Category: Monthly Review Press /

NEW! Transforming Classes: Socialist Register 2015 edited by Leo Panitch and Greg Albo

February 20, 2024

This 51st annual Socialist Register completes the investigation of class formation and class strategies on a global scale begun with last year's volume. Deploying an understanding of class as an historical social process—rather than an abstract sociological category or statistical artifact—the essays here investigate the concrete ways that working classes are being made and remade in the struggles against neoliberalism, austerity, and authoritarian governments. Taking stock of the changing balance of class forces as well as old and new forms of workplace, household and political organization, they uncover the class strategies being debated and adapted in different zones of the world.

Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti reviewed in Journal of Colonialism and Colonial History

February 20, 2024

Wealthy and powerful countries have a variety of mechanisms available to them to control the fates of peoples in poor countries. These are not mutually exclusive, and most of poor countries have experienced more than one of these types of interventions. The use of propaganda, targeting populations both in the periphery and the metropole, was studied by Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky in 1988, and since. The power of financial institutions in controlling the economies of dependent countries has been documented by many scholars, among them, for Haiti, Paul Farmer. US interventions specifically designed for electoral processes through State Department–sponsored organizations and others (called "democracy promotion") have been analyzed by William Robinson and other scholars, including Nicholas Guilhot.

The Theory of Monopoly Capitalism in the Marx & Philosophy Review of Books

February 20, 2024

The Monthly Review tradition has played a unique and invaluable role in understanding and explaining contemporary social being. Philosophically Monthly Review has been eclectic and broadminded. With respect to political economy the tradition of Monthly Review retains its broadmindedness, but can also be described as both steadfast and innovative. The new edition of John Bellamy Foster's The Theory of Monopoly Capitalism (2014) is an excellent introduction and elaboration to fundamental issues in Marxian political economy in the context of the debates that emerged concerning monopoly capitalism and the Monthly Review tradition.

Nadine Gordimer’s Foreword to Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War against Apartheid

February 20, 2024

JOE SLOVO AND RUTH FIRST. We are entering their paths. Both grew up unbelievers in Jewish or any religious faith. They met when Ruth was at the University of the Witwatersrand, Joe just returned from the South African Army in the war against Nazi Germany. His motivation for volunteering, eighteen years old, unemployed, lying about being underage for military call-up—his early alliance with communism, and so to the Soviet Union under attack—was decisive in the act. But there remained the devastating racial dilemma in South Africa. He wrote: "How do you tell a black man to make his peace with General Smuts—butcher of Bulhoek and the Bondelswarts? 'Save civilisation and democracy'—must have sounded a cruel parody. And fight with what? No black man was allowed to bear arms . . . if you want to serve democracy, wield a knobkerrie [wooden club] as a uniformed servant of a white soldier."

Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti in Telesur Online

February 20, 2024

Jeb Sprague's book "Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti" documents how key players among Aristides' "peaceful opponents" in Haiti, along with military and government officials from the Dominican Republic, closely supported the insurgents who killed dozens of people while the international press (and the human rights industry) ignored it and depicted some of the financiers as victims of a "crackdown on dissent"

Silvertown reviewed in Socialist Worker

February 20, 2024

The author and critic Walter Benjamin once wrote in an essay titled "On the Concept of History": "There has never been a document of culture which is not simultaneously one of barbarism." John Tully's new book Silvertown is a well-researched examination of that very duality--with London, the 19th century heart of bourgeois imperial culture, at its center.

Gerald Horne discusses Race to Revolution at Red Emma’s in Baltimore [video]

February 20, 2024

On July 27, Gerald Horne, a radical scholar whose historical work refocuses our attention on the structures and legacies of white supremacy and black resistance, presented his two most recent books, Race to Revolution (published by Monthly Review Press) and The Counter-Revolution of 1776 (published by New York University Press) at Red Emma's in Baltimore. The event was recorded and video is kindly provided by our friends at Red Emma's.

The Contradictions of “Real Socialism” in the Marx & Philosophy Review of Books

February 20, 2024

Rather than a historical or dialectical analysis of actually existing socialism, The Contradictions of Real Socialism. The Conductor and the Conducted should be read more as an exercise in the moral psychology of 'human development' that, for Michael Lebowitz, should supplement today's Marxism. The crucial tenet of this kind of socialism is the idea, nay, the ideal of human development. According to the author, the main problem with the old theory and practice of Marxism is that it hosts 'a distortion that forgot about human beings'.

Silvertown reviewed on the Radical Sydney / Radical History blog

February 20, 2024

John Tully writes in the Preface to his new book, Silvertown – The Lost Story of a Strike that Shook London and Helped Launch the Modern Labour Movement, (Monthly Review Press, 2014), that 'Conservatives have attacked some of my previous work as being partisan, and this book should upset them again.' Radical historians, however, will welcome it for precisely that reason. And treasure it, because this is a way of writing labour history – or any history – that academic historians usually run a mile from. Radical historians know that it is impossible to be non-partisan. As Tully explains, 'Historians must always be scrupulous with the facts, but we should be deeply suspicious of claims that studies of human society can be "value free".'

Marta Harnecker’s Remarks upon receiving the 2013 Liberator’s Prize for Critical Thought

February 20, 2024

On August 15, 2014, Marta Harnecker accepted the 2013 Liberator's Prize for Critical Thought, awarded for her book, A World to Build: New Paths towards Twenty-first Century Socialism (forthcoming from Monthly Review Press). Available here are her remarks, translated by Federico Fuentes and originally published by Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal.