February 20, 2024
Gerald Horne's latest book is an ambitious transnational history of the United States and Cuba from the 1700s to the 1959 Cuban Revolution. It focuses on the shared and interconnected histories of slavery, the slave trade, Jim Crow, and the struggles against these oppressive systems in the two regions.
February 20, 2024
Reconstructing Lenin: An Intellectual Biography By Tamás Krausz 552 pp, $34 pbk Reviewed by Corinna Lotz “… So what shaped Lenin to become the man he did? Krausz firmly places... READ MORE
February 20, 2024
Many environmentalists disdain the ideas of Karl Marx. Some tout the spiritual virtues of environmental ‛ideals.’ Some argue for individual solutions like recycling, reduced consumption and “going back to the land.” Anti-communists claim that the ecological crimes of the Stalinist-era USSR flowed from Marxism itself. John Bellamy Foster’s Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature counters all these ideas. It is a dense and intricate analysis of Marxist theory, its historical and scientific foundations, and how central ecological concerns are to it.
February 20, 2024
If you're in Los Angeles, please stop by
Eso Won Bookstore
4327 Degnan Blvd., LA, CA 90008
Wednesday, February 3, 7:00 - 9:00 p.m.
February 20, 2024
The working class of Cuba played a much more decisive role in the Revolution than previously understood. Steve Cushion contends that significant portions of the Cuban working class launched an underground movement in tandem with the guerrillas operating in the mountains. From illegal strikes to sabotage to armed conflict with the state, workers' efforts helped clinch the Revolution's victory. A fresh and provocative take on the place of the working class in Cuban history.
February 20, 2024
Left Forum is the largest annual gathering of the broad Left in the United States. Each year thousands of conference participants come together to discuss pressing local, national, and global issues; to better understand commonalities and differences, and alternatives to current predicaments; or to share ideas to help build social and political movements to transform the world. Left Forum 2015 drew 4,000 participants for 400 panels and events. Recent speakers include Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Harry Belafonte, Arundhati Roy, Naomi Klein, Michael Moore, Bolivian Vice President Álvaro García Linera, Slavoj Zizek, Marina Sitrin, Amy Goodman, Immortal Technique, and Grace Lee Boggs.
February 20, 2024
Far-right forces are on the move in and out of the US. Socialist Register 2016: The Politics of the Right, edited by Leo Panitch and Greg Albo, delivers crisp analyses of this trend.... A recurring theme in the book is the process of political centrism drifting to the right. This move enhances authoritarianism, a cultural feature of modern politics in the post Sept. 11 era.... Hard right politics dovetails with policing of national minorities. Lesley Wood outlines three related trends: “intelligence-led policing, community policing and strategic incapacitation protest policing,” which confront movements such as Black Lives Matter, pushing back for public control over this state function.
February 20, 2024
My interests cluster around understanding and exposing both global power structures and alternatives to the existing system. I approach this from the point of view of someone who wants to help create a socio-economic and political system worthy of humanity’s best inclinations. This would be a society and civilization without racial, class, sexual and gender divisions and conflicts, one based on authentic democracy, equality, civil freedoms, respect for the natural world, generous social arrangements, empathy, peace, social justice, and solidarity.
February 20, 2024
Continuing our series of book reviews in time for the holiday gift-giving season, here’s a quick look at Michael Perelman’s Railroading Economics, a title, and a subject, that intrigued me for two reasons. Trivially, as readers know, I’m by way of being a rail fan; more importantly, when I was a mere sprat, I read Matthew Josephson’s Robber Barons. Josephson’s tales of Jim Fisk watering the stock of the Erie Railroad — 'Gone where the woodbine twineth' was Fisk’s answer to where the money went — and his running buddy Jay Gould — 'I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half' (attributed) — trying to corner the gold market would inoculate anyone from belief in the ideology of 'perfect competition.' They certainly did me.... This is a long and complicated story, and Perelman tells it well.
February 20, 2024
News stories and academic studies generally focus on the decisions made by presidents, prime ministers, and other world leaders. But where do those options decided upon come from in the first place? Why are some options never even considered? Behind the scenes, think tanks play a large part in what policies are considered by central governments. In the U.S., the most influential think tank of them all is the Council on Foreign Relations. From the 1920s right up until today, the CFR has been shaping policies, advising presidents, and helping ensure the U.S. remains the dominant superpower in the world.
