Category: Monthly Review Press /

New! “Free Speech and the Suppression of Dissent During World War I”

February 20, 2024

World War I, given all the rousing “Over-There” songs and in-the-trenches films it inspired, was, at its outset, surprisingly unpopular with the American public. As opposition increased, Woodrow Wilson’s presidential administration became intent on stifling antiwar dissent. Presidential candidate Eugene Debs was jailed, and Deb’s Socialist Party became a prime target of surveillance operations, both covert and overt. Drastic as these measures were, more draconian measures were to come. In Free Speech and the Suppression of Dissent During World War I, Eric Chester reveals that out of this turmoil came a heated public discussion on the theory of civil liberties—the basic freedoms that are, theoretically, untouchable by any of the three branches of the U.S. government.

New! “Dead Epidemiologists: On the Origins of COVID-19”

February 20, 2024

The COVID-19 pandemic shocked the world. It shouldn’t have. Since this century’s turn, epidemiologists have warned of new infectious diseases. Indeed, H1N1, H7N9, SARS, MERS, Ebola Makona, Zika, and a variety of lesser viruses have emerged almost annually. But what of the epidemiologists themselves? Some bravely descended into the caves where bat species hosted coronaviruses, including the strains that evolved into the COVID-19 virus. Yet, despite their own warnings, many of the researchers appear unable to understand the true nature of the disease—as if they are dead to what they’ve seen...

Marx, humanity and the rift in nature: Green Left reviews “The Robbery of Nature”

February 20, 2024

John Bellamy Foster’s Marx’s Ecology, published in 2000, brought awareness of Karl Marx and Fredrich Engel’s writings on and relevance to, environmental thinking. His latest work, The Robbery of Nature, written with Brett Clark, demonstrates the importance of understanding nature and society with a Marxist perspective....

UK’s Socialist Review considers Fosters and Clark’s “The Robbery of Nature”

February 20, 2024

The Robbery of Nature draws on and develops the theories of Marx and Engels to understand why capitalism has such a destructive influence on the natural world. Central to Fosters and Clark’s argument is that, under capitalism, human beings and the natural environment are the original sources of wealth, but it is only the labour of workers that generates value....

America’s settler colonialist roots explain how we see property rights: Gerald Horne on The Real News Network

February 20, 2024

Historian and author Gerald Horne, most recently, of The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century, talks with Jacqueline Luqman on The Real News Network about how the colonization of the United States helped create the American obsession with property rights and property damage over people's rights...

“The revolutionary life and times of Ruth First, and her legacy” by Ronnie Kasrils

February 20, 2024

Ronnie Kasrils, activist and the author of The Unlikely Secret Agent, the story of his wife as an underground agent for the African National Congress, recently wrote about anti-apartheid leader Ruth First, who was killed by a letter bomb on August 17, 1987. Kasrils's article about First, commemorating the 38th anniversary of her death, is based on a lecture he presented on 23 August 2020. It first appeared in Umsebenzi Online, an online voice of the South African working class...

Healthcare for the People–CounterPunch reviews “Cuban Health Care”

February 20, 2024

If they are paying attention, progressives worldwide know that Cuba provides healthcare that saves lives and prevents disease more effectively than does the United States, its major capitalist enemy. They know that Cuban health workers have been caring for people throughout the global South and, during the Covid -19 pandemic, in Europe too. And the word is out that Cuba educates vast numbers of physicians for much of the world…

Coastal fires, George Jackson, fascism: Gerald Horne on Diasporic Music/BlackPower96

February 20, 2024

If you’re living in a settler-colonialist society–which is virtually all of the Americas–the seeds of fascism have been implanted because of the violent uprooting of the Indigenous population that helps to create a culture of mega-violence… They really drank the kool-aid with regard this idea of the United States being this democracy with a sturdy constitution…

Red Library’s Cosmopod considers Kohei Saito’s “Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism”

February 20, 2024

Red Library: A Political Education Podcast for Today's Left offers a program called the "Lost Futures Series." In the latest podcast, Comrade Adam (a.k.a. Chairman Bane) joins podrades Remi and Niko from Cosmonaut's Ecology Cast series to discuss Kohei Saito's Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy. Included in the conversation: the concept of metabolism, Marx's evolution of thought on ecology being the core realm of capitalist crisis, agricultural chemistry, the role of a Marxist ecosocialist perspective to stop the destruction of capital across the planet, and more...

New York Labor History Association reviews Cal Winslow’s “Radical Seattle”

February 20, 2024

The Seattle General Strike lasted only five days, but people have been fighting over what it means for a hundred years. Cal Winslow raises this discussion to a new level. Sticking close to the workers themselves, he shows us why the strike matters....