Dear Friend of Monthly Review,

Few on the left would deny the fact that conditions in the United States and the world today are exceedingly grim, on a level not seen in almost a century. The United States (along with NATO as a whole) remains embroiled in a proxy war with Russia, a nuclear superpower. Israel’s extermination of Palestinians in Gaza continues with the full backing of Washington, which is supplying the bombs, while those in the United States and Europe who protest on humanitarian grounds are increasingly being persecuted. Mass deportations of immigrants are being carried out under the 1798 Alien Enemies Act—last used in the Second World War for the internment of Japanese Americans—with some being sent to concentration camps outside formal U.S. jurisdiction. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has declared that the United States is “prepared” for war with the People’s Republic of China over Taiwan, which is recognized internationally as an autonomous region of China. In all of this, the United States is seeking to reverse its declining hegemony over the world economy.

The root of these dangerous developments is the structural crisis of capital, which now extends to the capitalist state itself—including the entire ideological state apparatus. The core capitalist countries of the world system are mired in deepening economic stagnation and financial hypertrophy, faced with the constant threat of financial meltdown. Inequality in the United States has surpassed the levels of the Gilded Age preceding the Great Depression: half the U.S. population now owns less wealth than the top three tech-financial overlords.

Liberal democracy is everywhere in decline, while neofascism is on the rise. Donald Trump’s lower middle-class MAGA movement, backed by an oligarchy of billionaires, has not only captured the U.S. government, but is seeking to bend the Constitution and the whole of society to its will. Government programs and federal employees have come under attack in the name of combating diversity, equity, and inclusion, or “cultural Marxism,” while the repression is being extended via a New McCarthyism to the media, educational institutions, lawyers and law schools, the halls of science, the arts, and trade unions. Many liberal organizations are already capitulating, in a process that in Nazi Germany was known as Gleichschaltung (falling into line). The Trump tariffs represent economic warfare on the entire world, with much of the cost to be paid by the U.S. population in the form of higher inflation Federal funding for climate change research and environmental regulations are being scrapped, at the very moment that the 1.5C guardrail has been crossed, placing the world at or near the planetary tipping point.

Nevertheless, in the words of Bernie Sanders, “despair is not an option? In the struggle against monopoly capital, fascism, and global exterminism—that is, capitalism as it presents itself to us today—the only answer is to build a revolt from below, dedicated to a world of substantive equality, ecological sustainability, and free human development. In movements all around the world, hundreds of millions of people are currently engaged in the struggle for humanity and the earth. But to succeed, these movements will need to organize on a socialist basis. Nothing else will be enough to stave off disaster and create a new path for humankind.

This is where Monthly Review, we believe, has a crucial role to play. Throughout MR‘s existence, it has provided the intellectual resources for a process of reason and revolution on behalf of humanity as a whole. During the McCarthyism of the 1950s, MR editors Leo Huberman, Paul Sweezy, and Harry Magdoff were all called before red-baiting committees and threatened with imprisonment for their noncooperation with the authorities and refusal to name names. Not only did they not retreat in these circumstances, but they fought back. The Sweezy v. New Hampshire case went all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, leading to a landmark decision in support of academic freedom. In this and in innumerable other ways, MR has stood steadfast throughout its history in its defense of socialism and in its unswerving commitment to “the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large” (Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto).

Over the last year, the magazine, along with Monthly Review Press, has dedicated itself to uncovering the roots of neofascism in the United States, combating the “new denial of imperialism, and redoubling its efforts to reconstruct an authentic, worldwide socialist critique. As a symbol of “where we stand, Monthly Review Press this year is republishing Albert Einstein’s classic article “Why Socialism?”—which appeared in MR‘s very first issue—in a beautiful, compact book edition. It serves to remind us why we do what we do, even against the odds and in dark times.

That’s also why we are asking for your financial support. Any amount you can afford, large or small, will ensure that we will be able to continue the work envisioned by our founders. Tens of thousands of people worldwide wish they could give to the magazine but cannot afford to do so. Please make a donation in their name. Write, as you have in the past, a generous check and contribute not just to critical analysis of the world as it is but to the creation of a new one. You are our support. We are counting on you.

In Solidarity,

John Bellamy Foster