February 20, 2024
Horace Campbell is the author of Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya: Lessons for Africa in the Forging of African Unity, new from Monthly Review Press. He was interviewed by Amy Goodman and Juan González on Democracy Now!, discussing his book, Obama's trip to Africa, Nelson Mandela, and more.
February 20, 2024
You have that friend. You know, the well-intentioned liberal who thinks that by recycling your Coca Cola cans and composting your GMO fruits and vegetables, all of the sudden, everything will be okay. Capitalism? "Well, we can't escape that," they say "So I'm just going to keep drinking Naked Juice and wearing an obscene amount of patchouli." Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster's "What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism," is a remedy for this quixotic crusader. A "Citizen's Guide to Capitalism and the Environment," Magdoff and Foster write with great lucidity the case against a "green capitalism."
February 20, 2024
In connection with the events this month there is a new book out by Paul Le Blanc and Michael D. Yates, A Freedom Budget for All Americans. This is published by Monthly Review Press, is due for print in September (I have the uncorrected proof, which Paul Le Blanc was kind enough to send me). Bayard had been very concerned that the March would not lead to the next steps, which he felt should be an effort to put forward a political and economic program to give the civil rights movement a "floor", a program for full employment ... It is good to have two socialist thinkers sketch out not only the history of the original Freedom Budget, but also give us an updated look at what such a budget might look like today.
February 20, 2024
This book examines the historical record of globalization and restores agency to the capitalists, policy-makers, and politicians who worked to craft a regime of world-wide exploitation. It demolishes their neoliberal ideology – already on shaky ground after the 2008 financial crisis – and picks apart the record of trade agreements like NAFTA and institutions like the WTO. But, crucially, Hart-Landsberg also discusses alternatives to capitalist globalization, looking to examples such as South America's Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) for clues on how to build an international economy based on solidarity, social development, and shared prosperity.
February 20, 2024
In America's Education Deficit and the War on Youth, Henry A. Giroux focuses on the dysfunctional nature of US culture and politics. Giroux offers an alternative to the corporate-teaching model prevailing in US K-12 schools now. To this end, he analyzes mainstream assumptions and conclusions about the social purpose of education. He terms our present moment as an era of "casino capitalism." In this time of an ultra-rich minority calling the cultural and political shots, Giroux is a vital voice against corporate education reformers that talk progress for students and fund tests that restrict classroom curriculum and subvert critical thought.
February 20, 2024
These essays by the author of The Political Economy of Growth and co-author of Monopoly Capital cover the working range of a strong and original mind. They are as diverse as his well-known discussion of Marxism and psychoanalysis, and his expert handling of the politics and economics of development. The themes of Baran's major works were expressed in these shorter essays with a vigor and personal style that preserves much of the flavor of Baran's day-to-day reflections. They display, as John O'Neill says in his introduction, "a breadth of sociological and economic analysis which represents a unique conquest of mind in its ability to situate itself in an environment where disorientation and abdication threaten many social thinkers." Edited with an introduction by John O'Neill and with a preface by Paul M. Sweezy.
February 20, 2024
The world is not limitless, yet growth without limits is touted as a permanent economic elixir. But natural resources aren't infinite, nor can demand be infinite. What happens when the limits of growth are reached? We aren't supposed to ask that question about capitalism; the assumption is that economic activity will always grow. The insertion of China into the world capitalist system has created the opportunity for more growth as a country of 1.3 billion people has been thrown open to the world's markets. But what if, rather than throwing capitalism a lifeline in the form of a vast pool of consumers who will drive demand, China instead will fatally destabilize an already weakened world economic system?
February 20, 2024
Gerald Horne is the author of Race to Revolution: The U.S. and Cuba During Slavery and Jim Crow, new from Monthly Review Press. He was interviewed on Democracy Now! discussing this and another new book, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America.
February 20, 2024
The following lecture was filmed on September 15th, 2012, at the Democracy Center in Cambridge, MA. It features Irv Kurki, coordinator for essential discussions, on "The Roots of Capital," and Doug Enaa Greene, member of the Kasama Project and an activist at Occupy Boston, on "Overcoming Alienation."
February 20, 2024
For those whose knowledge of the gay rights movement begins with Stonewall—or worse, with the fight for marriage equality—Ralf Dose's short but well-researched monograph Magnus Hirschfeld: The Origins of the Gay Liberation Movement (originally published in German as Magnus Hirschfeld: German, Jew, Citizen of the World, 2005) comes at a propitious moment, when the State grudgingly hallows the LGBTQ community with the dubious privilege of matrimony.
