Back in 1989, with the Berlin Wall about to fall, I enjoyed a long and leisurely dinner with Joe Slovo at his Lusaka home. The youngest of his three daughters, Robyn, popped in, but mostly it was just Joe, his friend Pallo Jordan and me, and it ended with a fine bottle of red wine. “A gift,” Joe said after absorbing our compliments, pausing for effect, “from Erich Honecker.” Jordan, an independent-minded leftist and no admirer of the ailing East German leader whose fortunes were taking a tumble, offered a raised eyebrow. I offered a nervous smile. Slovo burst into laughter, clearly relishing the irony of it all. | more…

The defeat of a union organizing election at the Volkswagen auto plant in Chattanooga, Tenn. this month has stimulated intense national scrutiny of the United Auto Workers (UAW). As labor’s friends and enemies debate over the places UAW leadership fell short in the campaign, journalist Steve Early’s new book, Save Our Unions: Dispatches From a Movement in Distress (Monthly Review Press) seems especially relevant. Though Early’s work doesn’t analyze the Volkswagen campaign itself—and makes only passing references to the UAW—the declining power of the country’s leading labor organizations is a consistent theme in his reporting. | more…

We’re pleased to announce two NYC events with Ralf Dose, author of Magnus Hirschfeld: The Origins of the Gay Liberation Movement. He will be speaking at the Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung on March 18 (joined by journalist Steven Thrasher) and at The Bureau of General Services—Queer Division on March 23. | more…

Martin Hart-Landsberg gives us a very clear account of the realities of globalisation, as well as a withering critique of the neo-classical economics behind it, in accessible and succinct form. There is even some debunking of key elements of classical economics, such as Ricardo’s theory of comparative advantage. The latter is vital to the argument that, in a context of international free trade, national economies will specialise in certain products for their prosperity … Like so many nostrums of bourgeois economics, the proof of this theory rests on a series of assumptions requiring an idealised state of affairs that never holds true in practice. | more…

It was the summer of 1969. I was living in San Francisco. I had just gotten a job with Pacific Bell, the West Coast telephone company. One afternoon, I was performing some routine maintenance when a shop steward walked up to me and said, “Put down your tools; we’re walking out.” I looked up, saw other workers heading for the exit, and dutifully followed. We gathered across the street from Pacific Bell building and milled around for a while. | more…

Steve Early’s insightful writing on employment struggles in a time of political retreat for most American workers captivates. In Save Our Unions: Dispatches from A Movement in Distress (Monthly Review Press, 2013), he shares riveting descriptions of workplace struggles. Early’s approach to labor journalism is simple. He questions the deeds and words of the power class, in and out of unions. His focus on internal union democracy is a recurring theme in the book’s seven sections. From health care to media, he goes where mainstream press coverage fears to tread. | more…

In 1889, Samuel Winkworth Silver’s rubber and electrical factory was the site of a massive worker revolt that upended the London industrial district which bore his name: Silvertown. Once referred to as the “Abyss” by Jack London, Silvertown was notorious for oppressive working conditions and the relentless grind of production suffered by its largely unorganized, unskilled workers. These workers, fed-up with their lot and long ignored by traditional craft unions, aligned themselves with the socialist-led “New Unionism” movement. Their ensuing strike paralyzed Silvertown for three months. Historian and novelist John Tully tells the story of the Silvertown strike in vivid prose. He rescues the uprising—overshadowed by other strikes during this period—from relative obscurity and argues for its significance to both the labor and socialist movements. | more…

Join Monthly Review Press author John Tully for the Launch of his new book Silvertown: The Lost Story of a Strike that Shook London and Helped Launch the Modern Labor Movement, on Wednesday, March 5, at The VU Bar at Footscray Park campus, Victoria University, Melbourne, Australia. He will be joined by distinguished historian Stuart Macintyre and Victoria University colleague Phillip Deery. | more…

Read an exclusive excerpt from historian John Tully’s new book, Silvertown: The Lost Story of a Strike that Shook London and Helped Launch the Modern Labor Movement, in which Tully describes living and working conditions in the Silvetown district of London leading up to a massive strike in 1889. | more…

…[A]n international movement that brings together the peoples of the global North and the global South, with a common goal of nationalizing the monopolies that currently have a stranglehold on the world’s economy and a commitment to “de-financialization” (a “world without Wall Street”) is not only possible but indispensable, argues Samir Amin in his latest book, The Implosion of Contemporary Capitalism. These would not be ends unto themselves, but rather the first necessary steps on a long road toward a sustainable and equitable future. | more…

In the context of rapid industrialization and globalization in Asia’s dynamic economies, Peter Custers’s book highlights the continuing relevance of Marxian theory to understanding the exploitation of women’s productive and reproductive work. At the same time, it critiques the silences in Marx’s work regarding the key role of women’s labor in the perpetuation of capitalism…In tracing the coevolution of capitalism and patriarchy and the different ways in which women are impacted by capitalist accumulation processes, Custers makes a noteworthy contribution to the causes of both Marxism and feminism. This book, with its rethinking of Marxist analysis to incorporate insights from feminist theories, would be a very worthy addition to the library of academics, researchers, and students of development alike. | more…

This collection includes the major writings of General Giap, who, on the evidence of his record as well as his theoretical work, has long been recognized as one of the military geniuses of modern times. The book includes writings from the 1940s to the end of the 1960s and is presented here with a valuable historical introduction by Russell Stetler. | more…

Value and Crisis opens with a long and highly informative essay on the development of Marxian economics in Japan, and contains a number of the author’s important and original contributions to this stream of thought. Itoh discusses the major points of view on Marx’s theory of value, on theories of crisis, and on problems of Marx’s theory of market value. The essays demonstrate a wide-ranging familiarity with all the major theoretical schools of Marxist thought. In dealing with theories of crisis, for example, Itoh succinctly summarizes and criticizes the points of view of Tugan-Baranovsky, Hilferding, Bauer, Kautsky, Bukharin, and Luxemburg, as well as Grossman, Sweezy, and the Japanese Marxist Kozo Uno, together with the relevant parts of Capital. The book includes a section on the 1930s Great Depression in the context of the theoretical discussion about crisis theory. | more…