Category: Monthly Review Press /

Marciano: Steven Spielberg to direct another fantasy; this one about Walter Cronkite & the Vietnam War

Marciano: Steven Spielberg to direct another fantasy; this one about Walter Cronkite & the Vietnam War

February 20, 2024

The word out of Hollywood is that Steven Spielberg plans to direct a film about famed television commentator Walter Cronkite. According to Variety, it will highlight Cronkite’s protest against the War in Vietnam—especially ‘the role that he played in turning public opinion against the increasingly un-winnable conflict.’ So goes the myth. In reality, Cronkite never opposed the war itself; rather, he only came to question it after the Tet Offensive made it clear that the U.S. policy in Vietnam was not working.

Save the Georg Lukács Archive!

February 20, 2024

From the time the current rightist government in Hungary came into power, the archive of Georg Lukács–a preeminent Marxist of the 20th century–has been under a brutal attack. It has been gradually deprived of its subvention from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and of its ability to pay its staff. Now, the government threatens to sell the property on which it is located and disperse the archive.

Ian Angus’s Global Launch: Facing the Anthropocene

February 20, 2024

Watch Ian Angus at the Socialism for the 21st Century conference in Sydney, Australia, May 13, 2013, as he launches his new book, Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System.

Isn’t it time you faced … the Anthropocene?

February 20, 2024

Science tells us that a new and dangerous stage in planetary evolution has begun—the Anthropocene, a time of rising temperatures, extreme weather, rising oceans, and mass species extinctions. Humanity faces not just more pollution or warmer weather, but a crisis of the Earth System. If business as usual continues, this century will be marked by rapid deterioration of our physical, social, and economic environment. Large parts of Earth will become uninhabitable, and civilization itself will be threatened. Facing the Anthropocene shows what has caused this planetary emergency, and what we must do to meet the challenge. Bridging the gap between Earth System science and ecological Marxism, Ian Angus examines not only the latest scientific findings about the physical causes and consequences of the Anthropocene transition, but also the social and economic trends that underlie the crisis.

New! Samir Amin’s Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism

New! Samir Amin’s Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism

February 20, 2024

Out of early twentieth-century Russia came the world’s first significant effort to build a modern revolutionary society. According to Marxist economist Samir Amin, the great upheaval that once produced the Soviet Union also produced a movement away from capitalism—a long transition that continues today. In seven concise, provocative chapters, Amin deftly examines the trajectory of Russian capitalism, the Bolshevik Revolution, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the possible future of Russia—and, by extension, the future of socialism itself.

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