Monthly Review Press

José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology reviewed in Z Magazine

February 20, 2024

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.

Revolutionary Doctors reviewed by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives

February 20, 2024

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.

Read Michael Yates's afterword to Wisconsin Uprising on CounterPunch

February 20, 2024

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.

Revolutionary Doctors reviewed on A World to Win

February 20, 2024

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".

75 Years after the Death of Christopher Caudwell

February 20, 2024

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.

The Rise of the Tea Party reviewed in The Progressive Populist

February 20, 2024

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.

Fred Magdoff at Occupy Boston [VIDEO]

February 20, 2024

On October 30, Fred Magdoff spoke at Occupy Boston, as part of the Howard Zinn Memorial Lecture Series. His talk draws on his new book What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know about Capitalism (written with John Bellamy Foster). Watch the video here

Thoughts on the Tea Party: Interview with Anthony DiMaggio

February 20, 2024

The problem with the Tea Party "movement" is that its members' anger gets manipulated by a small group of partisan and media elites who are essentially Republican Party operatives. This is the dirty little secret of the Tea Party; it's not really a social movement, but a cluster of elitist interest groups operating locally and nationally, which is quite lacking in participatory elements, and largely driven by a top-down approach, determined and dictated by Republican partisan officials and business elites of the Koch variety.

NEW! The Rise of the Tea Party by Anthony DiMaggio

February 20, 2024

In this definitive socio-political analysis of the Tea Party, Anthony DiMaggio examines the Tea Party phenomenon, using a vast array of primary and secondary sources as well as first-hand observation. He traces the history of the Tea Party and analyzes its organizational structure, membership, ideological coherence, and relationship to the mass media. And, perhaps most importantly, he asks: is it really a movement or just a form of "manufactured dissent" engineered by capital? DiMaggio's conclusions are thoroughly documented, surprising, and bring much needed clarity to a highly controversial subject.

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