Category: Monthly Review Press /

Read an excerpt from Blowing the Roof Off the Twenty-First Century in Truthout

February 20, 2024

These are perilous times for capitalism, the reigning political economic system of the United States and the world. The economy is stagnating, and Mother Earth is gravely ill. In the second decade of the twenty-first century, we face widening economic inequality, plutocratic governance, endless militarism and mounting planetary ecological degradation. Not many years ago, this would have sounded hyperbolic to many people. But today, it is not just radicals who are sounding alarm bells.

Global Imperialism and the Great Crisis reviewed in Choice

Global Imperialism and the Great Crisis reviewed in Choice

February 20, 2024

In this volume, Screpanti (Univ. of Siena, Italy) offers a Marxist-inspired interpretation of the causes and consequences of the financial crisis that began in 2007. The author argues that the principal actors in the global economy are multinational firms and that, despite appearances to the contrary, national governments and international organizations largely serve their interests, while the citizens of the world are left to suffer the consequences.

9/21: MR Press at the Brooklyn Book Festival (plus talk and signing with Alan Wieder)

9/21: MR Press at the Brooklyn Book Festival (plus talk and signing with Alan Wieder)

February 20, 2024

Visit the MR Press table at this year's Brooklyn Book Festival, on Sunday, Sept. 21, 2014, 10am—6pm, at Brooklyn Borough Hall and Plaza. Alan Wieder, author of Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War against Apartheid, will be at the MRP table for a book signing at 10:30 AM, and will be participating in a festival panel discussion at noon, "Mandela: An American Perspective." We hope to see you there!

9/20: John Bellamy Foster & Fred Magdoff at the NYC Climate Convergence

9/20: John Bellamy Foster & Fred Magdoff at the NYC Climate Convergence

February 20, 2024

Before corporate and governmental leaders arrive in New York City this September for the UN Climate Summit, System Change Not Climate Change together with the Global Climate Convergence will be laying the groundwork for an alternative summit: the New York City Climate Convergence. The objective is to build and strengthen an environmental movement that addresses the root causes of the climate crises; a social-economic system that values profits above people, planet and peace. John Bellamy Foster and Fred Magdoff will be speaking on Saturday, September 20, at St. John's University.

Registering Class reviewed in The Progressive Populist

Registering Class reviewed in The Progressive Populist

February 20, 2024

Leo Panitch, Greg Albo and Vivek Chibber edit probing essays in "Registering Class: Socialist Register 2014". Contributors focus in part on the economics and politics of workers' fragmentation. Capital's constant breaking up of the laboring class and its re-composition is a recurring theme throughout. Merchant capital looms large.

Save Our Unions reviewed in Teamster Voice

Save Our Unions reviewed in Teamster Voice

February 20, 2024

It's no secret that the U.S. labor movement is in distress. To those who care about how to turn that situation around, Steve Early has a message worth reading in his Save Our Unions: Dispatches from a Movement in Distress. The book describes the problems facing workers—and some possible solutions such as organizing more union members, waging successful strikes, or developing new union leadership at the local or national level The chapters are essays (many have appeared previously in various magazine and labor publications), most of which tell stories of real people and struggles.

Capitalist Globalization reviewed in Green Social Thought

Capitalist Globalization reviewed in Green Social Thought

February 20, 2024

For the past three decades, the world has been subjected to the ideology of "free trade." Remove all barriers to trade, and a consumerist paradise would be the international result. Or so we were promised. Three decades later this ideology rings hollow; not only have the promised benefits failed to materialize, but those who have benefited have been overwhelmingly the ruling class, "the 1%," while the rest of us have been forced to face a grimmer reality. Fortunately we have writers such as Martin Hart-Landsberg on our side to examine the actuality of capitalist globalization, as he does in his book by the same name.

On The Contradictions of “Real Socialism”: Michael A. Lebowitz Responds

On The Contradictions of “Real Socialism”: Michael A. Lebowitz Responds

February 20, 2024

In the opening line of his essay on The Contradictions of 'Real Socialism': the Conductor and the Conducted, Alex Cistelecan proposes that my book should be read as 'an exercise in the moral psychology of "human development"'; and he proceeds to riff on this theme by speaking of my 'moral supplement to Marxism', 'the moral supplement of human development', 'the moral approach to Real Socialism', and my apparent claim that the classical elements of socialism should be supplemented 'with a vital third element'—namely, that my 'revised formula for 21st century socialism' would be 'soviets+ electrification+ human kindness'. HA! Not only is this unrecognisable as a description of my book on 'real socialism' book but it is precisely contrary to what I have argued in that book and developed in my immediately preceding work, The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development (2010).

35% Off November Book of the Month! José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology

35% Off November Book of the Month! José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology

February 20, 2024

José Carlos Mariátegui, a creative Marxist thinker and activist from Peru, who was born in 1894 and died in 1930, was once not widely known in the English-speaking world. Over the last few decades, however, more and more people have learned about his life and works, and in 2011, MR Press was proud to publish a comprehensive anthology of his writings, edited and translated by the scholars Harry E. Vanden and Marc Becker. Now, we're pleased to present José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology as our November book of the month. Receive 35% off when you use the coupon code BOM1114 at checkout.

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