Category: Monthly Review Press /

“Marxists are best placed to write an autobiography”: Helena Sheehan explains why “Navigating the Zeitgeist” is more than a memoir

February 20, 2024

Why write an autobiography? Who do I think I am? Why should anybody be more interested in my life than anyone else’s life? … I’m not a celebrity. I haven’t starred in Oscar-winning movies getting reviews of mesmerising performances…. ¶ I’ve lived a life that was not headline-making, but not totally obscure either, as an activist, academic and author…”

Ireland’s Independent Left reviews Helena Sheehan’s “Navigating the Zeitgeist”

February 20, 2024

Sheehan's autobiography is an important book, not just for documenting her times and the very interesting circles she moved in but in allowing the reader to explore in some depth a crucial question for us all: how do I know my current belief system is right?

“Massacres at Home and Abroad”–John Marciano via Counterpunch

February 20, 2024

On August 5, former President Obama released a powerful statement in response to the latest gun massacres in Gilroy, El Paso, and Dayton that left scores dead and wounded—including children…

“Karl Marx’s Ecological Socialism” is a Guide for Today’s Struggle: Socialist Alternative reviews Saito’s book

February 20, 2024

Too many socialists, even among those who like to see themselves as revolutionary Marxists, have been sadly late in discovering and understanding the ecological analysis of capitalism’s irreparable metabolic rift ...

New! “The Lie of Global Prosperity: How Neoliberals Distort Data to Mask Poverty and Exploitation”

February 20, 2024

“We’re making headway on global poverty,” trills billionaire philanthropist Bill Gates. “Decline of Global Extreme Poverty Continues,” reports the World Bank. “How did the global poverty rate halve in 20 years?” inquires The Economist. Seth Donnelly answers: “It didn’t!”...

Racism, capitalism, organized crime: Why MLToday reviewed Gerald Horne’s “Jazz and Justice”

February 20, 2024

“Capitalism turns art into product, which is put on the shelf with other products...As soon as capitalism enters the equation, there's no caring about the artistic properties that jazz as a music makes available..."--Julian Priester, trombonist

ICE Raids Benefit Bosses by Creating Fear in Workers: David Wilson via Truthout

February 20, 2024

David L. Wilson writes frequently about immigration and the cruelties of detention for Truthout. Here, he explains why more arrests will help neither immigrant or nor U.S.-born workers: what working people really need is an end to the raids.

Red Green Labour reviews “Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism” by Kohei Saito

February 20, 2024

This exceptionally clear and well-researched book is based on Saito’s dissertation, originally in German, and incorporates the results of his study of as-yet unpublished manuscripts and excerpt notebooks compiled during the last fifteen years of Marx’s life....

“Something we hardly find in biographies”–Heinrich’s “Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society” reviewed by The News on Sunday

February 20, 2024

Michael Heinrich’s biography of Karl Marx captures what most biographies reduce merely to a background mention: contemporary conflicts, struggles and disputes that engaged Marx at the time when he was writing as well as his complex relationships with a varied range of friends and opponents….

Ian Angus on the Politics of Ecosocialism, via REBEL

February 20, 2024

Marx and Engels were deeply concerned about capitalism’s destruction of the natural world, including river and urban pollution, and the degradation of the soil that all life depends on. For them, the word ‘socialism’ included those concerns and the need to overcome them. But in the 20th Century, most socialist organisations treated such matters as secondary...