Category: Monthly Review Press /

Occupy Consciousness: a video lecture on the work of István Mészáros

Occupy Consciousness: a video lecture on the work of István Mészáros

February 20, 2024

These videos were recorded at a lecture on May 19, in Cambridge, Massachusetts. They feature Irv Kurki, coordinator for essential discussions of advanced theory, discussing "Capital's (Dis)organizing Systems and the Socialist Alternatives"; and Doug Enaa Greene, member of the Kasama Project and an activist at Occupy Boston, on "Critiquing Capital from Capital's Viewpoint: Meszaros's Critique of Sartre and the Occupy Movement."

Jeb Sprague's Op-Ed in the Miami Herald

Jeb Sprague's Op-Ed in the Miami Herald

February 20, 2024

Haiti's government is making plans to revive the country's disbanded army, an institution guilty of many of the worst crimes ever perpetrated in the country. At the same time, special police units have been used to drive earthquake victims out of camps. While civil society and grassroots organizations in Haiti are campaigning against a return to the era of Duvalierist repression, people in the United States should be made aware of our government's long history with that country's military and security forces.

MR Panels at the Left Forum, NYC

February 20, 2024

A unique phenomenon in the U.S. and the world, Left Forum convenes the largest annual conference of a broad spectrum of left and progressive intellectuals, activists, academics, organizations and the interested public. Conference participants come together to engage a wide range of critical perspectives on the world, to discuss differences, commonalities, and alternatives to current predicaments, and to share ideas for understanding and transforming the world.

Mexico's Revolution Then and Now reviewed in The Progressive Populist

February 20, 2024

In Mexico's Revolution Then and Now (Monthly Review, paperback, 2010), James D. Cockcroft provides a window to the past and present of the US neighbor. A speaker of English and Spanish, Cockcroft is also a prolific author of books on Mexico, with over a half-century of experience and study there. His new book published a century after the Mexican Revolution arrives at a crucial time, as pundits and politicians "talk loud and say nothing" about the struggles of common people in Mexico.

Social Structure & Forms of Consciousness Vol. II reviewed on Counterfire

February 20, 2024

The central aspect of Mészáros' argument is the impossibility of understanding structure except through history. Furthermore, the denial of history (which is more or less explicit in structuralism and its progeny) is the necessary result of a failure to understand the dialectic of structure and history. Associated with this problem are a whole range of issues, first of all of course, the use of the Marxist concept of base and superstructure. There are also such matters as the relationship between individual and society, as exemplified, in a problematic sense, in Jean-Paul Sartre's attempts to reconcile existentialism and Marxism. While both Sartre's and Lévi-Strauss' work is seen ultimately in terms of failure, Sartre is regarded with considerable respect. In contrast, Mészáros has little patience with Lévi-Strauss, for whom history in itself was a problem.

Class Dismissed reviewed in CHOICE

Class Dismissed reviewed in CHOICE

February 20, 2024

Writing as en engaged public intellectual, Marsh (English, Pennsylvania State Univ.) argues that education, from preschool through graduate school, should not be viewed as a panacea for America's economic and social ills. Instead, he calls for a drastic decrease in poverty and inequality as a more potent elixir. Marsh marshals ample historical and empirical evidence to bolster his case.

MR Press author Jeb Sprague w/ Selma James and Danny Glover

February 20, 2024

Join Jeb Sprague, author of the forthcoming book Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti, for a teach-in with Selma James, Danny Glover, and others, at the Southern California Library in Los Angeles on Saturday, March 24.

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