Category: Monthly Review Press /

Health care beyond neoliberalism?–Social Theory & Health reviews “Health Care Under the Knife”

February 20, 2024

That capitalist medicine prioritises the generation of surplus value over the health of populations should be obvious to any critical student or scholar in the field, but where Waitzkin and colleagues depart from this basic assumption is in demonstrating the political economy of health in the current phase of neoliberalism where, for example, the processes of financialization have eclipsed material production….

“If Not Now, When? Finding a feminism for 2020”–Zillah Eisenstein via NYU Press

February 20, 2024

I ask us all to think as imaginatively as possible in these next several months before the first primaries. I see these current thoughts as a continuance of the challenge thrown out by me in my recent book Abolitionist Socialist Feminism, to think boldly about how we find the newest anti-racist feminisms that can mobilize for the 2020 election and beyond.

Lying to pretend things are OK: ResoluteReader looks at “The Lie of Global Prosperity”

February 20, 2024

The end of 2019 has seen a growing ‘global revolt’ in countries as varied as Hong Kong, Chile, Iraq, Ecuador, Catalonia and Lebanon. Seth Donnelly's new book is not about these revolts, but is an explanation of the dynamics that have driven the impoverishment of the Global South and how the ruling class seeks to justify things....

“30 Years Later: Another View of the Fall of the Berlin Wall”–Victor Grossman, via Portside

February 20, 2024

Berlin — Media jubilation reaches a climax on November 9th, thirty years after the bumbling, perhaps even misunderstood decision to open the gate for all East Germans to stream through, hasten to the nearest West Berlin bank for their ‘welcome present’ of 100 prized West German marks, and taste the joys of the western free market system....

“A left-wing memoir to treasure”–Twentieth Century Communism reviews Helena Sheehan’s “Navigating the Zeitgeist”

February 20, 2024

Much of the interest in Sheehan’s life-story has concentrated upon her journey from being a young nun in Philadelphia in the early 1960s to her joining the ‘Official’ IRA and subsequently the Communist Party of Ireland (CPI) in the 1970s. Her own text, Portrait of a Marxist as a Young Nun(published in the mid-1990s), has helped to focus readers’ attention upon this unusual trajectory.

“More liberty than bourgeois society can reach”: Socialism & Democracy reviews “Culture as Politics: Selected Writings of Christopher Caudwell”

February 20, 2024

Ever since he died fighting for the Republican cause in Spain in February 1937, there has been a recurring critical debate about the work of Christopher Caudwell. Indeed, between 1950 and 1951 there was what came to be known as ‘the Caudwell controversy’ where leading members of the British Communist Party, of which Caudwell was a member, debated in the pages of The Modern Quarterly whether Caudwell was really an orthodox Marxist or just a bourgeois idealist....

“Of interest to all radicals and political gossips”–Dublin Review of Books considers “Navigating the Zeitgeist”

February 20, 2024

Autobiographies are tricky things. The memoir can ground the writer in external events or situations and provide an objective rationale. The autobiography places oneself at the centre of the narrative and is an act of whopping self-regard that demands a weighty justification...

New! “Shamrocks and Oil Slicks: A People’s Uprising Against Shell Oil in County Mayo, Ireland”

February 20, 2024

Shell promised wonderful things.... But when the citizens of County Mayo realized what Shell actually intended to do, they rose up. Shamrocks & Oil Slicks tells the story of County Mayo—the fishermen, farmers, teachers, business people—who, motivated by love for their environment, their community, and their country, fought one of the planet’s most powerful destroyers to a standstill.

In no way a Stalinist apologist: Counterfire reviews “A Socialist Defector”

February 20, 2024

Many people have always doubted the starkness of the good West, evil East narrative. Perhaps as a result, since the collapse of the Stalinist states of eastern Europe, a concerted effort has been made to reinforce the notion that the East German state, the German Democratic Republic (DDR), in particular, was a dystopian police state morally equivalent to the Nazi regime...

“Magisterial Biography”: Morning Star reviews Heinrich’s “Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society”

February 20, 2024

In a short appendix to this first of what is to be a multi-volume biography of Karl Marx — which is bound to become a referential touchstone for any subsequent treatment of his life and works — Michael Heinrich examines how biographical writing is possible today and the reader should start with this essay in order to recognise the intentions and detailed scope of his treatment of Marx through his childhood and youth from 1818 to 1841...