democratic planning aimed at true equality into all levels of society. And what of the ecosocialist revolution? “Opportunities,” Foster says, “are everywhere. Obstacles, largely a product of the present system, are also everywhere.… Nothing can or will remain the same. That is the very definition of a revolutionary situation.”
June 1, 2024
The Myth of Black Capitalism, Earl Ofari Hutchinson reflects on the relevance of his work more than fifty years after its initial publication. Even despite the promotion of wealthy Black individuals as model capitalists and COVID recovery schemes purported to help Black entrepreneurs, “Little had changed except the desperation of countless numbers of near penniless, distressed Black small business owners.”
May 1, 2024
As dangerous trans-Atlantic crossings between Africa and Europe continue to rise, Hannah Cross examines the roots of the ongoing crisis. The discussion around migration, she notes, “overlooks the imperial role of Europe and the United States over borders, migration regimes, regional (de-)integration, and national development projects within Africa.” The solution, therefore, can only be found through genuine liberation and autonomy across the continent, rather than internationally imposed mechanisms benefitting the powerful in the Global North.
May 1, 2024
The International Monetary Fund, part of the Bretton Woods Agreement that helped establish the current rules of the U.S.-dominated international capitalist system, claims to aim for a world of prosperity through so-called free trade. In Latin America, David Barkin and Juan Santarcángelo write, the IMF has contributed to the impoverishment of the working class and destruction of these countries’ ecological legacies. But what does the future hold for the IMF in Latin America?
May 1, 2024
In this reprise from September 2000, Harry Magdoff, John Bellamy Foster, and Robert W. McChesney look forward to the future of Monthly Review in the twenty-first century: “Despite mistakes, setbacks, and recognition that the road is long and arduous, we must not waver as we continue to study, educate, and be missionaries for the transcendence of the social system of capitalism and the development…of a society of equals.”
April 1, 2024
As populations worldwide grow older, politicians are clamoring to raise the retirement age, thus extending people’s working lives at their own expense. Using the lens of political economy, Cai Chao examines the false narratives behind capitalists’ claims that delayed retirement is necessary to maintain society’s productive capacity, and proposes solutions to promote human development at all life stages.
April 1, 2024
In a world of convergent crises, leading voices have called for radical changes to food, financial, and energy systems. However, these fail to account for a deeper systemic crisis: unfettered and accelerating of capital accumulation. In this article, M. Graziano Ceddia and Jacopo Nicola Bergamo provide a more comprehensive narrative, one which emphasizes capital as a social relation—and the potential of the environmental proletariat to dismantle its dominance.
April 1, 2024
In this remarkable reprise reprinted from Monthly Review‘s October 1992 issue, Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy look ahead to the ecological crisis that has continued to unfold into the twenty-first century. Presaging the critical juncture at which we find ourselves today, they write that “only a change in the in the nature of power structures on a global scale could bring a realistic hope for the long-term continuation of human civilization…. If you think that is true, what do you think are the implications?”
April 1, 2024
In this review of Immanuel Ness’s Migration as Economic Imperialism, Torkil Lauesen illuminates the links between the migration of labor to theories of equal exchange, which have traditionally focused on international trade. These connections, Lauesen writes, relate to transfer of labor power from the periphery to the core, and the concomitant exploitation of vulnerable workers from the Global South.
