This article will be released in full online May 27, 2023.
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.” | more…
This month’s Review of the Month by John Bellamy Foster illuminates the idea of extractivism, a key concept in understanding our current planetary crisis. The accelerated extraction of Earth’s resources since the mid-twentieth century, Foster notes, threatens not only the natural world, but the means of life for the entire planet. | more…
Matthew Sharpe discusses Aymeric Monville’s Misère du nietzschéisme de gauche (The Misery of Left Nietzscheanism), an exploration of how Nietzsche’s popularity on the left co-opts truly radical energy in favor of authoritarianism and elitism. “If Monville is right,” Sharpe concludes, “Nietzcheanism has acted as a kind of ideological ‘useful idiot.’” | more…
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. | more…
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. | more…
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?” | more…
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. | more…
“It is surprising,” Marnie Holborow writes, “how often in Marxist accounts of women’s oppression Frederick Engels is overlooked.” In responding to this gap in analysis, Holborow examines his influential work, The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State, finding his observations on gender roles and social reproduction under capitalism—and their expressions based on class—are not only astute for Engels’s time, but very much for ours as well. | more…
Scrutinizes possibilities for an equalised global order, in light of recent conflicts between the world’s major powers
The “post-Cold War era is definitively over,” asserted US President Joe Biden as he launched the new National Security Strategy, warning in late 2022 that “a competition is underway between the major powers to shape what comes next.” American leadership, the document declared, would be more necessary than ever to define “the future of the international order,” insisting that the US must marshal its unparalleled economic, military, and diplomatic resources to confront its rivals.
Socialist Register 2024: A New Global Geometry? takes stock of momentous changes
John Bellamy Foster discusses the past and present state of U.S. nuclear policy, asserting that its reliance on belligerent approaches endangers the entire world. “Only a minimalist, as opposed to a maximalist, approach to nuclear arms can put humanity on the road to nuclear disarmament,” he writes, concluding that “the answer lies in a worldwide shift away from dying capitalism to…complete socialism.” | more…
Drawing on writings, historical accounts, and personal letters, Kaan Kangal surveys the considerable extent of Marx and Engels’s interest in language and capabilities as polyglots. This interest, he argues, was part and parcel of their political commitment to building worldwide socialism. | more…
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