Category: Monthly Review Press /

Engels on Ecology: Against the Grain talks to John Bellamy Foster

February 20, 2024

C. S. Soong, host of Against the Grain (KPFA/94.1 FM) talks with John Bellamy Foster, author, most recently, of The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology. To what extent did Frederick Engels engage with environmental and ecological issues? When Engels wrote about the dialectics of nature, what did he mean by “dialectics”? According to Foster, Engels’s insights into ecology, dialectics, and the environmental conditions of the working class were, and remain, critically important...

Spend February 14 with a book you’ll love: Socialist History Society launches “The Return of Nature” by John Bellamy Foster

February 20, 2024

Twenty years ago, John Bellamy Foster’s Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature introduced a new understanding of Karl Marx’s revolutionary ecological materialism. More than simply a study of Marx, it commenced an intellectual and social history, encompassing thinkers from Epicurus to Darwin, who developed materialist and ecological ideas. Now, with The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology, Foster continues this narrative. In so doing, he uncovers a long history of efforts to unite issues of social justice and environmental sustainability that will help us comprehend and counter today’s unprecedented planetary emergencies….

Portrait of the philosopher as a young man: Michael Heinrich’s biography of Marx, Vol. I

February 20, 2024

Michael Heinrich’s projected biography of Marx that is supposed to consist of four volumes is an extraordinary ambitious undertaking. Only the first volume “Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society” has been published so far. It covers the years before Marx’s birth (because it deals with his parents) and goes up to his doctoral dissertation done in 1841, when he was 23. The biography is extraordinary ambitious for three reasons....

Still “a communist”–good man! Weekly ☭ Worker reviews Grossman’s memoir of socialist defection

February 20, 2024

He hoped that, if he kept his head down and his mouth shut, then he could live out his military career in peace and quiet. Conscription had been renewed for Korea, but he was fortunate enough to be sent to Germany. This was also the time of peak McCarthyism....

New! “Value and Crisis: Essays on Marxian Economics in Japan” (2nd ed.)

February 20, 2024

About the time of the First World War, when interest in Marxist theory was virtually nonexistent in the United States, rival schools of thought in Japan emerged, and brilliant debates took place on Marx’s Capital and on capitalism as it was developing in Japan. Forty years ago, Makoto Itoh’s Value and Crisis began to chronicle these Japanese contributions to Marxist theory. Now, in a second edition of Value and Crisis, Itoh deepens his study of Marx’s theories. The promise of these theories has not waned. If anything—considering the failure of Soviet-style socialism and the catastrophe of neoliberalism—it grows daily.

Washington’s lethal war against the world: UK’s Morning Star reviews Prashad’s “Washington Bullets”

February 20, 2024

In Guatemala, Congo, Vietnam, Korea, Indonesia, Haiti, Chile, Brazil, Argentina, Yemen, Sudan, Grenada, Nicaragua, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Angola and so many other countries, Washington’s bullets have been deployed in the pursuance of regime change, the protection of US hegemony and opposition to the emergence of truly sovereign post-colonial nations, all in flagrant violation of international law....

Meticulous study of ecological scholarship: ISA reviews “The Return of Nature”

February 20, 2024

John Bellamy Foster’s ground-breaking Marx’s Ecology in 2000 demonstrated that Marxism, from the beginning, dealt with ecological questions. Its long-awaited sequel, The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology, developed these ideas from the deaths of Marx and Darwin to the 1960s, tracing a continuous thread of dialectical thinking about the environment. It is a meticulous study of the co-evolution of socialism and ecology citing a huge wealth of sources, including the significant contributions of Engels, the 'Left Darwinist' Ray Lankester, and the Romantic Marxist, William Morris...

“Walking through the door of a global clash”: ResoluteReader on “Dead Epidemiologists”

February 20, 2024

While I was recommending his earlier book, Wallace himself was being bombarded with requests for interviews, articles and speaking engagements. Out of that came this excellent new book. Dead Epidemiologists is a collection of material that grapples with the big questions around Covid-19 - its origins, the failure of capitalist governments to deal with it and the way the disease exacerbates existing social, political and economic fractures in society....

Biden’s COVID Plan Is Better Than Trump’s, But Still Far From Sufficient: Rob Wallace via Truthout…

February 20, 2024

Presuming Donald Trump’s electoral defeat will lead to little more than some revenge firings, a parade of pardons for any Trump fixers still standing, and a practice run at the mechanics of a rightist coup for next time, what does a Biden administration promise us come January 2021?...

Eric Chester & Mitch Jeserich on the Suppression of Speech in WWI, with Implications for a Biden Presidency

February 20, 2024

Eric T. Chester, author of the recently released Free Speech and the Suppression of Dissent During World War I, talked to Mitch Jeserich, host of KPFA's Letters and Politics, about the legacy of dissent, what happens when the United States works to suppress it, and how this might play out in light of the oncoming Biden administration...