On March 15 2019 up to 1.5 million students walked out of class to demand action in the face of looming environmental catastrophe. In the UK one of the most popular slogans was “System Change not Climate Change” reflecting the protesters’ feelings that capitalism and its politicians had failed them. As Marxist writers like John Bellamy Foster and Ian Angus have shown, capitalism is at heart, a system that puts the accumulation of wealth above the general interests of people and plane | more…
In this short book Samir Amin, a distinguished left intellectual with a career spanning many decades, offers an analysis of Russia and its role in the transition from capitalism to socialism. The book consists of six essays written between 1990 and 2015, supplemented by a new commentary at the end. Amin’s approach combines the Marxist theory of historical materialism with World Systems theory…. | more…
“In six chapters, Yates delivers a primer on radical economics. It is no mean feat, but he is up to it. ¶ In Chapter One, ‘The Working Class,’ Yates defines it, qualitatively and quantitatively. He refines the numbers that mainstream economists use to fog the oppressive nature of the system. ¶ Yates sketches an ‘analytical scaffolding’ of global labor, from the exploited (wages) and expropriated (theft). Yates explains how wage and unwaged labor are integral to the system, similar to the era of slave and ‘free’ workers… | more…
“The release of the Mueller report and its conclusion that President Donald J. Trump and his top aides did not collude with Russia has prompted some important critical reflection on the American media and its penchant for sensationalism….” | more…
Recently, Zillah Eisenstein, author of the forthcoming Abolitionist Socialist Feminism: Radicalizing the Next Revolution, was interviewed by phone on Berkeley, CA radio KPFA, 94.1FM by Lisa Dettmer, host of the Women’s Magazine. | more…
The Council on Foreign Relations is the world’s most powerful private foreign-policy think tank and membership organization. Dominated by Wall Street, it claims among its members a high percentage of past and present top U.S. government officials as well as corporate leaders and influential figures in the fields of education, media, law, and nonprofit work. Wall Street’s Think Tank follows the Council on Foreign Relations from the 1970s to the present, and this new paperback edition includes an Afterword discussing the Trump Administration and the Council…. | more…
Stephen Cushion’s A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution, the result of extensive archival and oral history research, is one of the most important books (in any language) on the history of the Batista regime and its opponents during the 1950s to appear in the last three or more decades. It is also an openly revisionist account that challenges much research and writing produced by both Cuban and foreign scholars…. | more…
On March 11, Michael D. Yates, economist, labor educator, and author, talked to WRFG Labor Forum hosts Dianne Mathiowetz and Paul McLennan about his latest book, Can the Working Class Change the World? | more…
Recently, Zillah Eisenstein, author of Abolitionist Socialist Feminism: Radicalizing the Next Revolution–forthcoming in May–delivered an address titled “Personal and Political Feminisms: Finding Understandings Amid the Chaos.” | more…
Only People Make Their Own History is the first ever posthumous publication of Amin’s work. It includes ten of Amin’s most important essays published in the 21st century, and an introduction by renowned Marxist literary critic, Aijaz Ahmad…. | more…
Radical political economist Samir Amin (1931–2018) left behind a cherished oeuvre of Marxist writings. Amin’s intellectual range—from economics to culture—was admirable, and his lessons remain essential. Monthly Review Press is honored to publish this volume, culled from the Monthly Review magazine, of ten of Samir Amin’s most significant essays written in the twenty-first century. … | more…
The story of bio-fuels is a moral tale of how marketised, profit-driven responses to climate change will both fail to solve the problem and cause unconsidered damaging outcomes…. ¶ In The Biofuels Deception,Okbazghi Yohannes traces the industry’s beginnings back to the Bush administration and the idea that the world was reaching ‘peak oil’…. | more…
The book by the philosopher Helena Sheehan follows by and large the typical structure of Greek tragedy. Sheehan analyses the five key years (from 2012 to 2016) and faces of Syriza from the period of counter-hegemonic movement showing Syriza preparing to catch power and giving voice to a society of anger… | more…
