Three years after the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, a number of its core organizers projected a new stage of the struggle for equality — expanding and deepening it, creating the economic and social foundations needed to realize Martin Luther King’s dream. Their program, “A Freedom Budget for All Americans,” was issued by the A. Philip Randolph Institute in fall 1966. In his foreword, King called the document “a moral commitment to the fundamental principles on which this nation was founded.” Chances are you’ve never heard of it. | more…

Despite recent efforts to efface its history through the practice of renaming, the area of mid-west Manhattan that real estate agents now call the Clinton Historic District (or even ‘Clinton Heights’) remains – to many existing residents and to the popular imagination at large – Hell’s Kitchen. Just how and why this moniker and all that it conjures have stuck is part of the story that Joseph Varga tells in Hell’s Kitchen and the Battle for Urban Space, a nuanced and theoretically-sophisticated history of the social relations and spatial imaginaries that produced this area in the turbulent decades from 1894 to 1914. Though this period of American urban history – the era of Progressive reform – has received considerable attention from historians, Varga adds a much-needed dimension to the discussion by engaging directly with critical spatial theory. The result is not just an eminently readable history of Hell’s Kitchen, but a fascinating example of how ‘taking space seriously’ can alter our historical understandings and perspectives in powerful ways. | more…

Just in time for the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Paul Le Blanc and Michael D. Yates explain the origins of the Freedom Budget, how it sought to achieve “freedom from want” for all people, and how it might be re-imagined for our current moment. Combining historical perspective with clear-sighted economic proposals, the authors make a concrete case for reviving the spirit of the Civil Rights Movement and building the society of economic security and democratic control envisioned by the movement’s leaders—a struggle that continues to this day. | more…

What does it mean to live in a “bad neighborhood”? How do urban dwellers themselves produce urban space as history, in the changing modes of perception, in the shifting conceptual ideas that are literally the result of the numerous encounters with the everyday physical paths, nodes, and routes. Here in urban laboratories like New York’s Hells Kitchen, we see the actual creation of the Progressive Era reformer, forged in the encounter with the space of tenement life. We see the emergence of a new politics, of an urban working class aware of its role as object of study, performing the routine of urban “problem” by insisting that their collective voice be heard. We see the space itself being produced in everyday use, and altered by the demands of economy, of culture, of politics, spaces that then act themselves, framing the new conceptual ideas that would drive future restructurings. | more…

In mainstream economics capitalism as a theoretical construct has been replaced by the free market economy, which has been declared the ultimate arbiter of public policy. It is little wonder that the very academic and business economists charged with developing a practical understanding of the economy went into shock when the Great Recession hit. In their world such an event was simply not theoretically possible. Into this breach step Foster and McChesney, continuing the tradition of Monthly Review, with their analysis of the contradictions of monopoly-finance capital. This book provides a clear explanation of why the Great Recession occurred and how the crash constituted a wide-scale failure that was entirely predictable. | more…

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. | more…

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. | more…

(Alan Wieder is the author of Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War against Apartheid, new from MR Press.) There were five South African launches for my new book on freedom fighters Ruth First and Joe Slovo – Bloemfontein, Johannesburg, two in Cape Town, and finally Port Elizabeth. It was the latter that provided a political education for the present. Earlier in our day in Port Elizabeth our host, Allan Zinn, had taken us to the northern campus of Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in the Missionvale Township. We witnessed over 500 high school students participating in a Nelson Mandela day workshop on conflict resolution and the difference between debate and dialogue. | more…

You have that friend. You know, the well-intentioned liberal who thinks that by recycling your Coca Cola cans and composting your GMO fruits and vegetables, all of the sudden, everything will be okay. Capitalism? “Well, we can’t escape that,” they say “So I’m just going to keep drinking Naked Juice and wearing an obscene amount of patchouli.” Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster’s “What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism,” is a remedy for this quixotic crusader. A “Citizen’s Guide to Capitalism and the Environment,” Magdoff and Foster write with great lucidity the case against a “green capitalism.” | more…

The Economic War Against Cuba: A Historical and Legal Perspective on the U.S. Blockade, Race in Cuba: Essays on the Revolution and Racial Inequality, and One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution, all recently published by Monthly Review Press, are reviewed by Dominic Alexander for Counterfire. | more…

Jeb Sprague is the author of Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti from Monthly Review Press. Political dysfunction on the Island of Hispaniola is rife, mired in clientelist networks (as in the Dominican Republic) and the blatant manipulation of elections (as in Haiti). Whereas the populations are interlocked in many ways, historical divisions remain and are readily exploited by dominant national and transnational groups. | more…

While not covering the entirety of Marxism today, Monthly Review, since its inception, has been carrying on some of the best works of Marxism today. The foundations for this type of analysis was set out by the economists Paul Baran, Paul Sweezy, and Harry Magdoff. Truly insightful analytic and theoretical works like Monopoly Capital and Magdoff’s work on Imperialism (along with Harry Braverman’s work on Labor and Monopoly Capital) help bring Marx’s political-economic insights into the twentieth and twenty-first centuries… John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney continue this strong tradition of analytically sharp Marxian political economy. | more…

Join author Alan Wieder for a discussion of his new book, Ruth First and Joe Slovo in the War against Apartheid, at one of these locations in the U.S. and London. This engaging and richly detailed work recounts the extraordinary lives of First and Slovo, their contributions to the anti-apartheid struggle, and their sometimes tumultuous relationship. | more…