Category: Monthly Review Press /

An Important Appeal from Robert W. McChesney

February 20, 2024

Dear Friend of Monthly Review: In the past few years world conditions have changed far more than most people realize. Since the financial collapse of 2007–2008, capitalism has entered a period of pronounced stagnation. The dismal recovery of the past six years is no longer to be regarded as a temporary adjustment; it is the new normal. What this means for the great mass of people in the United States and the globe is also clear: increasing poverty and unemployment; gaping increases in inequality; tremendous downward pressure on wages and benefits; collapsing infrastructure and decline in public services; systematic political corruption; environmental degradation in the pursuit of profit; and endless militarism. Capitalism is a system that gives every sign of being on its last legs. It is eating the future to stay alive today.

Henry Giroux interviewed in CounterPunch

February 20, 2024

Henry Giroux is the author of America's Education Deficit and the War on Youth, published by Monthly Review Press. He is interviewed by C. J. Polychroniou, who writes for Eleftherotypia in Greece. "What we have seen in the United States and a number of other countries since the 1970s is the emergence of a savage form of free market fundamentalism, often called neoliberalism, in which there is not only a deep distrust of public values, public goods and public institutions but the embrace of a market ideology that accelerates the power of the financial elite and big business while gutting those formative cultures and institutions necessary for a democracy to survive."

Silvertown Book Launch in Melbourne, Australia

February 20, 2024

Join Monthly Review Press author John Tully for the Launch of his new book Silvertown: The Lost Story of a Strike that Shook London and Helped Launch the Modern Labor Movement, on Wednesday, March 5, at The VU Bar at Footscray Park campus, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia. He will be joined by distinguished historian Stuart Macintyre and Victoria University colleague Phillip Deery.

Save Our Unions reviewed in The Progressive Populist

February 20, 2024

Steve Early's insightful writing on employment struggles in a time of political retreat for most American workers captivates. In Save Our Unions: Dispatches from A Movement in Distress (Monthly Review Press, 2013), he shares riveting descriptions of workplace struggles. Early's approach to labor journalism is simple. He questions the deeds and words of the power class, in and out of unions. His focus on internal union democracy is a recurring theme in the book's seven sections. From health care to media, he goes where mainstream press coverage fears to tread.

Save Our Unions reviewed by Left Labor Reporter

February 20, 2024

It was the summer of 1969. I was living in San Francisco. I had just gotten a job with Pacific Bell, the West Coast telephone company. One afternoon, I was performing some routine maintenance when a shop steward walked up to me and said, "Put down your tools; we're walking out." I looked up, saw other workers heading for the exit, and dutifully followed. We gathered across the street from Pacific Bell building and milled around for a while.

Capitalist Globalization reviewed by Counterfire

February 20, 2024

Martin Hart-Landsberg gives us a very clear account of the realities of globalisation, as well as a withering critique of the neo-classical economics behind it, in accessible and succinct form. There is even some debunking of key elements of classical economics, such as Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage. The latter is vital to the argument that, in a context of international free trade, national economies will specialise in certain products for their prosperity ... Like so many nostrums of bourgeois economics, the proof of this theory rests on a series of assumptions requiring an idealised state of affairs that never holds true in practice.

2 NYC Events: Ralf Dose discusses Magnus Hirschfeld at Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung & BGSQD

February 20, 2024

We're pleased to announce two NYC events with Ralf Dose, author of Magnus Hirschfeld: The Origins of the Gay Liberation Movement. He will be speaking at the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung on March 18 (joined by journalist Steven Thrasher) and at The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division on March 23.

Save Our Unions reviewed in Working In These Times

February 20, 2024

The defeat of a union organizing election at the Volkswagen auto plant in Chattanooga, Tenn. this month has stimulated intense national scrutiny of the United Auto Workers (UAW). As labor's friends and enemies debate over the places UAW leadership fell short in the campaign, journalist Steve Early's new book, Save Our Unions: Dispatches From a Movement in Distress (Monthly Review Press) seems especially relevant. Though Early's work doesn't analyze the Volkswagen campaign itself—and makes only passing references to the UAW—the declining power of the country's leading labor organizations is a consistent theme in his reporting.

Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War against Apartheid reviewed in the Mail & Guardian

February 20, 2024

Back in 1989, with the Berlin Wall about to fall, I enjoyed a long and leisurely dinner with Joe Slovo at his Lusaka home. The youngest of his three daughters, Robyn, popped in, but mostly it was just Joe, his friend Pallo Jordan and me, and it ended with a fine bottle of red wine. "A gift," Joe said after absorbing our compliments, pausing for effect, "from Erich Honecker." Jordan, an independent-minded leftist and no admirer of the ailing East German leader whose fortunes were taking a tumble, offered a raised eyebrow. I offered a nervous smile. Slovo burst into laughter, clearly relishing the irony of it all.

Global NATO and the Catastrophic Failure in Libya reviewed in Counterfire

February 20, 2024

From mid-March to October 2011, Libya was rarely out of the headlines as Western air forces averaged 150 air strikes per day on the hapless population. The brutal killing of Gaddafi – co-ordinated, Campbell says here, by US, British and French special forces and drones – was followed by a brief media celebration. Since then, with the exception of puzzled reports about the killing of the US ambassador in Benghazi in September 2012, and scattered references to chaos and militia rule, there has been virtual radio silence. The traumatic impact of this pummelling was so obvious on the ground, the western media simply slunk away.