It has been almost 10 years since the death of the Harvard paleontologist and evolutionary biologist Stephen Jay Gould at the relatively early age of 60. Gould was not only a major figure in the life sciences, he was also one of the great popularizers of science. He wrote a monthly column for Natural History magazine from 1974 to 2001, generating exactly 300 essays that explained complex scientific ideas without oversimplifying them. Ten collections of Gould’s popular articles, together with several other books aimed at a general audience, were best sellers, making him one of the best-known scientists of his generation. A year before his death, he was named a “living legend” by the U.S. Library of Congress. What makes Gould of particular interest to readers of this journal is that his scientific views were informed in interesting ways by his radical politics. | more…

I just had the pleasure of reading an important new book entitled, Cocaine, Death Squads and the War on Terror: U.S. Imperialism and Class Struggle in Colombia. This book, which was ten years in the making, is written by Oliver Villar & Drew Cottle and published and published by Monthly Review. The premise of the book is that, despite the U.S. claims that it is engaged in a war against drugs in Colombia, it is in fact engaged in an anti-insurgency war against the left-wing FARC guerillas – a war which does not seek to eradicate coca growing and cocaine production in Colombia at all. | more…

People in the United States may not be as rabidly anti-immigrant as we’ve been led to believe. An article posted on the Center for American Progress website in December, “The Public’s View of Immigration,” summarizes five recent U.S. opinion polls. Authors Philip E. Wolgin and Angela Maria Kelley find that while the media and the politicians frantically call for the mass deportation of “illegals,” a majority of U.S. adults don’t favor the idea of removing all 11 million of the country’s unauthorized immigrants. And while immigrant rights advocates don’t dare use the word “amnesty,” the polls show a majority of the population supporting some form of legalization for many or most of the undocumented — in other words, they support an amnesty. | more…

Anthony DiMaggio is a social justice activist who has written a timely book on the myths and realities of the Tea Party, with its ties to corporate and GOP interests, and sheen of a grassroots social movement. He disentangles big money and media errors of fact in The Rise of the Tea Party: Political Discontent and Corporate Media in the Age of Obama (Monthly Review Press). DiMaggio carefully looks at the reporting on the Tea Party and flawed assumptions. They yield mistaken conclusions. | more…

On February 12, 1937, Christopher Caudwell, a Marxist scholar and revolutionary, was killed by fascists in the valley of Jarama during the Spanish Civil War. He died at a machine gun post, guarding the retreat of his comrades in the British Battalion of the International Brigade. He was 29.  | more…

Of the many statistics in Steve Brouwer’s book, Revolutionary Doctors: How Venezuela and Cuba are changing the World’s Conception of Health Care, one in particular stands out. There are more students, about 73,000, in medical school in Cuba and Venezuela, with a combined population of 39 million people, than there are in the whole of the US with a population of 300 million. And they are all educated and trained for free. Many of them will go to Bolivia, Haiti and other countries in order to “to serve the poor, heal the afflicted and make a better world”. | more…

On 3 September 2011 Samir Amin celebrated his 80th birthday. Amin is a consistent and irrepressible exponent of the development of Marxism in his chosen discipline, International Political Economy. His long and fruitful career of intellectual struggle has been marked by a series of publications and re-publications, including the five books under review. | more…

The most important thing that has taken place since Wisconsin is another uprising, the phenomenal Occupy Wall Street (OWS). It began in Manhattan’s Zuccotti Park in September 2011 and spread rapidly to more than 2,600 towns and cities around the world. With OWS, the anger over growing inequality and the political power of the rich that has been bubbling under the surface for the past several years has finally burst into the open. Suddenly, everything seems different, and a political opening for more radical thinking and acting is certainly at hand. | more…

Each of us read Steve Brouwer’s Revolutionary Doctors (MR Press, 2011) the same week the media reported average gross fee-for-service earnings of Manitoba doctors at $298,119. The media also reported, again, that many Canadians do not have access to a family doctor; that some specialists are in short supply; and that health conditions in many Aboriginal communities are appalling. While we are fervent supporters of Canada’s Medicare system, we think there is much to be learned about health care from Brouwer’s book. | more…

Join MR Press authors Fred Magdoff and William Camacaro for a discussion on food sovereignty and Venezuela following a screening of the film Growing Change at Howard University in Washington DC.  | more…

He was an unabashed Marxist in theory and practice. A socio-historical approach clarified the concrete realities of his place and time: post-World War I and the Russian Revolution amid poverty and inequality. In hindsight, we know this systemic social problem birthed a financial panic and global Great Depression. Editors and translators Harry E. Vanden and Marc Becker divide Mariátegui’s writing into nine sections, including one at the end that has his writing on women, feminism and politics. He links their emancipation to human liberation in no uncertain terms. | more…

Anthony DiMaggio, author of The Rise of the Tea Party, discusses his book, the state of the Tea Party today, the Occupy movement, and more, on History for the Future Radio with Kevin Brown, WRCT-Pittsburgh 88.3 fm.  | more…

Join David Newby, Michael Zweig, Stephanie Luce, and Rand Wilson for a party and discussion celebrating the publication of Wisconsin Uprising: Labor Fights Back, at Stony Brook Manhattan in New York City.  | more…