Monthly Review Press

Senior Women Web reviews “Mythologies of State and Monopoly Power” by Michael E. Tigar

Senior Women Web reviews “Mythologies of State and Monopoly Power” by Michael E. Tigar

February 20, 2024

This is a law book written for a general audience. Tigar has been a law professor most of his life; in these pages one can learn much from his vast legal and historical knowledge. ¶ Multiple chapters are spread out over five "mythologies": Racism, Criminal Justice, Free Expression, Worker Rights and International Human Rights. ¶ His discussion of these mythologies is not neutral; he has a point of view and it's generally from the left....

JONUS, Journal of Nusantara Studies, reviews “Can the Working Class Change the World?”

JONUS, Journal of Nusantara Studies, reviews “Can the Working Class Change the World?”

February 20, 2024

Can the Working Class Change the World? is not written suddenly. Throughout the last decade, capitalism has been increasingly discussed and debated, both by the right and left wing. This is because many people are struggling with economic downturn, wide income gap, unemployment, poverty and environmental crisis. The Lehman Brothers collapse in 2008, almost brought down the global financial system. Later in 2011, the Occupy Wall Street movement began and spread to several countries to protest against the 1%. And in 2018, Ray Dalio, a multibillionaire who is also the founder of Bridgewater Associates, himself admits that capitalism does not function for most people. Today, the assets of the 26 richest individuals in the world is equivalent to the assets of half the world’s citizens (Elliott, 2019). But, if capitalism now has failed, the question is: who fix it?

It’s About Time America Reckons With Its Racist Founding: Gerald Horne, via The Real News Network

It’s About Time America Reckons With Its Racist Founding: Gerald Horne, via The Real News Network

February 20, 2024

Gerald Horne, radical historian and author of dozens of 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 Jaisal Noor of The Real News Network about the eruption of demonstrations across the United States--and around the world--protesting the murder of George Floyd and countless people of color by police. Watch, below, or at The Real News

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….

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