Monthly Review Press

New! “Planning from Below: A Decentralized Participatory Planning Proposal”

February 20, 2024

Political scientist, author, and activist, Marta Harnecker devoted her life to collaborating in building radical democracy in Latin American communities where people have, for generations, experienced crushing poverty and a near complete loss of control over their lives. In South America and the Caribbean, but especially in Cuba and Venezuela, Harnecker has worked directly with disenfranchised workers and peasants. In this latest work, Harnecker, with Spanish economist José Bartolomé, shares some of her wisdom on how this is being done, and how communities everywhere can gain empowerment.

“Moving beyond Neoliberal Models of Health Care”: Medical Anthropology reviews “Health Care Under the Knife”

February 20, 2024

Why are US health-care costs far higher than elsewhere in the world? And why, if so much more is spent, are such critical outcomes as rates of infant and maternal mortality, life expectancy and treatments for serious diseases not significantly better – and often markedly worse – than in other economically comparable countries?...

Robbery of the soil and the worker: International Socialism on Saito’s “Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism”

February 20, 2024

“Kohei Saito’s book Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism is based on extensive and ­painstaking research. As well as Marx’s published works, Saito makes use of notebooks that Marx kept on science and agriculture and that have only recently been made available. He argues that ecological questions were central to Marx’s worldview and defends a version of ecosocialism based on the notion of metabolism, and using the Marxist tools of value theory, contradiction and alienation….

ROAR magazine reviews “The Coming of the American Behemoth”

February 20, 2024

But there exists a different narrative, or at least there did in the 1930s, before it was buried under an avalanche of patriotic American propaganda and liberal historiography. According to this alternative understanding, the US was falling victim to fascism already in the 1920s — though a different sort of fascism than in Europe…

The only way forward is abolitionist, socialist, and feminist: Zillah Eisenstein talks to This Is Hell!

February 20, 2024

Zillah Eisenstein, author of recently published Abolitionist Socialist Feminism: Radicalizing the Next Revolution, talks about the crises all humans face–of capitalism, of racism, of misogyny–and how these crises cannot be reformed individually, but must be understood and fought with revolutionary rethinking, on This is Hell!, WNUR-FM.

Fighting Fully Conscious: Counterfire reviews Michael Tigar’s “Mythologies of State and Monopoly Power”

February 20, 2024

Reading between the lines is a skill we all need. Justice, freedom, equality and other fine ideals are invoked daily, but what do they really mean? In the abstract, it is impossible to say, for it is only when they are used in concrete contexts that we can get some meaningful handle on them….

Helena Sheehan: Radical Thinker, Radical Times–on KPFA’s Against the Grain

February 20, 2024

Helena Sheehan author, most recently, of Navigating the Zeitgeist: A Story of the Cold War, the New Left, Irish Republicanism, and International Communism, talks to C.S. Soong, host of Against the Grain, about her life as an activist, educator, Marxist philosopher, and her engagement with radical movements, including the New Left, the IRA, and the Communist Party of Ireland.

Britain’s Communist Review considers Victor Grossman’s “A Socialist Defector”

February 20, 2024

For most of history, there was no ‘Germany’ as such – just a ragbag of German-speaking states. In 1871, most of them unified into the German Empire (Austria stayed outside, together with Switzerland, where German is but one of the languages spoken). ¶ Germany came late to the capitalist table, and flexed its muscles in the early 20th century with the aim of becoming a major imperialist power. ...

Climate Change, Capitalism, Socialism: Fred Magdoff talks about Creating an Ecological Society

February 20, 2024

Last June, in a Town Meeting hosted by CCTV, via the Center for Media & Democracy, Fred spoke about what a just and ecologically sustainable society might look like–and if the current economic system can’t respond, what are the strategies to advance our struggle?

Imperialism in a coffee cup: John Smith caffeinates Open Democracy

February 20, 2024

Even the debate on reparations for slavery and colonialism is framed in terms of correcting past wrongs, excluding any notion that imperialist plunder of nature and living labour continues apace in the modern ‘post-colonial’ world....