Category: Monthly Review Press /

Cocaine, Death Squads, and the War on Terror reviewed in Z Magazine

Cocaine, Death Squads, and the War on Terror reviewed in Z Magazine

February 20, 2024

Why write a book about class, cocaine, Colombia and the U.S.? Oliver Villar and Drew Cottle have an answer. In Cocaine, Death Squads, and the War on Terror: U.S. Imperialism and Class Struggle in Colombia they provide data and evidence to refute Uncle Sam's official version of relations between both nations today and yesterday. To this end, the authors present a strong counter-narrative that begins with cocoa plants and continues with the capitalist production and distribution of cocaine.

Michael Yates discusses a double-dip recession on PBS.org

February 20, 2024

A few months ago, it looked like the Great Recession was over and the economy on its way to full recovery. The Federal Reserve and the Treasury had bailed out the nation's financial sector and engaged in enough deficit spending to stop the dramatic rise in unemployment. The major European economies were holding their own, and the rising BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India and China) economies seemed to be taking up any global slack in consumer demand and capital investment. Gross domestic product (GDP) here and in many other nations had stopped falling and started rising, sometimes dramatically.

NEW! José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology

February 20, 2024

José Carlos Mariátegui is one of Latin America's most profound but overlooked thinkers. A self-taught journalist, social scientist, and activist from Peru, he was the first to emphasize that those fighting for the revolutionary transformation of society must adapt classical Marxist theory to the particular conditions of Latin America. This volume collects his essential writings, including many that have never been translated and some that have never been published.

Class Dismissed reviewed in The Progressive Populist

February 20, 2024

This much is true. Americans with bachelor's degrees and up earn higher pay than high school grads. Yet a third of the future jobs statewide created in the next 10 years, will require, at most, no more than a 12th-grade education. Meanwhile, US income inequality and poverty has been rising over the past three decades. Why has and does education bear the burden that it does for what ails the nation's populace?

John Bellamy Foster on "Why We Occupy, What We Know"

February 20, 2024

We are here as part of the Occupy Wall Street movement, which in a few short weeks has become a global movement in hundreds of cities around the world. We are part of the 99 percent not only in this country but the world. I have been reading the mainstream, corporate media. I have been listening to the pundits, the power brokers, the politicians. They criticize our movement, saying we don't really know why we are here. They are wrong. We are part of the growing army of the Occupy Wall Street movement worldwide. And we know why we are here.

John Bellamy Foster speaks at Occupy Wall Street on "Capitalism and Environmental Catastrophe"

February 20, 2024

The Occupy Wall Street movement arose in response to the economic crisis of capitalism, and the way in which the costs of this were imposed on the 99 percent rather than the 1 percent. But "the highest expression of the capitalist threat," as Naomi Klein has said, is its destruction of the planetary environment. So it is imperative that we critique that as well. I would like to start by pointing to the seriousness of our current environmental problem and then turn to the question of how this relates to capitalism. Only then will we be in a position to talk realistically about what we need to do to stave off or lessen catastrophe.

Class Dismissed reviewed on Counterfire

February 20, 2024

It is the erroneous idea that more university graduates will solve America's economic and social woes with which Marsh has a problem. He dissects this idea so forensically, with the help of a range of data on poverty in the US, that his case becomes unanswerable. The research is rigorous and the author's handling of it ensures the book never becomes dry. Marsh teaches English literature and has a non-specialist's eye for the need to make economic data and analysis fresh and engaging. His lively writing style is a great strength, with an ability to interweave hard data with illuminating examples from his own life, others' experiences and history.

The Great Financial Crisis reviewed in Work, Employment, & Society

February 20, 2024

An impressive and stimulating analysis of the historical origins and structural roots of the financial crisis, The Great Financial Crisis has much to commend it, providing an excellent reminder of the power of Marxist political economy in revealing the dynamics and contradictions of the present financial crisis, and indeed, of capitalist crises in general.

José Carlos Mariátegui book party, NYC

February 20, 2024

Join Marc Becker, co-editor of José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology (with Harry E. Vanden), for a book party at the Brecht Forum in NYC on March 1, 2012.

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