Monthly Review Press

Monthly Review at the Left Forum: NYC, May 30 to June 1

Monthly Review at the Left Forum: NYC, May 30 to June 1

Join Monthly Review and many others from around the world at this year's Left Forum conference at John Jay College, the City University of New York, May 30 to June 1. Left Forum is the largest annual gathering of left activists and scholars in the United States. This year's theme is "Reform and/or Revolution: Imagine a World of Transformative Justice." Please click here for more information on MR-sponsored and related panels, and don't forget to visit the Monthly Review Press table for discounts on a wide range of MR Press titles, new and old!

"Bold New Era or Hard Times for Organized Labor?" Steve Early & Manny Ness in NYC

"Bold New Era or Hard Times for Organized Labor?" Steve Early & Manny Ness in NYC

Join us for a discussion of workers' movements in the U.S. and abroad with Steve Early and Manny Ness on Wednesday, June 4, 6:30 to 8 P.M. at the NWU/UAW Hall in New York City. Former CWA organizer Steve Early is the author of Save Our Unions: Dispatches From A Movement in Distress and Manny Ness, professor of political science at Brooklyn College/CUNY is the editor of New Forms of Worker Organization.

An Important Appeal from Robert W. McChesney

An Important Appeal from Robert W. McChesney

Dear Friend of Monthly Review: In the past few years world conditions have changed far more than most people realize. Since the financial collapse of 2007–2008, capitalism has entered a period of pronounced stagnation. The dismal recovery of the past six years is no longer to be regarded as a temporary adjustment; it is the new normal. What this means for the great mass of people in the United States and the globe is also clear: increasing poverty and unemployment; gaping increases in inequality; tremendous downward pressure on wages and benefits; collapsing infrastructure and decline in public services; systematic political corruption; environmental degradation in the pursuit of profit; and endless militarism. Capitalism is a system that gives every sign of being on its last legs. It is eating the future to stay alive today.

Henry Giroux interviewed in CounterPunch

Henry Giroux interviewed in CounterPunch

Henry Giroux is the author of America's Education Deficit and the War on Youth, published by Monthly Review Press. He is interviewed by C. J. Polychroniou, who writes for Eleftherotypia in Greece. "What we have seen in the United States and a number of other countries since the 1970s is the emergence of a savage form of free market fundamentalism, often called neoliberalism, in which there is not only a deep distrust of public values, public goods and public institutions but the embrace of a market ideology that accelerates the power of the financial elite and big business while gutting those formative cultures and institutions necessary for a democracy to survive."

Steve Early interviewed in Working In These Times

Steve Early interviewed in Working In These Times

Steve Early is the author of Save our Unions, published by Monthly Review Press. He is interviewed by Mike Elk for Working In These Times, who writes: "At time when the labor beat was disappearing from mainstream publications, Early's writing formed a valuable body of work that inspired many young writers—myself included—to stick with the profession through its highs and lows."

NEW! Global Imperialism and the Great Crisis: The Uncertain Future of Capitalism by Ernesto Screpanti

NEW! Global Imperialism and the Great Crisis: The Uncertain Future of Capitalism by Ernesto Screpanti

In this provocative study, economist Ernesto Screpanti argues that imperialism—far from disappearing or mutating into a benign "globalization"—has in fact entered a new phase, which he terms "global imperialism." This is a phase defined by multinational firms cut loose from the nation-state framework and free to chase profits over the entire surface of the globe. No longer dependent on nation-states for building a political consensus that accommodates capital accumulation, these firms seek to bend governments to their will and destroy barriers to the free movement of capital. And while military force continues to play an important role in imperial strategy, it is the discipline of the global market that keeps workers in check by pitting them against each other no matter what their national origin.

Save Our Unions reviewed in Jacobin

Save Our Unions reviewed in Jacobin

It has been Steve Early's fate to chronicle in excruciating detail the decline of the labor empires that grew up in the flush years that followed the World War II — a task he takes up in his new book Save Our Unions: Dispatches From a Movement in Distress.... Union activists concerned with these questions should read Early's book for essential background on this ongoing crisis of the US labor movement.

Lettuce Wars reviewed in the Huffington Post

Lettuce Wars reviewed in the Huffington Post

The author of Lettuce Wars has produced a most compelling work. It will be of particular interest to other former "colonizers" who got active in the labor movement in the 1970s as members of various left-wing groups, including the RCP. Lettuce Wars should be also be read by their younger, union-backed counterparts, who are now "salting" non-union hotels, warehouses, and fast food joints in the pursuit of goals more modest than world revolution.

"Bold New Era or Hard Times for Organized Labor?" Seattle MRP event w/ Steve Early and Arun Gupta

"Bold New Era or Hard Times for Organized Labor?" Seattle MRP event w/ Steve Early and Arun Gupta

Is this a Bold New Era or Hard Times for Organized Labor? Find out at a Monthly Review Press book event and discussion of workers' movements in the U.S. and abroad, on Monday, May 5, 7 P.M., at Elliott Bay Books in Seattle! Meet former CWA organizer Steve Early, author of Save Our Unions, and Arun Gupta, contributor to In These Times and Registering Class, the 2014 edition of Socialist Register. Singers from the Seattle Labor Chorus will perform!

NEW! Magnus Hirschfeld: The Origins of the Gay Liberation Movement by Ralf Dose

NEW! Magnus Hirschfeld: The Origins of the Gay Liberation Movement by Ralf Dose

Magnus Hirschfeld (1868-1935) was one of the first great pioneers of the gay liberation movement. This biography, first published to acclaim in Germany, follows Hirschfeld from his birth in the Prussian province of Pomerania to the heights of his career during the Weimar Republic and the rise of German fascism. Ralf Dose illuminates Hirschfeld's ground-breaking role in the gay liberation movement and explains some of his major theoretical concepts, which continue to influence our understanding of human sexuality and social justice today.