Hitting the mark: “Grand Theft Capital”, by Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster
October 27, 2026
The latest: Red Pepper's David Matthews picks six of the best new books for leftists...Category: Reviews /
In Chicago in November? August Nimtz’ “‘Black Marxism’: A Marxist Critique”
October 27, 2026
The latest, an interview by Constantin Berlin, for Jacobin: "The recently published collection, 'Black Marxism: A Marxist Critique,' makes accessible, for the first time, a critique that spans four decades and addresses Robinson’s claims and those made by his followers by putting forth an authentic Marxism as the most reliable method for human liberation in the real world and explaining why it remains the guiding principle for the transracial class struggle today...."
The latest on Gabriel Rockhill’s “Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism?”
October 16, 2026
The latest: "...social democratic outlets such as Jacobin (18 April 2026) have reduced Rockhill’s analysis to a crude and simplistic narrative: that the CIA simply paid off these academics and effectively invented various opportunist trends. Detractors of Rockhill’s work have also disingenuously presented this caricature as Rockhill’s actual analysis...."
Ian Angus’ “Metabolic Rifts”
September 8, 2026
Featured review: "Severed Universal Metabolism and Predatory Logic: Groundwork for an Ecosocialist Critique of Capitalism" by Varun Wigmal (INSEE Journal); "The bulk of the book is an attempt to explain the core concepts of ecological Marxism and political ecology by detailing the metabolic processes vital to Earth’s systems. In Chapter 10, Angus discusses the carbon cycle’s breakdown—which is driving climate change—and in Chapter 11, he describes how industrial agriculture is pumping nitrogen into Earth’s systems faster than any natural process through fertilizers, disrupting the nitrogen cycle. Angus proposes a radical reduction in the use of nitrogen and chemical fertilizers as a solution to environmental damage, and envisions a time when it will be possible to feed people without them. These chapters are the strength of Angus’ book. They demonstrate how Marxists should use science to understand the complexity of the damage inflicted by capitalism on the Earth’s systems and develop viable solutions based on the idea of hope without optimism, i.e., confronting adversity rather than denying it
Matthew Stanley’s “The Ragged Edge of Freedom”
August 13, 2026
The latest, from Paul Buhle: "Abolitionists and social reformers of all kinds, with a wide Yankee following augmented by many recent German immigrants, sought to take things beyond the uneasy accommodation of white populations to each other across existing political lines. In Wisconsin and in Chicago most notably, these would include “Abe’s Boys” enrolling in the army of the Union. Not so in the Southern Illinois, two hours’ drive from my hometown. The whites who immigrated northward from the near South, largely uneducated and lacking skills, came to be considered almost a species in themselves...."
John Bellamy Foster’s “Breaking the Bonds of Fate”
August 12, 2026
The latest: The title of John Bellamy Foster’s latest book "derives from Lucretius’s famed De Rerum Natura, usually translated as On the Nature of Things. Lucretius wrote: “Again, if all movement is always interconnected, the new arising from the old in a determinate order – if the atoms never swerve so as to originate some new movement that will break the bonds of fate, the everlasting sequence of cause and effect – what is the source of the free [will] … .” ([On the Nature of Things,] Book II, 251ff) This exact quotation, moreover, was one made by Karl Marx in his Epicurean Notebooks, compiled in preparation for his doctoral thesis: “The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature” of 1841. From this point of departure, Foster initiates the reappraisal of two thousand years of philosophical controversy...."
Steve Cushion’s “Slavery in the British Empire and its Legacy in the Modern World”
July 8, 2026
The latest: "Guyana Institute of Historical Research Nineteenth Conference 2026: There is a public park in the North London borough of Brent named after Sir William Gladstone, the former Liberal Prime Minister, who had spent many years using Dollis Hill House as his weekend retreat...."
Andy Merrifield’s many books, from “Roses for Gramsci” to “Marx, Dead and Alive”
July 2, 2026
The latest: "....Is 'subaltern' a code for the working classes? Is 'hegemony' an economic force or a cultural power? Are 'organic intellectuals' inherently more progressive? The answers to such questions depend upon your choice of scholar—whether, say, you’re reading a Foucauldian literary critic or a Marxist sociologist, a subaltern historian or a posthuman anthropologist. Over the years, Gramsci’s writing has been polished by critics of such diverse persuasions that it has now become a mirror: One opens his books only to confirm one’s own beliefs....when the English writer Andy Merrifield arrived in Rome, feeling 'washed out intellectually,' Gramsci came to the rescue...."
Eric Chester’s “Silencing Fighting Bob: The Attack on Antiwar Progressives During the First World War”
July 1, 2026
The latest: ""....To keep track of the multitudinous political figures and organizations featured in the book, the author helpfully provides a glossary of detailed biographical and organizational profiles. It was an age prolific especially of government acronyms and of faceless bureaucrats charged with keeping Americans as misinformed as possible about the true state of the world. Eric Chester has written an ambitious book about momentous government initiatives to quell antiwar opposition...."The Digital Mask of Class Power (Forthcoming: “Digitalization in India”)
March 31, 2026
The latest: "What has happened in the 15 years when digitalisation was expected to clean up systems, make governments more efficient, make services more inclusive, reduce poverty, and reduce dependence on the state and reduce inequality? Okay, that last was perhaps never said to have been on the agenda, but it should have been. The articles brought together by the Research Unit in Political Economy (RUPE) analyse, through field surveys and policy documents, the experience of those whom the system has so far failed to serve…."