Monthly Review Press

An Important Appeal from Robert W. McChesney

February 20, 2024

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

February 20, 2024

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

February 20, 2024

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

February 20, 2024

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 by LSE Review of Books

February 20, 2024

Steve Early is a well-known commentator on the complex world of US trade unionism. His analyses are often provocative and always well-informed as he has worked in and around the US labour movement for more than 40 years. This is his third book since he retired from the Communication Workers of America (CWA) union. Evidently he is a man who intends to use the freedom of retirement to stir up debate... Early is passionate about working people having the opportunity not only to have a say in their working lives, but to act as a countervailing power to corporate America.

Save Our Unions reviewed by the Association for Union Democracy

February 20, 2024

Does Steve Early exist? Or is his the brand name for a syndicate of crack labor journalists who in James Thurber's words "get the story and write the story," but write it from the perspective of working people. That's a talent that often unappreciated, even by many unions. And, yes, he exists.

Save Our Unions reviewed in Jacobin

February 20, 2024

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

February 20, 2024

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

February 20, 2024

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

February 20, 2024

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.