Category: Monthly Review Press /

Race in Cuba reviewed by LSE Review of Books

February 20, 2024

Professor Emeritus of Political Economy of the University of Havana, Morales Domínguez, who continues to live in and write from Cuba, is a prolific social scientist and a leading scholar of race. With this collection of articles, essays, and interviews, he demonstrates how one can both be a supporter of the Revolution as well as a critic of its shortcomings primarily where it comes to race... This is an extraordinary addition to Cuban Studies

Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War against Apartheid Book Tour with Alan Wieder

February 20, 2024

Join author Alan Wieder for a discussion of his new book, Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War against Apartheid, at one of these locations in the U.S. and London. This engaging and richly detailed work recounts the extraordinary lives of First and Slovo, their contributions to the anti-apartheid struggle, and their sometimes tumultuous relationship.

John Bellamy Foster's Rosa Luxemburg Foundation Lecture in Berlin [video]

February 20, 2024

Watch a video of the lecture, "The Great Rift: Capitalism and the Metabolism of Nature and Production." John Bellamy Foster is editor of Monthly Review and professor of sociology at the University of Oregon. His latest book, written with Robert W. McChesney, is The Endless Crisis: How Monopoly-Finance Capital Creates Stagnation and Upheaval from the USA to China. This talk was given at the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation's salon in Berlin on 28 May 2013.

The Endless Crisis reviewed in Marxist Sociology Section (ASA) Newsletter

February 20, 2024

While not covering the entirety of Marxism today, Monthly Review, since its inception, has been carrying on some of the best works of Marxism today. The foundations for this type of analysis was set out by the economists Paul Baran, Paul Sweezy, and Harry Magdoff. Truly insightful analytic and theoretical works like Monopoly Capital and Magdoff's work on Imperialism (along with Harry Braverman's work on Labor and Monopoly Capital) help bring Marx's political-economic insights into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries... John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney continue this strong tradition of analytically sharp Marxian political economy.

Jeb Sprague on the "Island of Hispaniola" in Pambazuka News

February 20, 2024

Jeb Sprague is the author of Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti from Monthly Review Press. Political dysfunction on the Island of Hispaniola is rife, mired in clientelist networks (as in the Dominican Republic) and the blatant manipulation of elections (as in Haiti). Whereas the populations are interlocked in many ways, historical divisions remain and are readily exploited by dominant national and transnational groups.

Three MR Press books on Cuba reviewed by Counterfire

February 20, 2024

The Economic War Against Cuba: A Historical and Legal Perspective on the U.S. Blockade, Race in Cuba: Essays on the Revolution and Racial Inequality, and One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution, all recently published by Monthly Review Press, are reviewed by Dominic Alexander for Counterfire.

Alan Wieder on South Africa in CounterPunch

February 20, 2024

(Alan Wieder is the author of Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War against Apartheid, new from MR Press.) There were five South African launches for my new book on freedom fighters Ruth First and Joe Slovo – Bloemfontein, Johannesburg, two in Cape Town, and finally Port Elizabeth. It was the latter that provided a political education for the present. Earlier in our day in Port Elizabeth our host, Allan Zinn, had taken us to the northern campus of Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in the Missionvale Township. We witnessed over 500 high school students participating in a Nelson Mandela day workshop on conflict resolution and the difference between debate and dialogue.

The Endless Crisis reviewed in Socialism & Democracy

February 20, 2024

In mainstream economics capitalism as a theoretical construct has been replaced by the free market economy, which has been declared the ultimate arbiter of public policy. It is little wonder that the very academic and business economists charged with developing a practical understanding of the economy went into shock when the Great Recession hit. In their world such an event was simply not theoretically possible. Into this breach step Foster and McChesney, continuing the tradition of Monthly Review, with their analysis of the contradictions of monopoly-finance capital. This book provides a clear explanation of why the Great Recession occurred and how the crash constituted a wide-scale failure that was entirely predictable.

The Endless Crisis reviewed in New Politics

February 20, 2024

The Endless Crisis breathes new life into the once-prominent analysis of monopoly capitalism and rescues it from the quiet oblivion of discarded academic thought. The book has no interest in being a political pamphlet for social movements or focusing on the sociological ramifications of our moribund economy. Foster and McChesney demonstrate tremendous reserve by not filling the pages with polemical calls to action and discussing thorny questions of political strategy. Rather, the authors issue a wake-up call to the leftist intelligentsia who have largely abandoned the critiques of capitalism and retreated from the field of economics altogether. Marxists have been largely driven out of economics since allowing "capitalism," a term embedded with history and sociological conflict, to be replaced with the sterilized and ahistorical term, "market economy." The Endless Crisis is a focused and muscular work that ranks alongside the works of John Kenneth Galbraith, Paul Sweezy, Paul Baran and other great political economists who were unafraid to deliver sobering criticisms of modern capitalism. It is a robustly researched testament to the enduring relevance of Marxist theory in the 21st century.

Read an excerpt from Hell’s Kitchen and the Battle for Urban Space on the Gotham Center's History Blotter

February 20, 2024

What does it mean to live in a "bad neighborhood"? How do urban dwellers themselves produce urban space as history, in the changing modes of perception, in the shifting conceptual ideas that are literally the result of the numerous encounters with the everyday physical paths, nodes, and routes. Here in urban laboratories like New York's Hells Kitchen, we see the actual creation of the Progressive Era reformer, forged in the encounter with the space of tenement life. We see the emergence of a new politics, of an urban working class aware of its role as object of study, performing the routine of urban "problem" by insisting that their collective voice be heard. We see the space itself being produced in everyday use, and altered by the demands of economy, of culture, of politics, spaces that then act themselves, framing the new conceptual ideas that would drive future restructurings.