Monthly Review Press

America's Education Deficit and the War on Youth reviewed in the Progressive Populist

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.

Back in Print! The Longer View: Essays Toward a Critique of Political Economy by Paul Baran

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.

Gerald Horne interviewed on Democracy Now!

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.

Magnus Hirschfeld: The Origins of the Gay Liberation Movement reviewed in PopMatters

February 20, 2024

For those whose knowledge of the gay rights movement begins with Stonewall—or worse, with the fight for marriage equality—Ralf Dose's short but well-researched monograph Magnus Hirschfeld: The Origins of the Gay Liberation Movement (originally published in German as Magnus Hirschfeld: German, Jew, Citizen of the World, 2005) comes at a propitious moment, when the State grudgingly hallows the LGBTQ community with the dubious privilege of matrimony.

NEW! From Solidarity to Sellout: The Restoration of Capitalism in Poland by Tadeusz Kowalik

February 20, 2024

In the 1980s and 90s, renowned Polish economist Tadeusz Kowalik played a leading role in the Solidarity movement, struggling alongside workers for an alternative to "really-existing socialism" that was cooperative and controlled by the workers themselves. In the ensuing two decades, "really-existing" socialism has collapsed, capitalism has been restored, and Poland is now among the most unequal countries in the world. Kowalik asks, how could this happen in a country that once had the largest and most militant labor movement in Europe?