Monthly Review Press

Thoughts on the Tea Party: Interview with Anthony DiMaggio

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

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.

Book Party with The People's Lawyer author Albert Ruben, NYC

Monthly Review Press, and Michael Ratner and Karen Ranucci, invite you to a special event celebrating the publication of The People's Lawyer: The Center for Constitutional Rights and the Fight for Social Justice, From Civil Rights to Guantánamo by Albert Ruben, in New York City, December 8.

Ben Dangl reviews MRP classic Let Me Speak!

Ben Dangl reviews MRP classic Let Me Speak!

The life experiences of Bolivian mining activist Domitila Barrios de Chungara traverse some of the most important and tumultuous events in 20th century Bolivian history. Her account of this life in the book Let Me Speak! offers a view from the trenches of militant, leftist organizing within the country labor movements and beyond.

The Science & Humanism of Stephen Jay Gould reviewed in Human Ecology Review

Undoubtedly, Stephen Jay Gould is one of the great thinkers of the Twentieth Century. Gould was a leading figure in the fields of evolutionary biology and paleontology, and made important theoretical and empirical contributions to those fields over his accomplished career. The Science and Humanism of Stephen Jay Gould, by sociologists Richard York and Brett Clark, broadly examines the philosophical underpinnings of Gould's work, and its application for understanding the interweaving relations among and between natural and social systems. This book provides a concise, yet remarkably thorough, survey of key aspects of Gould's powerful worldview and philosophy, applying a rich overarching analysis of a scientific perspective that reveals numerous insights into the complexity of nature and, compellingly, society.

The Devil's Milk reviewed on Counterfire

What is a commodity? On the face of it, simply an object. Marx pointed out however that it is really 'a very queer thing indeed, full of metaphysical subtleties and theological whimsies'. A commodity like rubber on the one hand contains all sorts of useful, non-reducible physical properties, and on the other, within a capitalist economy, is just the equivalent of a given quantity of money; it contains an abstract exchange value of a definite amount. Moreover, the individual commodity contains within itself all the natural and social processes which brought it into being as a discrete product, from the growth, in this case, of the rubber-producing tree, to its harvesting, transport and manufacture into commercial rubber.

The Ecological Rift reviewed in Earth Island Journal

There are more factors than climate change that threaten our existence on Earth. Scientists warn that it is only one of nine "planetary life-support systems" vital for human survival. The other boundaries are: global freshwater use, chemical pollution, ocean acidification, land use change, loss of biodiversity and the increasing extinction rate, ozone and aerosol levels in the atmosphere, and the nitrogen and phosphorus cycles that regulate soil fertility.

The Ecological Rift reviewed in Marx & Philosophy Review of Books

In the last few decades, there has been a renewed interest in exploring issues of ecology and sustainability from a Marxist perspective. Partially inspired by the ecological movement more widely, partially by the revival of Marxist economic theory since the 1980s, the topic of 'Marx and ecology' has been given wide attention in a range of publications in recent years. All three of the authors of the present book have earned their stripes in this field of research, and in particular John Bellamy Foster has been influential in putting ecological questions on the agenda of socialist politics, a tradition that had hitherto often been hostile to the claims of (middle class) 'green' campaigners.