February 20, 2024
Salim Lamrani is the author of The Economic War Against Cuba. On May 26 he discussed the history, impact, and possible demise of the U.S. imposed economic sanctions against Cuba at Secular Hall in Leicester, UK. The event was a joint meeting of the Leicester Cuba Solidarity Campaign and the Leicester Secular Society and part of a UK speaking tour organized by the Cuba Solidarity Campaign.
February 20, 2024
Harry E. Vanden and Marc Becker are well known for their important contributions to the study of Latin American Marxism, Latin American revolutionary politics and Jose Carlos Mariategui's thought. Their new joint contribution is a volume that makes available to English readers a considerable number of Mariategui's shorter texts... Mariategui, an undoubtedly gifted journalist, political author and literary critic, offers readers engaging and rich perspectives—mainly but not exclusively Latin American and Marxist ones—on some of the main issues that concerned European and Latin American progressive public opinion at the time. These translations are a welcome and useful aid for all engaged in teaching Latin American history and literature, the history of socialist ideas, indigenismo, world history, third world studies and so on.
February 20, 2024
Nancy Stout is the author of One Day in December: Celia Sánchez and the Cuban Revolution. In this in-depth interview, Stout discusses Sánchez's life, her role in the Cuban revolution, and her relationship with Fidel Castro. The interview was conducted by Hazel Kahan for her Tidings podcast and WPKN in Bridgeport, CT.
February 20, 2024
The following is Joan Stone's Foreword to Dispersed City of the Plains by Harris Stone, his final book, published by Monthly Review Press in 1998. It provides a little context for the book's creation and insight into Harris's major aim: examining "the built form of the American city, the built form of monopoly capital."
February 20, 2024
Clairmont Chung is the editor of Walter A. Rodney: A Promise of Revolution, published by Monthly Review Press, and director of the film W.A.R. Stories: Walter Anthony Rodney. He discusses the life and legacy of revolutionary and scholar Walter Rodney with C.S. Soong on KPFA's Against the Grain radio program.
February 20, 2024
Few figures rival Ronnie Kasrils in personifying South Africa's revolutionary trajectory from the day the armed struggle was launched in 1961 through to the messy, post-Apartheid present. Almost twenty years ago, no less a figure than Rusty Bernstein declared of Kasrils and the African National Congress's armed wing, "You can cover the whole history of Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) in the life and adult adventures of Ronnie Kasrils." This year, activist scholar Patrick Bond noted that Kasrils is Africa's "highest-profile white revolutionary."...The Unlikely Secret Agent – his biography of his late wife, Eleanor – suggests however that Kasrils' achievements are woven into his relationships. Even a cursory reading of this book provides often surprising insights into the material, political and emotional resources that South African revolutionaries drew on to resist the burgeoning Apartheid state of the 1960s.
February 20, 2024
For much of the 20th century, there was a curious mirror effect between orthodox Soviet and Chicago School ideologies — both saw the other as the only other possible economic system. Although both time and the ongoing global crisis of capitalism has begun to chip away at such a ridiculous binary, to a maddening degree this ideological straitjacket continues to assert itself. A straitjacket that does not spontaneously materialize but is crafted for the maintenance of power.
February 20, 2024
Many people will be aware that our economy is in trouble. And many will also be aware that it will stay in trouble for some time to come. The British government keeps on pushing its austerity agenda, which, in addition to wrecking the lives of hundreds of thousands of families and individuals who have their benefits slashed, further sucks demand out of the economy, making a speedy recovery increasingly unlikely. The developments in mainland Europe are similar. As European leaders force austerity policies on indebted countries, the outlook for the people across the continent is grim, and many will indeed think that what we have been living through since 2007 is an 'endless crisis'.
February 20, 2024
The 2013 edition of Socialist Register is titled The Question of Strategy. However, because of the themes which this edition addresses, it could be titled 'What is to be Done?' The editors have designed this volume in conjunction with the Registers for 2011 and 2012. The aim of those two volumes was to analyze the global financial and economic crisis. The 2013 volume extends that analysis, but offers a more concentrated focus on the 'choices faced by the Left today, the models of strategy available to it, and the innovations that are being made by groups as they organize in diverse
settings.'
February 20, 2024
Nancy Stout is interviewed about her new biography of the Cuban revolutionary Celia Sánchez, One Day in December, on Vancouver Cooperative Radio. Click here to listen to her conversation with Mordecai Briemberg of the Redeye Collective.
