Tag: News

Agriculture and Food in Crisis reviewed in International Socialism

February 20, 2024

When prices for many basic foods spiked in 2007 and 2008, thousands rioted in more than 30 countries from Bangladesh to Burkina Faso. In Haiti the riots drove President Réné Préval from office; in Egypt they were a key act in the prologue to the current revolution. It took the world’s intellectual establishment by surprise. By 2009 Scientific American was running articles with titles such as “Could Food Shortages Bring Down Civilization?” After all, there can be few more serious failures of any social order than an inability to feed the population—as the Bolsheviks knew when they made the demand for “peace, bread and land” one of their main slogans in the Russian Revolution of 1917. This collection of essays is a serious attempt to theorise the crisis in the global food economy for the left.

John Marsh interviewed on Against the Grain with Sasha Lilley

February 20, 2024

It seems logical: if you don’t have enough education your economic prospects will be diminished, while those who have a lot are able to succeed in our purportedly knowledge-based economy. But what if that’s only partially accurate? John Marsh posits that economic inequality and poverty are not causally connected to differing levels of education. He argues that we need to reject the appealing notion of education as a cure-all and look deeper at class power and structural inequality.

Critique of Intelligent Design reviewed in International Socialism

February 20, 2024

In a debate that is often dominated by right wing creationists and reactionary neo-atheists, the authors manage to chart a different course. They succeed in showing how life has developed without needing to invoke supernatural forces. At the same time they sensitively discuss how materialist ideas have developed over the last several thousand years in a way which allows the reader to appreciate how radical and powerful such ideas can be.

The Socialist Alternative reviewed in Science & Society

February 20, 2024

Michael Lebowitz has drawn on the diverse experiences that led to the failure of socialism in the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia and elsewhere, and those in Venezuela where he has resided for nearly a decade, to bolster his thesis on the need to place the transformation of values at the center of socialist construction. In his emphasis on consciousness, Lebowitz follows the tradition of Georg Lukács, Karl Korsh and Che Guevara, while rejecting the determinist notion of the superstructure as an appendage of the structure lacking in autonomy.

David Wilson, co-author of The Politics of Immigration, on Occupying the Immigration Debate

February 20, 2024

People in the United States may not be as rabidly anti-immigrant as we’ve been led to believe. An article posted on the Center for American Progress website in December, “The Public’s View of Immigration,” summarizes five recent U.S. opinion polls. Authors Philip E. Wolgin and Angela Maria Kelley find that while the media and the politicians frantically call for the mass deportation of “illegals,” a majority of U.S. adults don’t favor the idea of removing all 11 million of the country’s unauthorized immigrants. And while immigrant rights advocates don’t dare use the word “amnesty,” the polls show a majority of the population supporting some form of legalization for many or most of the undocumented — in other words, they support an amnesty.

Social Structure and Forms of Consciousness, Vol. II reviewed in Marx and Philosophy Review of Books

February 20, 2024

Mészáros is a master dialectician. Having been mentored by Lukács, he is one of a few contemporary philosophers to have a viable sense of the depth of connection between Marx and Hegel and his contribution to Marxist thought over many decades has been seminal, earning him a variety of accolades including the Deutscher prize.

NEW! The Crisis and the Left: Socialist Register 2012

February 20, 2024

The global economic crisis that closed the first decade of the 21st century has demonstrated that the contradictions of capitalism cannot be overcome. The challenge for socialist analysis is to reveal both the nature of these contradictions in the neo-liberal era of globalized finance, and their consequences in our time. This volume, a companion to The Crisis This Time: Socialist Register 2011, examines the response of the international Left and asks, how has the Left responded and can it offer an alternative to faltering capitalism?

The People's Lawyer author Albert Ruben on The Center for Constitutional Rights vs. The Pope

February 20, 2024

Albert Ruben, author of The People’s Lawyer: The Center for Constitutional Rights and the Fight for Social Justice, From Civil Rights to Guantánamo, describes the recent lawsuit brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights against the Catholic Church.

NEW! Wisconsin Uprising: Labor Fights Back, edited by Michael D. Yates

February 20, 2024

This timely book brings together some of the best labor journalists and scholars in the United States, many of whom were on the ground at the time, to examine the causes and impact of the Wisconsin Uprising, and suggest how the labor movement might proceed in this new era of union militancy. Includes a foreword by Robert W. McChesney.

NEW! The God Market: How Globalization is Making India More Hindu by Meera Nanda

February 20, 2024

Conventional wisdom says that integration into the global marketplace tends to weaken the power of traditional faith in developing countries. But, as Meera Nanda argues in this path-breaking book, this is hardly the case in today’s India. Against expectations of growing secularism, India has instead seen a remarkable intertwining of Hinduism and neoliberal ideology, spurred on by a growing capitalist class.