Tag: News

New! “Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present”

New! “Capital and Imperialism: Theory, History, and the Present”

February 20, 2024

Those who control the world’s commanding economic heights, buttressed by the theories of mainstream economists, presume that capitalism is a self-contained and self-generating system. Nothing could be further from the truth. In the pathbreaking Capital and Imperialism—winner of the Paul A. Baran-Paul M. Sweezy Memorial Award—radical political economists Utsa Patnaik and Prabhat Patnaik argue that the accumulation of capital has always required the taking of land, raw materials, and bodies from noncapitalist modes of production…

Extraordinary Achievements: Don Fitz’ “Cuban Health Care”

Extraordinary Achievements: Don Fitz’ “Cuban Health Care”

February 20, 2024

Comparing the health systems of Cuba and the United States, Don Fitz’ book “Cuban Health Care” presents a startling statistic: The cost of healthcare per person in Cuba is one twentieth that of the US. “Why?” Peter Arkell asks, and Fitz answers: “Poor countries simply cannot afford such an inefficient health system”…

The raw material of exploitation: Harry Braverman’s ‘Labor and Monopoly Capital’

The raw material of exploitation: Harry Braverman’s ‘Labor and Monopoly Capital’

February 20, 2024

Work sucks. Every day, workers go into jobs they hate, whether in a factory, office or on a checkout line. Workers are made to perform menial and demeaning tasks that have already been outlined for them, down to the smallest details, by management. Their job is so simple that anyone can do it. Ultimately, the worker possesses no control at the workplace.

New! The Socialist Imperative by Michael Lebowitz

New! The Socialist Imperative by Michael Lebowitz

February 20, 2024

Lebowitz explores the obvious but almost universally ignored fact that as human beings work together to produce society’s goods and services, we also “produce” something else: namely, ourselves. Human beings are shaped by circumstances, and any vision of socialism that ignores this fact is bound to fail, or, at best, reproduce the alienation of labor that is endemic to capitalism. But how can people transform their circumstances in a way that allows them to re-organize production and, at the same time, fulfill their human potential? Lebowitz sets out to answer this question first by examining Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme, and from there investigates the experiences of the Soviet Union and more recent efforts to build socialism in Venezuela. He argues that socialism in the twenty-first century must be animated by a central vision, in three parts: social ownership of the means of production, social production organized by workers, and the satisfaction of communal needs and communal purposes. These essays repay careful reading and reflection, and prove Lebowitz to be one of the foremost Marxist thinkers of this era.

A Freedom Budget for All Americans reviewed by Marx & Philosophy Review of Books

A Freedom Budget for All Americans reviewed by Marx & Philosophy Review of Books

February 20, 2024

Paul Le Blanc and Michael D. Yates have recently identified a political point of entry that has the potential to galvanize wide public support and focus political discussion and debate on the most glaring (historical) weaknesses of capitalism as a mode of production and to begin to nudge public awareness toward the deep contradictory ontology that is capitalism.

Reconstructing Lenin reviewed by International Socialism

Reconstructing Lenin reviewed by International Socialism

February 20, 2024

Reconstructing Lenin is a thoughtful and compelling study of Lenin. Tamás Krausz reveals Lenin as an activist revolutionary whose thoughts were shaped by immediate political events but who also at the same time never strayed far from a coherent theoretical framework. As a work of scholarship it deserves to be up there with Lars Lih’s Lenin Rediscovered.

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