Category: Monthly Review Press /

“Trump Entertains; Lebowitz Enlightens”—The Progressive Populist reviews The Socialist Imperative

February 20, 2024

According to Donald Trump, a former front-runner to be the GOP presidential nominee, Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders, a democratic socialist running against Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination for the presidency, is giving everything away, a partial truth. For a fuller treatment of what a radical break with capitalism entails, read The Socialist Imperative: From Gotha to Now by Michael A. Lebowitz (Monthly Review Press, 2015).
A retired economics professor at Simon Fraser University in Vancouver, Canada, his two-part book doesn’t end there. That is a positive thing, as the public is open to socialism, in no small measure due to the Great Recession

Silvertown reviewed by ResoluteReader

February 20, 2024

In 1889 nearly 3,000 workers at Silver's, an enormous factory in East London, in Silvertown went on strike. The men and women who walked out were inspired by the New Unionism that was sweeping the city. They'd seen mass strikes by dockers in the East End that had won major victories and they wanted improvements too.

Their twelve week strike has almost been forgotten today. Perhaps because it ended in defeat. But John Tully's important book rescues the struggle for readers today, and, perhaps surprisingly, the reader will find that we can learn much from those brave men and women.

Deutscher Memorial Prize-winner, Reconstructing Lenin, reviewed by ResoluteReader

February 20, 2024

In recent years there has been a intense discussion about the ideas of the Russian revolutionary Lenin. Some of this has its roots in the class struggle - the Arab Spring and the Occupy movement both threw up questions about the nature of revolutionary organisation. Others have attempted to re-examine Lenin to critique existing organisations and ideas. There have been some excellent books, articles and events debating these questions.

Tamás Krausz's important new biography must be seen as part of this debate. His work is very much an attempt to re-examine Lenin's ideas as part of a resolute defence of Lenin and his work. Krausz is clear that this is intended to take forward the revolutionary movement that can challenge and defeat capitalism.

New! Crooked Deals and Broken Treaties

February 20, 2024

The War on Terror Is a War on Youth — Henry A. Giroux/Brad Evans via Truthout

February 20, 2024

There is a revealing similarity between the attacks on September 11, 2001 - when airplanes were flown into the twin towers, killing thousands of people - and the attacks in Paris, in which over 130 people were killed and hundreds wounded. Yet, what they have in common has been largely overlooked in the mainstream and alternative media's coverage of the more recent terrorist attacks. While both assaults have been rightly viewed as desperate acts of alarming terrorism, what has been missed is that both acts of violence were committed by young men. This is not a minor issue because unraveling this similarity provides the possibility for addressing the conditions that made such attacks possible.

Gerald Horne’s Race to Revolution reviewed in The American Historical Review

February 20, 2024

October 30 NYC Book Party for Confronting Black Jacobins

February 20, 2024

Peter Custers, 1949 – 2015

February 20, 2024

Your Time is Done Now reviewed in Repeating Islands

February 20, 2024

Polly Pattullo’s very important piece entitled Your Time is Done Now: Slavery, Resistance and Defeat: the Maroon Trials of Dominica (1813-1814), is an edited collection of original primary source documents with contextual commentary detailing the account of what has been known as Dominica’s Second Maroon War in 1813 and 1814. Pattullo, a British writer and creator of her own publishing company entitled Papillote Press, uses the actual court documents of the Maroon (runaway slave) trials as well as correspondences between the British colonial government officials to disclose to public the eventful conflict between the Maroons and the colonial government of Dominica in the second decade of the nineteenth century.