Monthly Review Press

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

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….

How the Coronavirus Unmasked Capitalism: Gerald Horne Talks to WBAI’s “Building Bridges”

February 20, 2024

Historian and prolific author Gerald Horne--whose latest book The Dawning of the Apocalypse will be published in July--recently talked to Mimi Rosenberg and Ken Nash, hosts of WBAI's Building Bridges, the longest running labor and community affairs radio program in the New York Metropolitan area, about the history of inequality behind the current horrific impact of the coronavirus....

New! “Tell the Bosses We’re Coming: A New Action Plan for Workers in the Twenty-First Century”

New! “Tell the Bosses We’re Coming: A New Action Plan for Workers in the Twenty-First Century”

February 20, 2024

Lengthening hours, lessening pay, no parental leave, scant job security… Never have so many workers needed so much support. Yet the very labor unions that could garner us protections and help us speak up for ourselves are growing weaker every day. In an age of rampant inequality, of increasing social protest and strikes—and when a majority of workers say they want to be union members—why does union density continue to decline? Shaun Richman offers some answers in his book, Tell the Bosses We’re Coming

Marx & Philosophy reviews Michael Heinrich’s “Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society”

Marx & Philosophy reviews Michael Heinrich’s “Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society”

February 20, 2024

Michael Heinrich opens the first volume of his biography on Marx and the modern society he grew up in by noting that ‘Marx probably would not have wanted a biography, and certainly not one planned for multiple volumes’. Seeing as Marx did not desire a personal biography, and that dozens already exist, Heinrich’s project raises the question: why write this book at all? While this review will diverge from the ubiquitous praise being offered elsewhere and offer some slightly critical commentary, it can confidently be said that Heinrich’s completed biographical series will easily eclipse previous Marx biographies...

Cal Winslow reflects on the Seattle General Strike of 1919

Cal Winslow reflects on the Seattle General Strike of 1919

February 20, 2024

Cal Winslow, author of Radical Seattle: The General Strike of 1919, talks to Sasha Lilley, host of KPFA’s Against the Grain:
While the United States is in the throes of upheaval over police murders, we take a historical look back at another time of great social ferment: a century ago, when the workers of Seattle shut that city down. The first major general strike in the United States coincided with the last widespread pandemic — the Spanish influenza….

General Strike 100 Years Ago Shows Us Hope for Today: Labor Notes reviews “Radical Seattle”

General Strike 100 Years Ago Shows Us Hope for Today: Labor Notes reviews “Radical Seattle”

February 20, 2024

For five days in 1919, union members took control of the city of Seattle. They arguably ran it better, and certainly more justly, than it had ever been run before. ¶ The strike began when waitresses, laundry workers, streetcar workers, and more—65,000 union workers in all—walked off the job on February 6, 1919, to support striking shipyard workers. ¶ Thousands of workers volunteered to keep Seattle’s essential services operating. People were fed at 21 different locations; on February 9, volunteers served more than 30,000 meals....

When Solidarity Mattered: CounterPunch considers “Radical Seattle: The General Strike of 1919”

When Solidarity Mattered: CounterPunch considers “Radical Seattle: The General Strike of 1919”

February 20, 2024

This is a special book, bearing an almost sacred topic for all those interested in the history of the American labor and the Left. The vibrant, pre-1920 Socialist Party, waxing strong and confident until struck down for its resistance to the US entry into the First World War, stood for a larger and more diverse radicalism. including Wobblies, quasi-wobblies. labor and cultural radicals of no certain description and of several generations. They had in common the sense that dramatic change in society was possible, perhaps inevitable....

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