So many put their puts hopes into Syriza; so many were bitterly disappointed. Greece’s Coalition of the Radical Left proved wholly unable to resist the enormous pressures put on it and it is Greek working people who are paying the price, not excepting those who voted for Syriza. ¶ How should we analyze the depressing spectacle of what had been a genuinely Left party, indeed a coalition of leftist forces from a variety of socialist perspectives, self-destructing so rapidly? The simplistic response would be to wash our hands and condemn Syriza as “opportunists,” but we’ll learn exactly nothing with such an attitude…… | more…

Anti-capitalism needs a viable political party. Whether it’s a big one, like the Democratic Party—which Bernie Sanders’ supporters are hoping to influence and dreaming, perhaps, of taking over—or a robust third party that’s openly socialist, it’s clear that without a party that operates in conjunction with left movements, it will be difficult to achieve goals like Medicare for All, free higher education, student loan forgiveness, environmental and climate protection, and substantially shrinking the military and the vast prison system…. ¶ That is precisely what several essays in Rethinking Revolution advocate.… | more…

A new influenza pandemic is quite possible, according to a study by researchers at the University of NSW’s School of Public Health. The study notes that 19 different influenza strains have affected humans in the last 100 years, but the speed with which new strains have emerged has increased over the past 15 years. There have been seven new strains in the past five years alone. ¶ In Big Farms Make Big Flu, published last year by Monthly Review Press, Rob Wallace agreed a pandemic is not just more than likely, it is probable, and echoes the necessity to prepare. But his focus is to identify why the rate of new virus strains has increased, which he sees as basic to how to effectively plan containment.… | more…

As the Anthropocene advances, people across the red-green political spectrum seek to understand and halt our deepening ecological crisis. Environmentalists, scientists, and ecosocialists share concerns about the misuse of natural resources, but often differ on explanations and solutions. Some blame environmental disasters on overpopulation. Some ask if all this worry about climate change and the ecosystem might lead to a “catastrophism” that weakens efforts to heal the planet. Ian Angus responds to these concerns in A Redder Shade of Green, with a fresh, insightful clarity, bringing socialist values to science, and scientific rigor to socialism.… | more…

Irish author Helena Sheehan recently traveled to the United States for a tour of her new book, The Syriza Wave: Surging and Crashing with the Greek Left. There, she appeared, with Natalie Jeffers, Black Lives Matter UK activist, on The Laura Flanders Show to discuss whether social movements can actually stick to their promises after they’re elected to power—and what might be learned from Greece’s current government of Syriza, which ran against austerity and ended up imposing it.… | more…

Large congratulations for their fine work go to:
Stefano Longo, Rebecca Clausen, and Brett Clark, who won the 2017 Paul M. Sweezy Marxist Sociology Book Award from the American Sociological Association for their book, The Tragedy of the Commodity: Oceans, Fisheries, and Aquaculture, which was based on their 2014 article in MR magazine, “Capitalism and the Commodification of Salmon”…… | more…

Black Perspectives is hosting an online roundtable on Gerald Horne’s wide-ranging scholarly contributions to African American history and the black radical tradition. “Gerald Horne’s Black Radical History” will assemble a diverse group of scholars to reflect on pressing themes in black history’s global reach. It begins on Monday, June 5, 2017 and concludes on Saturday, June 10, 2017. During this week-long forum, each scholar will address various aspects of Horne’s scholarship, including his books on slavery, Caribbean history, and transpacific black history, along with his biographies, and works on W. E. B. Du Bois.

The forum will feature essays by Yuichiro Onishi (University of Minnesota,

“The English working class ‘did not rise like the sun at an appointed time. It was present at its own making.’ In frequently quoted lines from the preface to The Making of the English Working Class (1780-1832), E.P. Thompson endeavored to ‘rescue the poor stockinger, the Luddite cropper, the “obsolete” hand-loom weaver, the “utopian” artisan, and even the deluded follower of Joanna Southcott, from the enormous condescension of posterity.’ ¶ More broadly, Thompson sought to elucidate class as a historical phenomenon that involved changing human relationships over time, rather than being a static structure or simple category of analysis….”… | more…

Salvage, a startling new quarterly of revolutionary arts and letters, brings us “Ragpicking Through History: Class Memory, Class Struggle and its Archivists,” an article by Tithi Bhattacharya, in which James Boggs’s The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker’s Notebook receives notice…… | more…

For unions in corporate America, it’s always been hard times. Even in labor’s heyday—the 1940s, ’50s, and ’60s—unions had to struggle for everything. Plus, back then organizers risked being tarred as stooges for Moscow. ¶ Historian James Young makes those points clear in his readable new book Union Power: The United Electrical Workers in Erie, Pennsylvania. But the book offers more than history—it’s instructive, showing how a progressive union can survive in the incredibly hostile and toxic environment of corporate America.… | more…