The International Monetary Fund, part of the Bretton Woods Agreement that helped establish the current rules of the U.S.-dominated international capitalist system, claims to aim for a world of prosperity through so-called free trade. In Latin America, David Barkin and Juan Santarcángelo write, the IMF has contributed to the impoverishment of the working class and destruction of these countries’ ecological legacies. But what does the future hold for the IMF in Latin America? | more…
In a December 2023 interview with the Wall Street Journal, Richard Haass, former special assistant to H. W. Bush, declared that the world has descended into a “new world disorder,” lamenting the long-lost dream of unending U.S. hegemony. This month’s “Notes from the Editors” reflects on not only Haass’s recent statements, but his longstanding advocacy of an “Imperial America” designed to ensure U.S. domination on the world stage. | more…
Named one of “five of the best science picks” on Nature
“Cuba’s future must, by necessity, be a future of scientists,” Fidel Castro proclaimed in 1960. As Agustín Lage Dávila shows in this pathbreaking book, Cuba has in fact become a global leader in both the generation and application of scientific knowledge—as demonstrated by its ubiquitous production of socially useful products, from vaccines and medicines, to organic food. Speaking from his position as a noted Cuban immunologist, Dr. Lage shows how Cuba achieved such prominence, positing that the training of its scientists, their scientific practices, and their relationships with the Cuban people are
Paul Burkett’s death on January 7, 2024, at age 67, means that the world is suddenly bereft of the figure who played the leading role over the last three decades in developing a Marxist ecological economics in the face of the growing planetary crisis. His loss leaves ecological Marxism without its foremost exponent of the ecological critique of capitalist value relations. It also means the loss of a warm and compassionate human being, and a beloved jazz musician. | more…
Christian Noakes tells the story of the struggle to liberate jazz from the exploitative, white-controlled music industry in 1950s and beyond. Recounting the seminal events of the movement and backlash from white civil society, Noakes reveals a legacy of Black cultural autonomy and resistance led by such jazz legends as Charles Mingus, Max Roach, Eric Dolphy, Bill Dixon, and others. | more…
This lyrical vignette from the recently departed Paul Burkett is the author’s final, posthumously published piece for Monthly Review. In it, the eminent ecological economist and jazz musician muses on the nature of creativity, technology, and the corporatization of music—and the struggle to decommodify it, freeing musicians and their craft from the confines of capitalism. | more…
Scrutinizes possibilities for an equalised global order, in light of recent conflicts between the world’s major powers
The “post-Cold War era is definitively over,” asserted US President Joe Biden as he launched the new National Security Strategy, warning in late 2022 that “a competition is underway between the major powers to shape what comes next.” American leadership, the document declared, would be more necessary than ever to define “the future of the international order,” insisting that the US must marshal its unparalleled economic, military, and diplomatic resources to confront its rivals.
Socialist Register 2024: A New Global Geometry? takes stock of momentous changes
John Bellamy Foster discusses the past and present state of U.S. nuclear policy, asserting that its reliance on belligerent approaches endangers the entire world. “Only a minimalist, as opposed to a maximalist, approach to nuclear arms can put humanity on the road to nuclear disarmament,” he writes, concluding that “the answer lies in a worldwide shift away from dying capitalism to…complete socialism.” | more…
There is a paradox, Benjamin Selwyn and Charis Davis write, at the heart of corporate veganism in the Global North. While vegan products are sold to consumers as environmentally conscious alternatives to meat and dairy, the world’s largest producers of such products are rapacious, ecologically destructive, and exploitive of populations in the Global South. The authors argue that a turn toward socialist veganism can advance the goals of decommodifying and democratizing our food system. | more…
Deciphers the history of “Black capitalist” rhetoric— and how it serves to enrich a minuscule few at the expense of the many
In his 1970 book The Myth of Black Capitalism, Earl Ofari Hutchinson laid out a rigorous challenge to the presumption that capitalism, in any shape or form, has the potential to rectify the stark injustices endured by Black people in America. Ofari engaged in a diligent historical review of the participation of African Americans in commercial activity in this capitalist country, demonstrating conclusively that the creation of a class of Black capitalists failed to ameliorate the extreme inequity faced by African Americans. Even “Buy Black”
