“Mapping Water in Dominica” (Horne reviews Mark W. Hauser for H-Net)
February 20, 2024
…examining shards of slave property, waterways, mills, and vessels for storing water….
Tag: Reviews
Read alongside primary texts, “an important tool in the labor movement and the classroom” (Michael Yates reviewed in Socialism & Democracy)
February 20, 2024
Yates takes a decidedly unorthodox approach. He spends a fair amount of time explaining the importance of reclaiming common spaces and “commoning” practices….
Brings homes the seemingly Sisyphean task of a collective revolutionary project, “with theoretical and stylistic aplomb” (Marx & Philosophy Review of Books on “Marx, Dead and Alive”)
February 20, 2024
“Marx, Dead and Alive” packs an extraordinary amount into its 184 pages, both historical detail and in contemporizing Marx with multifarious global contexts and examples…. it would make an excellent introduction for someone just starting to grasp Marx and wanting clear definitions of alienation, capital, class, commodity fetishism, value and wage labour – amongst other key concepts….
Her Majesty’s African-American Allies: A review by Gerald Horne
February 20, 2024
It is well-established that African-Americans have sought allies abroad as a way to weaken opposition at home. Often, scholars have tackled this important topic as it manifested during the Cold War. The work at hand emulates previous scholarship in detailing this trend during the antebellum and early postbellum era…
Some ways forward after the devastating decline in union membership (Shaun Richman reviewed for Organizing Upgrade)
February 20, 2024
The ongoing debate about reviving the U.S. labor movement tries to grapple with the devastating decline in the union membership rate from one-third of the workforce in the 1950s to less than 11% today. In this discussion, occasionally a book comes along that is a great combination of labor history, thoughtful analysis of union organizing, and suggestions for ways forward. Shaun Richman’s “Tell the Bosses We’re Coming: A New Action Plan for Workers in the Twenty-First Century” is such a book.
The working-class GIs who became dissidents (“Dissenting POWs” reviewed by Real Democracy Movement)
February 20, 2024
By the time of the POWs release and repatriation in early 1973, the war between the walls of Hoa Lo (the prison near Hanoi) was more than that between prisoners and their guards. The tensions between the officers and the enlisted men, universal in military organisations, had hardened into class lines…
“A brave book,” well-timed with the 50th anniversary of the Paris Peace Accords (“Dissenting POWs” reviewed in Peace & Change)
February 20, 2024
As part of its survey of POWs in society, the book delves into movie treatments. The antiwar prisoners were obscured by Hollywood, which preferred films on the POWs and “Missing in Action” (MIAs) who were supposedly left behind, or which dwelt on the trope of the deranged veteran….
Sure to “inspire new directions in research and debate” (“Dissenting POWs” reviewed in H-Soz-Kult, H-NET)
February 20, 2024
Without trivializing the hardships of often several years in jail, Wilber and Lembcke dissect personal accounts by former POWs. They point out contradictions, distinguish between physical punishment measures and deliberate violence, reconstruct different phases in the history of the prisons, and conclude that brutal treatment and torture were less common and systematic than purported.
The fictitious cause of Venezuelan precarity (“Extraordinary Threat” reviewed in Counterpunch)
February 20, 2024
Chavez inherited an impoverished country with a thin, glittering layer of affluence at the top. To the horror of Washington and Venezuelan plutocrats, he promptly began redistributing wealth to the poor…
The American “regime change” manual (Countercurrents reviews “Washington Bullets”)
February 20, 2024
A common line of argument from the contemporary American left is that “socialism has never been tried.” It’s understandable that Western socialists would make this argument to members of the US proletariat, who have been deeply affected by years of red scare propaganda. This argument however, ignores the millions who have struggled and died in an effort to move beyond the contradictions of capitalism…