Tag: News

Race in Cuba reviewed in Science & Society

Race in Cuba reviewed in Science & Society

February 20, 2024

Race in contemporary Cuba is a delicate and hotly contested issue. What most agree is that pre-1959 Cuba was characterized by a stark racial inequality which, rooted in a relatively recent history of slavery (abolished only in 1886), was addressed after January 1959 by legally eliminating its more evident institutional manifestations, by a social program which particularly benefited those at the bottom of the old social structure, and by a mass emigration which initially was predominantly (83.5%) white. More recently, we know that after the 1990s’ traumatic crisis (following the Soviet and socialist bloc collapse) and the unprecedented changes to counter that crisis (including increased tourism and toleration of the U. S. dollar), inequality partly returned, as remittances from relatives abroad disproportionately benefited whites.

E.P. Thompson and the Making of the New Left reviewed by Counterfire

February 20, 2024

The ‘left’ has been reborn many times over the last two centuries. Every renewal has carried with it traditions from past phases, with greater or lesser degrees of continuity, while establishing new relations and alliances in response to the changing structures of capitalism. This can be seen in the transition between radical Jacobinism and early forms of socialism, or between the Chartist movement and later nineteenth-century trade-union and socialist movements, and in other moments in the history of working-class politics. E. P. Thompson was a figure who both recaptured these transitions in his historical writing, and participated in a major re-orientation of left politics after the Soviet Union’s suppression of the Hungarian revolution in 1956.

Save Our Unions author Steve Early on the Presidential Candidacy of Bernie Sanders

Save Our Unions author Steve Early on the Presidential Candidacy of Bernie Sanders

February 20, 2024

Monthly Review Press author Steve Early first met Bernie Sanders in 1976 during a Vermont political campaign. Today, writing in Jacobin magazine and interviewed on Alternative Visions radio, Early reflects on how organized labor should respond to Sanders’s bid for the Democratic Party presidential nomination.

Race to Revolution reviewed by Counterfire

Race to Revolution reviewed by Counterfire

February 20, 2024

Gerald Horne’s new volume casts light on a ‘special relationship’ which is often ignored or forgotten: that of the United States and pre-revolutionary Cuba. Horne, a Marxist historian whose work has covered a multiplicity of themes including race, empire, revolution and communism, has been committed to the study of narratives and topics excluded from the (particularly US) mainstream. He describes the manner in which academic historians have generally dealt with communist history, for instance, as ‘incredibly biased, one-sided, deeply influenced by the conservative drift of the nation’.

Labor in the Global Digital Economy reviewed by Counterfire

Labor in the Global Digital Economy reviewed by Counterfire

February 20, 2024

You are almost certainly reading this review on a computer screen, on a mobile device, tablet, laptop or PC. It’s probably one of many, many things you’ll read onscreen today. Some of your uses of new technology will be for leisure, recreation and education, and some will be work-related. The information, communication and technology industry (ICT) is all around us, almost like air or water.

NEW! The Hidden Structure of Violence: Who Benefits from Global Violence and War by Marc Pilisuk and Jennifer Rountree

NEW! The Hidden Structure of Violence: Who Benefits from Global Violence and War by Marc Pilisuk and Jennifer Rountree

February 20, 2024

Acts of violence assume many forms: they may travel by the arc of a guided missile or in the language of an economic policy decision that contaminates drinking water, and they may leave behind a smoldering village or a starved child. The all-pervasive occurrence of violence makes it seem like an unavoidable, and ultimately incomprehensible, aspect of the human world, particularly in a modern era. But, in this detailed and expansive book, Marc Pilisuk and Jennifer Rountree demonstrate otherwise. Widespread violence, they argue, is in fact an expression of the underlying social order, and whether it is carried out by military forces or by patterns of investment, the aim is to strengthen that order for the benefit of the powerful.

Cuba, the Media, and the Challenge of Impartiality reviewed by The Progressive Standard

Cuba, the Media, and the Challenge of Impartiality reviewed by The Progressive Standard

February 20, 2024

In Cuba, the Media, and the Challenge of Impartiality, Salim Lamrani, a French journalist and professor of Latin-American studies at the University of Paris-Sorbonne Paris IV, raises important questions about the condition of journalism today and the role played by privately owned, centrally controlled media cartels. As an important addition to his previous work, The Economic War Against Cuba, Lamrani, examines media treatment of Cuba taking an investigative journalist’s approach to dissecting a variety of claims made about life and politics on the island since the revolution of 1959.

Help Support our Friends at AK Press

Help Support our Friends at AK Press

February 20, 2024

Please read this appeal from our friends at AK Press, the important publisher of anarchist and radical books and distributor of titles from many small presses, including Monthly Review Press, as they recover from a devastating fire at their warehouse in Oakland, California. To make a donation, please visit this page, or to purchase books from AK Press, visit their website.

In Walt We Trust reviewed on Truthout

In Walt We Trust reviewed on Truthout

February 20, 2024

In Walt We Trust is a sprightly, extended essay or first-person peroration by a young lit prof who felt a ton of frustration and heartache, or at least headache (self-medicating with alcohol, he tells us), and in despair, threw himself at Whitmania. That is, the poetry, the life, the setting and the aura. The project was obviously successful and not only because of the resulting book. He feels, he insists, better about life, death and even sex – the trifecta that pretty much wraps up human earthly possibilities. But he had to take a gloomy field trip to Camden, New Jersey, to get his mind in place.

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