Category: Monthly Review Press Blog

Chip Smith on Monthly Review and Economics

Chip Smith on Monthly Review and Economics

Chip Smith is an economist and author of The Cost of Privilege. He was interviewed on Cumberland County Progressives TV (North Carolina) by host Nancy Shakir on the topic “Growing a Sustainable Economy.” In this video, Chip discusses the contributions made by Monthly Review authors and publications toward an understanding of monopoly capitalism, particularly The Endless Crisis by John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney, The Great Financial Crisis by Foster and Fred Magdoff, and Monopoly Capital by Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy.

America's Education Deficit and the War on Youth reviewed on Critical-Theory.com

America's Education Deficit and the War on Youth reviewed on Critical-Theory.com

Giroux offers a compelling primer for the chaos that neoliberalism has wrought on our youth and education system. Giroux writes with passion that borders on poetic. And, unlike a lot of critical theory, the book is intelligible and easy to read. It would make a welcome addition any OWS-style people’s library or intro-level college class.

Watch Salim Lamrani's Lecture on The Economic War Against Cuba

Salim Lamrani is the author of The Economic War Against Cuba. On May 26 he discussed the history, impact, and possible demise of the U.S. imposed economic sanctions against Cuba at Secular Hall in Leicester, UK. The event was a joint meeting of the Leicester Cuba Solidarity Campaign and the Leicester Secular Society and part of a UK speaking tour organized by the Cuba Solidarity Campaign.

Bruce Neuburger discusses Lettuce Wars in California

Bruce Neuburger discusses Lettuce Wars in California

Join Bruce Neuburger, author of Lettuce Wars: Ten Years of Work and Struggle in the Fields of California for three upcoming events in the Bay Area. Ann López, Executive Director of the Center for Farmworker Families, calls Lettuce Wars “compelling and often spell-binding … surely one of the most important contributions to the social justice literature exposing farmworker injustice at all levels,” and will be joining Bruce at one event.

José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology reviewed in Journal of Latin American Studies

José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology reviewed in Journal of Latin American Studies

Harry E. Vanden and Marc Becker are well known for their important contributions to the study of Latin American Marxism, Latin American revolutionary politics and Jose Carlos Mariategui’s thought. Their new joint contribution is a volume that makes available to English readers a considerable number of Mariategui’s shorter texts… Mariategui, an undoubtedly gifted journalist, political author and literary critic, offers readers engaging and rich perspectives—mainly but not exclusively Latin American and Marxist ones—on some of the main issues that concerned European and Latin American progressive public opinion at the time. These translations are a welcome and useful aid for all engaged in teaching Latin American history and literature, the history of socialist ideas, indigenismo, world history, third world studies and so on.

NEW! America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth by Henry A. Giroux

NEW! America’s Education Deficit and the War on Youth by Henry A. Giroux

America’s latest war, according to renowned social critic Henry Giroux, is a war on youth. While this may seem counterintuitive in our youth-obsessed culture, Giroux lays bare the grim reality of how our educational, social, and economic institutions continually fail young people. Their systemic failure is the result of what Giroux identifies as “four fundamentalisms”: market deregulation, patriotic and religious fervor, the instrumentalization of education, and the militarization of society. Giroux sets his sights on the war on youth and takes it apart, examining how a lack of access to quality education, unemployment, the repression of dissent, a culture of violence, and the discipline of the market work together to shape the dismal experiences of so many young people.

Nancy Stout Interviewed by Hazel Kahan

Nancy Stout Interviewed by Hazel Kahan

Nancy Stout is the author of One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution. In this in-depth interview, Stout discusses Sánchez’s life, her role in the Cuban revolution, and her relationship with Fidel Castro. The interview was conducted by Hazel Kahan for her Tidings podcast and WPKN in Bridgeport, CT.

One Day in December reviewed on Human Needs Before Profit

One Day in December reviewed on Human Needs Before Profit

For many years, I’ve been inspired to read about the lives of revolutionaries. These are people who had been raised in a more or less typical environment, and transformed themselves into leaders of political movements. These political movements didn’t merely attempt to reform one or another aspect of society. No, these leaders attempted to form a new kind of government that would have completely different priorities. The list of some of these leaders would include, Spartacus, Thomas Paine, Tecumseh, Frederick Douglass, Jose Martí, Ida Wells, Mother Jones, Vladimir Illyich Lenin, Eugene Debs, Malcolm X, Ernesto Che Guevara, and Nelson Mandela. Looking at this list we see that most of these leaders were men. Nancy Stout spent ten years researching her biography of Celia Sánchez. Reading Stout’s book, we can see why the name Celia Sánchez clearly needs to be added to this list. In this biography we see a woman who overcomes unbelievable odds to put in place a government that transformed the lives of the Cuban people.

Joan Stone's Foreword to Dispersed City of the Plains by Harris Stone

Joan Stone's Foreword to Dispersed City of the Plains by Harris Stone

The following is Joan Stone’s Foreword to Dispersed City of the Plains by Harris Stone, his final book, published by Monthly Review Press in 1998. It provides a little context for the book’s creation and insight into Harris’s major aim: examining “the built form of the American city, the built form of monopoly capital.”