Monthly Review Press

What the Fall of the Wall Really Meant: Workers World reviews Victor Grossman’s “A Socialist Defector”

What the Fall of the Wall Really Meant: Workers World reviews Victor Grossman’s “A Socialist Defector”

This Nov. 9, the world’s imperialists and big capitalists will be celebrating the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. They will fill the media, all too available to them, with lies claiming this event was a victory for democracy and freedom. They will be slandering the German Democratic Republic and all the good and progressive acts of the once-socialist part of Germany…

Marx & Philosophy reviews “From Commune to Capitalism”

Marx & Philosophy reviews “From Commune to Capitalism”

What is remarkable about China’s agrarian reforms is that, despite their pivotal role in ending socialist production, some on the left have offered quite positive evaluations. ¶ Zhun Xu is a skeptic of these accounts….

In no way a Stalinist apologist: Counterfire reviews “A Socialist Defector”

In no way a Stalinist apologist: Counterfire reviews “A Socialist Defector”

Many people have always doubted the starkness of the good West, evil East narrative. Perhaps as a result, since the collapse of the Stalinist states of eastern Europe, a concerted effort has been made to reinforce the notion that the East German state, the German Democratic Republic (DDR), in particular, was a dystopian police state morally equivalent to the Nazi regime...

“Magisterial Biography”: Morning Star reviews Heinrich’s “Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society”

“Magisterial Biography”: Morning Star reviews Heinrich’s “Karl Marx and the Birth of Modern Society”

In a short appendix to this first of what is to be a multi-volume biography of Karl Marx — which is bound to become a referential touchstone for any subsequent treatment of his life and works — Michael Heinrich examines how biographical writing is possible today and the reader should start with this essay in order to recognise the intentions and detailed scope of his treatment of Marx through his childhood and youth from 1818 to 1841...