September 2024 (Volume 76, Number 4)
This month’s “Notes form the Editors” recounts the history of U.S. preparations for “prolonged and limited” nuclear war and Washington’s repeated refusal to abide by international agreements regarding nuclear weaponry. With the recent announcement that the United States will be stationing nuclear-capable Tomahawk missiles on German soil—within minutes’ striking distance of Moscow—this history is now, troublingly, more relevant than ever. | more…
The Ecological Rift in the Anthropocene
In an interview with Brazilian magazine Margem Esquerda, John Bellamy Foster shares with Fabio Querido, Maria Orlanda Pinassi, and Michael Löwy the formative experiences that contributed to his work as a young activist and, later, a preeminent scholar of ecological Marxism. The interview concludes with a message to the ecological left in Brazil and elsewhere: “Whatever solutions there are to the present planetary crisis must, in historical-materialist terms, arise from concrete social formations, on the basis of which the new revolutionary transformations will take place.” | more…
Sub-Imperialist India in Washington’s Anti-China “Pivot”
This article will be released in full online September 2, 2023.
Bernard D’Mello describes India’s role as a collaborator in the U.S. anti-China Indo-Pacific project. This role, he elaborates, grows directly from the imperial/sub-imperial relationship between the United States and India, which manifests itself in border disputes, military exercises, diplomacy, economic ties, and more, has heightened hostilities in the Indo-Pacific region while benefiting the power elite of both countries. | more…
UARCs: The American Universities that Produce Warfighters
This article will be released in full online September 9, 2023.
Sylvia Martin reveals the deep linkages between U.S. universities and the military-industrial complex through the Department of Defense’s University Affiliated Research Centers. These programs utilize colleges and universities as research and development labs for the U.S. imperial war machine, blurring the lines between ostensibly independent institutions and the military academy and enabling the further expansion and normalization of the warmaking apparatus throughout U.S. society. | more…
Listen to the Ecologists!
This article will be released in full online September 16, 2023.
In this reprise from 1992, former MR editors Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy look toward the end of the recession then plaguing the United States, seeing choice looming on the horizon: Will the progressive left attempt to reform capitalism, or replace it entirely? Capital’s inexorable thirst for growth beyond natural limits, they write, means we must choose the latter—”if we care about the future of the human species…we had better listen to the ecologists.” | more…
How Microfinance Financializes Women
This article will be released in full online September 23, 2023.
Reviewing Smitha Radhakrishnan’s Making Women Pay, Jingyi Zhang elucidates the exploitative practices of the much-vaunted microfinance industry, particularly as they apply to—and exacerbate—existing tensions within communities of women in India. | more…
July-August 2024 (Volume 76, Number 3)
While Israel’s horrific assaults on the people of Gaza continue, the voices against the U.S. support for the Zionist state grow ever-louder. This spring, the fight spilled onto college campuses. In this month’s “Notes,” MR editors take the long view, starting with the Free Speech Movement over half a century ago. | more…
Imperialism in the Indo-Pacific—An Introduction
John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark introduce this summer’s special issue on “Imperialism in the Indo-Pacific,” exploring how the super-region came to be conceptualized among geopolitical strategists and its present-day role in U.S military strategy. “The United States,” they write, “facing the demise of its global hegemonic imperialism, is not only preparing for a Third World War; it is actively provoking it.” | more…
Changes in U.S. Grand Strategy in the Indo-Pacific and China’s Countermeasures
Cheng Enfu and Li Jing survey the current economic, diplomatic, and security status quo between China and the United States, with an eye toward future policy decisions that could help strengthen China’s position as a bulwark against the imperial hegemon. | more…
Taiwan: An Anti-Imperialist Perspective
“In the Western imagination,” the Qiao Collective writes, “Taiwan exists as little more than a staging ground for ideological war with the People’s Republic of China.” However, this not only obscures the deep historical and cultural ties between Taiwan and the mainland, but functions as a justification for U.S. imperial intervention in the South China Sea. | more…
The Korean Linchpin: The Korean Peninsula’s Enduring Centrality in U.S. Indo-Pacific Geostrategy
Tim Beal dives into the critical role that the Korean Peninsula plays in U.S. strategy for maintaining power in the Indo-Pacific. The United States, he concludes, has long used its position on the peninsula to advance U.S. interests in the Pacific theater, aiming its most recent efforts against the rise of China and Russia. | more…
Power Concedes Nothing Without a Demand: Peace in Korea and Northeast Asia Now!
In this forcefully argued piece, Dae-Han Song presents an overview of the past few decades of U.S. policy on the Korean Peninsula and its continued refusal to engage meaningfully with any peace process between the artificially separated North and South. The article ends with a series of demands that look toward a future of peace on the peninsula. | more…
When the Ruling-Class Parties Harden: Indonesia and Great Power Politics in the Indo-Pacific
Iqra Angurah elucidates the strategic role in the Indo-Pacific in the context of the New Cold War and, in particular, the country’s close ties to the forces of multinational capital and Western imperialism. The alignment of the Global North and local elites underscores the need for a popular, socialist, and anti-imperialist movement among the Indonesian working class. | more…