Category: Monthly Review Press /

WATCH: 50 YEARS OF DEPENDENCY THEORY

February 20, 2024

This year, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the publication of The Dialectics of Dependency, Monthly Review Press released the first-ever English translation of Ruy Mauro Marini's classic – one of the most important texts in the field of Latin American Dependency Theory. An event celebrating its release was held in mid September at The People's Forum, featuring Cristóbal Reyes (representing his advisor Jaime Osorio), Phethani Madzivhandila, Chris Gilbert and Andy Higginbotham, and co-hosted by Joseph Mullen and Jaime Osorio's coeditor, Amanda Latimer.

Novel as biography (Radek reviewed in ‘Against the Current’)

February 20, 2024

In his 1995 novel Radek, published in English translation for the first time last year by Monthly Review Press, Stefan Heym portrays Karl Radek as not only a man of the world but a perpetual outsider — a socially awkward contrarian with stereotypically Jewish features, thick glasses and a big mouth. In this, Heym likely saw in Karl Radek something of a kindred spirit.

The Fault in Our SARS in the news

February 20, 2024

As usual Rob Wallace has made the media rounds, this time with his latest book, The Fault in Our SARS. Listen and watch!

A history which is far from over (The War Against the Commons reviewed in ‘Counterfire’)

February 20, 2024

Capital’s war against the commons continues today in the Global South, as does resistance to it. The removal of the people from the land to work in industrial cities is also part of the mechanism which creates the metabolic rift, one of the reasons for capitalism’s inherent environmental destructiveness. The route to overcoming this does not lie in individuals or communities returning to an idealised communal past. As Angus says, this has been the expectation of utopian communal groups since the Diggers established themselves on St George’s Hill in 1649...

How capitalism was born in ‘robbery, violence and fraud’ (The War Against the Commons reviewed by ‘Socialist Worker’)

February 20, 2024

As Marx wrote, the common rights “were simply redefined as crimes: poaching, wood-theft, trespass”. The war against the commons removed the rights for people to hunt, forage, collect firewood and more. Game laws put restrictions on the poor, where you were criminalised even “if you took one hare when your family was starving”. The rich enclosed lands to hunt for sport, while the poor could be sentenced to death for hunting deer...

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