On this Labor Day, perhaps it is time for all members of the world’s working class, to ask themselves, why is work so often a “torment,” an “affliction,” done under “compulsion”? Why does it feel as if our bosses are “persecuting” us? Why does it wreck our bodies? Why does it seem so meaningless? It certainly doesn’t have to be and was not for most of our time on Earth…. | more…
…From the employer’s point of view, our labor power is simply a commodity, no different than the inanimate buildings, machines, tools, and raw materials purchased by businesses. Given our circumstances, we must sell this commodity to survive. But after we do, the employer has no guarantee that our capacity to toil will be converted into actual work effort. Workers have always resisted their commodity status… | more…
MR editor John Bellamy Foster’s The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2020) was the recipient of the Paul Sweezy Outstanding Book Award of the Section on Marxist Sociology of the American Sociological Association for 2022… | more…
War comics, with a democratic twist, seem to be coming of age … again. The Lincoln Brigade is a good if imperfect contribution. | more…
Heinrich’s close attention to the original German, contrary to many anglophone scholars, is another element of his textual approach that strengthens the accuracy of the interpretation…..to say that “How to Read Marx’s ‘Capital’” is not only for first-time readers may be to state the obvious. It is a commentary that is straightforward in its exposition and indispensable for beginners, yet still challenges those who have already long dedicated themselves to a study of ‘Capital’…. | more…
…we are also the only commodity that can disrupt production and halt the flow of profits that makes growth possible. Workers have always protested their commodity status, rioting, forming labor unions, building political organizations, even fomenting revolution…. | more…
…until I read ‘The Return of Nature’ half a century later, I knew nothing of this or of the way Tansley’s ‘ecosystem approach’ drew so much from Marxist ideas… | more…
“Work Work Work: Labor, Alienation and Class Struggle,” by Michael Yates, new, from Monthly Review Press! Read for excerpts from the introduction and first chapter… | more…
‘Capital’ was Marx’s dreaming fargazing, his Here Comes Everybody, a condition, he thought, where all countries were headed, his image of everybody’s future…. | more…
Stay tuned for more details: On July 18th, Ben Wilkins, the editor of Anne Braden Speaks and Director of Raise Up The South will be joined by Rosalyn Pelles of Repairers of the Breach and former Director of the National Rainbow Coalition during the Jesse Jackson campaign, and the renown public intellectual and author of Freedom Dreams. | more…
Employers want your body. They want your mind, too. When you can’t work anymore, you’re disposable. I want people to think about their work and their lives. Maybe they’ll be inspired to take some action… | more…
white Americans largely fell into three groups concerning the issue of annexation, Dr. Horne told Insider. One group supported removing Black Americans from the mainland to remove any reminders of slavery. Another group supported removing Black Americans because they didn’t want the US to become a multiracial republic. And a third group wanted to keep Black people on the mainland because they were a cheap labor supply…. | more…
Labour organizers have every interest in getting wise to how pensions work and making sure they can transmit this information to the membership in a way that steels them for the fights ahead. This will undoubtedly be a book they refer to for years to come as the capitalist crisis increases | more…