Monthly Review Press

No workers’ paradise, but the GDR wasn’t a prison, either: novelist Eve Ottenberg reviews “A Socialist Defector”

No workers’ paradise, but the GDR wasn’t a prison, either: novelist Eve Ottenberg reviews “A Socialist Defector”

From the perspective of 2019, it’s often difficult to recall the cold war hysteria over East Germany. It was called a secret police state. Everyone there was said to be oppressively monitored if not actively harassed by the Stasi. For Americans, it epitomized communist tyranny. Then along comes Victor Grossman’s memoir, A Socialist Defector–he fled US anticommunism to East Germany in 1952–and the distortions about East Germany (GDR) go right out the window…

Robin Morgan talks with Stephanie Urdang about what’s going on in South Africa

Robin Morgan talks with Stephanie Urdang about what’s going on in South Africa

Robin Morgan, poet, author, and political theorist, hosts a weekly, hour-long, nationally syndicated radio show based at the Women’s Media Center. On May 12, she talked with Stephanie J. Urdang, South African journalist, activist, and author of Mapping My Way Home: Activism, Nostalgia, and the Downfall of Apartheid South Africa, about the recent election and 25th anniversary of South African liberation.

Ronnie Kasrils on South Africa and Palestine, comparing one apartheid to another…

Ronnie Kasrils on South Africa and Palestine, comparing one apartheid to another…

Ronnie Kasrils, South African anti-apartheid activist, former South African Minister for Intelligence Services, and author of The Unlikely Secret Agent, appears on RT to talk with Afshin Rattansi, host of Going Underground, about current South African life, the ANC, and how, regarding the current Palestinian struggle, one apartheid compares to another…

New! By Samir Amin: “Only People Make Their Own History”

New! By Samir Amin: “Only People Make Their Own History”

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. ...

“A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution”: reviewed by the New West Indian Guide

“A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution”: reviewed by the New West Indian Guide

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….

“Wall Street’s Think Tank”–New in Paperback, with Afterword

“Wall Street’s Think Tank”–New in Paperback, with Afterword

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....