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WATCH: 50 YEARS OF DEPENDENCY THEORY

This year, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Dialectics of Dependency, Monthly Review Press released the first-ever English translation of Ruy Mauro Marini’s classic – one of the most important texts in the field of Latin American Dependency Theory. An event celebrating its release was held in mid September at The People’s Forum, featuring Cristóbal Reyes (representing his advisor Jaime Osorio), Phethani Madzivhandila, Chris Gilbert and Andy Higginbotham, and co-hosted by Joseph Mullen and Jaime Osorio’s coeditor, Amanda Latimer. | more…

Parallels between the old Cold War in the Pacific and the new… (The Hidden History of the Korean War reviewed in ‘Socialist China’)

Peace was very much an option…Reading Izzy Stone’s reporting today, it’s striking the extent to which these mechanisms of Cold War still exist and are being used to wage a New Cold War. The military bases, the troop deployments, the nuclear threats that aimed to contain socialism and prevent the emergence of a multipolar world in the 1950s continue to serve the same purposes in 2023. | more…

“No mere cheerleader for Marx” (How to Read Marx’s Capital reviewed in ‘Socialism and Democracy’)

Heinrich’s reading guide is the best that I have ever come across for volume 1 of Capital and I am certain it is a necessary edition for any person who takes their study of Marx’s ‘Capital’ seriously. Heinrich explains that “Capital provides crucial elements of the basic knowledge that is needed to fundamentally change social structures”. As such this volume, read in conjunction with Marx’s work, should prove valuable to anyone, inside or outside the academy, who is interested and invested in transforming capitalist social structures into something more beneficial to all. | more…

Contradictions of the contemporary accumulation regime (Socialist Register 2023 reviewed in ‘Counterfire’)

as Marx showed, while accumulation creates an ever greater mass of means of production, this in itself begins to throw up barriers to the profitable reproduction of such great quantities of capital. This contradiction results in the intensification of competition between capitals over labour, raw materials and markets, not the least consequence of which is imperialist tension and war… | more…

How capitalism was born in ‘robbery, violence and fraud’ (The War Against the Commons reviewed by ‘Socialist Worker’)

As Marx wrote, the common rights “were simply redefined as crimes: poaching, wood-theft, trespass”. The war against the commons removed the rights for people to hunt, forage, collect firewood and more. Game laws put restrictions on the poor, where you were criminalised even “if you took one hare when your family was starving”. The rich enclosed lands to hunt for sport, while the poor could be sentenced to death for hunting deer… | more…

WATCH: The Korean Policy Institute on Izzy Stone’s classic, MRP’s first-ever book

At first no one would touch Stone’s findings – they were too hot. But Stone got in touch with Monthly Review — and this was the first book we published. Courageously written at the height of the McCarthy era, officials never refuted nor denied the book’s claims, but Stone’s book still got a real audience due to the durable reputation of the journalist himself. Christine Hong, MR author Marty Hart-Landsberg, and Gregory Elich (each of the Korea Policy Institute) and Time Beal discuss… | more…

The first war the U.S. lost: Korea, not forgotten, hidden (Tim Beal in ‘Pearls and Irritations’)

Wars never start on the date given in history books. There is always a pre-history, a series of events and decisions that lead to the outbreak of fighting. The war in Korea has been called in America the ‘Forgotten War’ and it is not difficult to see why it was soon shunted out of public sight, consigned to oblivion. It was the first war that the United States did not win and it ended in an armistice, a concession of stalemate, but also an ominous indicator of unfinished business… | more…