Monthly Review Press

Meticulous study of ecological scholarship: ISA reviews “The Return of Nature”

February 20, 2024

John Bellamy Foster’s ground-breaking Marx’s Ecology in 2000 demonstrated that Marxism, from the beginning, dealt with ecological questions. Its long-awaited sequel, The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology, developed these ideas from the deaths of Marx and Darwin to the 1960s, tracing a continuous thread of dialectical thinking about the environment. It is a meticulous study of the co-evolution of socialism and ecology citing a huge wealth of sources, including the significant contributions of Engels, the 'Left Darwinist' Ray Lankester, and the Romantic Marxist, William Morris...

Time Talks–so does Gerald Horne: about “The Dawning of the Apocalypse”

February 20, 2024

Chris Time Steele, host of Channel Zero's podcast Time Talks, and Gerald Horne, author of dozens of histories of white supremacy--most recently The Bittersweet Science: racism, racketeering and the political economy of boxing, discuss Dr. Horne's The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century...

Left Voice reviews Rob Wallace’s “Dead Epidemiologists” + This Is Hell interviews Rob Wallace

February 20, 2024

DOUBLE HEADER: "A must-read for anybody who wishes to truly understand Covid-19...." AND listen to Rob Wallace talking recently with Chuck Mertz on This Is Hell...

New! “Marx, Dead and Alive: Reading ‘Capital’ in Precarious Times”

February 20, 2024

Karl Marx saw the ruling class as a sorcerer, no longer able to control the ominous powers it has summoned from the netherworld. Today, in an age spawning the likes of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, our society has never before been governed by so many conjuring tricks, with collusions and conspiracies, and endless sleights of the economic and political hand. And yet, contends Andy Merrifield, as our modern lives become ever more mist-enveloped, the works of Marx can help us penetrate the fog. In Marx, Dead and Alive—a book that begins and ends beside Marx’s recently violated London gravesite—Merrifield makes a spirited case for a critical thinker who can still offer people a route toward personal and social authenticity...

Left Socialist Blog reviews “Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society”

February 20, 2024

“'A man dressed like Karl Marx' Michael Heinrich observes 'would hardly arouse attention walking through the streets of Paris of London today.' Some biographers assert that Marx was a product of a past epoch, the early 19th century 'increasingly distant from our age.' (Jonathan Sperber 2013) By contrast the first volume of a projected account of Marx’s life sees his reflections on the 'epochal rupture' that created modern capitalism, to be, if more arresting than his clothing, recognisably part of today’s world....”

“Stop Centering White People”–Zillah Eisenstein via Portside

February 20, 2024

"Stop centering white people—there are so many other newer faces to see and they are already here..." Zillah Eisenstein, author, most recently, of Abolitionist Socialist Feminism: Radicalizing the Next Revolution, has, in the wake of the presidential election, written "The New US: While Calling Out Trump White Women" for Portside, a leftist news aggregator and alternative communication medium...

“Reconstructing Lenin” beyond the lies and distortions: LeftEast interviews Tamás Krausz

February 20, 2024

Tamás Krausz, author of Reconstructing Lenin: An Intellectual Biography, recently talked to Alex Anfruns of LeftEast about the premise of Krausz’s book, which asserts that Vladimir Lenin’s theoretical and political legacy is of real interest to the political left--and that only after the disappearance of the USSR can we better understand Lenin's thought and actions...

Marx & Modern Society: Journal of the History of Ideas interviews Michael Heinrich

February 20, 2024

In 2019, Michael Heinrich published Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society: The Life of Marx and the Development of His Work. It was the first installment of a biography slated to stretch across three volumes. Kathrin Witter interviewed Heinrich about his book for the Journal of the History of Ideas...

Crafting a revolutionary healthcare system–NACLA reviews 2 books on Cuban Health Care

February 20, 2024

The Right to Live in Health and Cuban Health Care, when read together, historicize Cuba’s pathbreaking medical system. ... While observers often focus on Cuba’s health infrastructure and policies, Rodríguez and Fitz instead emphasize consciousness and ideology. These two books show that throughout the twentieth century, Cubans voiced new demands and prioritized specific values, and, as a result, crafted a revolutionary healthcare system...

“Colossal intellectual undertaking”: Irish Marxist Review on John Bellamy Foster’s “The Return of Nature”

February 20, 2024

"John Bellamy Foster is a U.S.-based writer and lecturer whose works are essential reading for all revolutionaries and environmentalists. Over two decades, Foster has produced an immensely important body of work, and alongside a small number of others (like Ian Angus), has clarified and rescued Marxist thinking on key environmental issues in the age of climate catastrophe..."