Monthly Review Press

“Global ecologically sensitive socialism”: Left Unity reviews John Bellamy Foster’s “The Return of Nature”

February 20, 2024

"This brilliant book—which traces and establishes the link between socialism and ecology—couldn’t have come at a more appropriate time, given the ever-worsening Climate and Ecological Crises, and the mounting health and economic impacts of the closely-linked Covid-19 pandemic. As a result of these combined crises, more people than ever are accepting the need for some fundamental ‘System Change’..."

Maduro’s Government and the Left: CounterPunch looks at “Venezuela, the Present as Struggle”

February 20, 2024

“Nicolas Maduro’s government in Venezuela poses a unique dilemma for some on the left. They have criticisms of it, but decided against voicing them too obstreperously now, for the obvious reason that that could aid and comfort a mortal enemy–the most powerful military empire of all time, namely the United States...

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..."

New! “Crisis and Predation: India, COVID-19, and Global Finance”

February 20, 2024

With the advent of COVID-19, India’s rulers imposed the world’s most stringent lockdown on an already depressed economy, dealing a body blow to the majority of India’s billion-plus population. Yet the Indian government’s spending to cushion the lockdown’s economic impact ranked among the world’s lowest in GDP terms, resulting in unprecedented unemployment and hardship. Crisis and Predation shows how this tight-fistedness stems from the opposition of global financial interests to any expansion of public spending by India, and that Indian rulers readily adhere to their guidance...

The Thanksgiving Afterthoughts of Gerald Horne, via The Socialist Program w/Brian Becker

February 20, 2024

Gerald Horne, author of several books, including The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century, talked a few days ago to Brian Becker, host of The Socialist Program, about the story of the creation of Thanksgiving. This isn the first installment of an ongoing series where The Socialist Program examines the real origins of U.S. society...

North of Oxford looks at “Cuban Health Care: The Ongoing Revolution”

February 20, 2024

I am not a fan of the oppressive government of Cuba where there is no vote, no guarantee of freedoms we here in the United States take for granted. As with all the revolutions in the last century based on Marxist philosophy the Cuban revolution devolved into a cult of personality. Unlike the others, Russian elitism and Chinese embrace of corporate identity to support the establishment as opposed to utopia, Cuba did establish two elements foreign to other Marxist revolutions. Cuba established an outreach of medical care for the poor and rural and a literacy campaign to educate the population...

Ecology after Marx: Green Left reviews Foster’s “The Return of Nature”

February 20, 2024

The Return of Nature is essentially a sequel to John Bellamy Foster’s Marx’s Ecology published twenty years earlier. In this new work Foster examines the ecological thought of those who came after Karl Marx and were influenced by his philosophy, politics and ecology. ¶ Among the theorists that Foster examines, the ideas of socialism they held and their relations to the socialist movement were of various forms. But an important unifying thread which informed their ecological thinking is the materialist and dialectical critique that originated with Marx....

“The Horne Report” now weekly on Diasporic Music

February 20, 2024

Historian and author Gerald Horne can now be heard every Sunday on Diasporic Music, blackpower96.org, from 3:30 to 4:00pm, Eastern time. Here, he talks with Norman “Otis” Richmond (a/k/a Jalali) and Malinda Francis (a/k/a Mali Docuvixen) about world politics, from New Zealand to Mexico, adding in Ishmael Reed, Stanley Crouch, Brooklyn, and the antidemocratic aspects of jazz...