Monthly Review Press

Did the Good Guys Win in 1776? Gerald Horne talks with Historic.ly

February 20, 2024

Historian Gerald Horne, author of several books, including the forthcoming The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth Century, talks to Esha, host of Historic.ly, the web program that “decolonizes history and debunks myths and misinformation taught to you in school and on corporate media.” Much of Dr. Horne's work, it turns out, is based on his question, “Why is there not a stronger left movement in the USA, the leading imperialist country?”

Work is Inevitable But Its Organization Is Not: CounterPunch considers “How the World Works”

February 20, 2024

All human societies, from the most primitive to the most modern, have an important commonality—the need to work. Water, food, shelter and other basics of life don’t arrive as gifts. Work is required to secure them and to raise the next generation. ¶ So fundamental is this basic principal of human life that generations of Marxist theorists have based analyses of social societies and structures on the economic base of a given society….

A retrospective view of Ireland from the far Left: The Irish Catholic considers “Navigating the Zeitgeist”

February 20, 2024

Dr Helena Sheehan is a well-known left-wing intellectual. Her book, Marxism and the Philosophy of Science: Critical History, published in 1985, became a classic work on its subject. ¶ She has now written her autobiography, and this is the first volume, covering her life from the 1940s to the 1980s, a book which is full of interest for a particular view of Ireland and the world today....

A riposte to woeful identitarian politics? Bristol Radical History Group reviews “The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism”

February 20, 2024

Professor Horne is under no illusions as to the reception which such bold, defiant assertions will be received by bourgeois and liberal historians, because every statement in the book is scrupulously footnoted, and indeed there are no less than two in the introductory paragraph quoted above. Professor Horne comes to the field of combative ‘history from below’ both well-armed and unwilling to take prisoners. This is an assertive position, which in the view of this reviewer, is well due admiration and applause….

Research findings from cutting-edge sciences: Resilience reviews “Facing the Anthropocene”

February 20, 2024

Facing the Anthropocene describes a new geological epoch (the anthropocene) and its impacts on the earth system. The book further identifies the possible cause of the present crisis of the earth system (fossil capitalism) and discusses the effects of fossil capitalism on the earth system (environmental degradation, climate change)....

As the Earth Dies… CounterPunch reviews “The Robbery of Nature”

February 20, 2024

“The earth is dying and capitalism is to blame. Facing this, one can opt for hope, as Marxist ecosocialists do, or one can succumb to pessimism fed by dark thoughts on human nature and the intractable, deadly persistence of our economic system of exploitation. Human nature has a destructive and murderous side, while capitalism, expressing that side with its endless growth, endless greed, blights the planet like cancer...”

Gerald Horne: US Prof. asks Iranian friends to assist Americans in abolishing culture of slavery

February 20, 2024

“Trump,” says Horne, “is fueling the protests. He is a cornered beast right now and a beast is most dangerous when it is cornered….”

Lifting The Shroud: Pandemic Capitalism & the Uprisings of 2020–Gerald Horne

February 20, 2024

Gerald Horne, radical pundit and prolific author, talks to Patrick Farnsworth, creator and host of Last Born in the Wilderness, examining “the material conditions that have precipitated the uprisings across the United States the past week, in response to the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis on May 25th.... Dr. Horne frames the wave of uprisings across the nation within a deeper and broader context of previous uprisings (e.g. the Watts Riots of the 1960s in Los Angeles and the nation-wide uprisings that occurred after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.), and points to the impacts the ‘Long Sixteenth Century’ had in the formation of white supremacy, as explored in his book The Dawning of the Apocalypse....

BELABORED: Cal Winslow talks to Michelle Chen and Sarah Jaffe about Radical Action–in 1919 and Now

February 20, 2024

Our talk about the organization of the working class in Seattle—including the tensions over organizing black and Japanese workers alongside white ones—explored the question of what it means when, for a little while, the working class runs the city. Because that’s what happens during a general strike. And it is happening now....

Gerald Horne: Political crisis deepens as Trump threatens military crackdown on protest movement

February 20, 2024

Protests are nothing new in American society. And protests for racial justice are certainly nothing new. But has America not learned any lessons from the civil rights movement? Have we learned nothing from decades of the police clashing with peaceful marchers? Why is this still happening in America in the year 2020? Why are our police departments militarized and so willing to use violence against citizens?...