February 20, 2024
MR Press author John Tully discusses his book Silvertown: The Lost Story of a Strike that Shook London and Helped Launch the Modern Labor Movement in this interview on "Nights," a program broadcast by Radio New Zealand.
February 20, 2024
This is a long overdue account of an important struggle in London's East End in 1889 with many parallels and lessons for workers today. It was part of a wider upsurge of workers' struggles that led to a rebirth of the trade union movement, and to the creation of independent working-class political representation in the form of the Labour Party. John Tully explains why this strike has largely been lost in the annals of the labour movement – unlike the famous Bryant & May matchgirls' strike of 1888 and the London dock strike which was still on as the Silvertown strike started.
February 20, 2024
Labor law is outdated and rotten in the US, corporations have an inordinate amount of power, so it is rare that unions win or even strike these days. Solid activist leadership in our unions is rare in these last decades of concessionary bargaining and the sustained war on the working class. The lack of a class perspective by many Americans makes them susceptible to the ugliest sorts of manipulation against their own interests. Steve Early has seen much of it and described it in a clear-eyed fashion in his latest book, Save Our Unions: Dispatches from a Movement in Distress (Monthly Review 2013). It should be read by unionists and their supporters and the more than 60% of Americans who pollsters say would like to be unionized.
February 20, 2024
Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, a long-time contributor to and friend of Monthly Review, will be discussing her new book An Indigenous Peoples' History of the United States at Bluestockings Books in New York City, on Thursday, September 25, 7pm.
February 20, 2024
Question 1: Both your new book Save Our Unions: Dispatches From a Movement in Distress - and your previous one, The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor - draw on your experience as a union negotiator and longtime single payer activist. In 2008, liberal foundations, major unions, and the AFL-CIO created and financed Health Care for American Now! (HCAN). This lobbying coalition had a name similar to ours but it soon distanced itself from the goal of single payer. In retrospect, what impact did HCAN have on labor's quest for a better health care system?
February 20, 2024
In connection with the events this month there is a new book out by Paul Le Blanc and Michael D. Yates, A Freedom Budget for All Americans. This is published by Monthly Review Press, is due for print in September (I have the uncorrected proof, which Paul Le Blanc was kind enough to send me). Bayard had been very concerned that the March would not lead to the next steps, which he felt should be an effort to put forward a political and economic program to give the civil rights movement a "floor", a program for full employment ... It is good to have two socialist thinkers sketch out not only the history of the original Freedom Budget, but also give us an updated look at what such a budget might look like today.
February 20, 2024
This book examines the historical record of globalization and restores agency to the capitalists, policy-makers, and politicians who worked to craft a regime of world-wide exploitation. It demolishes their neoliberal ideology – already on shaky ground after the 2008 financial crisis – and picks apart the record of trade agreements like NAFTA and institutions like the WTO. But, crucially, Hart-Landsberg also discusses alternatives to capitalist globalization, looking to examples such as South America's Bolivarian Alliance for the Americas (ALBA) for clues on how to build an international economy based on solidarity, social development, and shared prosperity.
February 20, 2024
In America's Education Deficit and the War on Youth, Henry A. Giroux focuses on the dysfunctional nature of US culture and politics. Giroux offers an alternative to the corporate-teaching model prevailing in US K-12 schools now. To this end, he analyzes mainstream assumptions and conclusions about the social purpose of education. He terms our present moment as an era of "casino capitalism." In this time of an ultra-rich minority calling the cultural and political shots, Giroux is a vital voice against corporate education reformers that talk progress for students and fund tests that restrict classroom curriculum and subvert critical thought.
February 20, 2024
These essays by the author of The Political Economy of Growth and co-author of Monopoly Capital cover the working range of a strong and original mind. They are as diverse as his well-known discussion of Marxism and psychoanalysis, and his expert handling of the politics and economics of development. The themes of Baran's major works were expressed in these shorter essays with a vigor and personal style that preserves much of the flavor of Baran's day-to-day reflections. They display, as John O'Neill says in his introduction, "a breadth of sociological and economic analysis which represents a unique conquest of mind in its ability to situate itself in an environment where disorientation and abdication threaten many social thinkers." Edited with an introduction by John O'Neill and with a preface by Paul M. Sweezy.
February 20, 2024
Gerald Horne is the author of Race to Revolution: The U.S. and Cuba During Slavery and Jim Crow, new from Monthly Review Press. He was interviewed on Democracy Now! discussing this and another new book, The Counter-Revolution of 1776: Slave Resistance and the Origins of the United States of America.
