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… | more…

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… | more…

“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…” | more…

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… | more…

“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’…” | more…

“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… | more…

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… | more…

Gerald Horne, author of The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century, talked with Margaret Prescod of Sojourner Truth Radio about the current Ethiopia / Tigray conflict, its history, and its implications for the region… | more…

Presuming Donald Trump’s electoral defeat will lead to little more than some revenge firings, a parade of pardons for any Trump fixers still standing, and a practice run at the mechanics of a rightist coup for next time, what does a Biden administration promise us come January 2021?… | more…

Eric T. Chester, author of the recently released Free Speech and the Suppression of Dissent During World War I, talked to Mitch Jeserich, host of KPFA’s Letters and Politics, about the legacy of dissent, what happens when the United States works to suppress it, and how this might play out in light of the oncoming Biden administration… | more…

While I was recommending his earlier book, Wallace himself was being bombarded with requests for interviews, articles and speaking engagements. Out of that came this excellent new book. Dead Epidemiologists is a collection of material that grapples with the big questions around Covid-19 – its origins, the failure of capitalist governments to deal with it and the way the disease exacerbates existing social, political and economic fractures in society…. | more…

Historians Gerald Horne, author, most recently, of The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century and Nikki Taylor, author, most recently, of Driven Towards Madness: The Fugitive Slave Margaret Garner and the Tragedy on the Ohio, appeared last week on the first 36 minutes of The Real New Network’s new Marc Steiner Show. They talked about the history of–and resistance to–fascist violence against Indigenous and Black communities in the US… | more…

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… | more…