Monthly Review Press

UE News looks at Michael Yates’s new book–and how working people can still change the world

February 20, 2024

If you have ever felt overwhelmed by the problems facing working people on seemingly every front, economist and labor educator Michael Yates has written a timely book. In Can the Working Class Change the World? he makes the case that the working class — and only the working class — can indeed overcome economic inequality, eliminate racism, sexism and other forms of discrimination, and meet the challenge of environmental degradation and climate change….

New! The World Turned Upside Down? | Socialist Register 2019

February 20, 2024

The World Turned Upside Down? poses overarching questions for the new period opened by the Trump election and the continued growth of right-wing nationalisms. These questions are addressed through a series of essays that carefully map the national, class, racial, and gender dimensions of the state, capitalism, and progressive forces today. Sober assessment is crucial for the left to gain its political bearings in this trying period and the uncertainties that lie ahead.

“Is This the Moment for the Working Class?” –Counterpunch reviews “Can the Working Class Change the World?”

February 20, 2024

Fasanella’s father delivered ice to people in his Bronx neighborhood and his mother worked in a neighborhood dress shop drilling holes into buttons. In her spare time, she was an anti-fascist activist. The family’s experience informed his art just as Michael Yates’s working class roots and long career as a labor activist and educator shapes his latest book...

Howard Waitzkin speaks on U.S. health care at the Berkeley Center for Social Medicine

February 20, 2024

Howard Watizkin, author, with the Working Group on Health Beyond Capitalism, of Health Care Under the Knife: Moving Beyond Capitalism for Our Health, spoke about his life and his work, December 4, at the Berkeley Center for Social Medicine Colloquia Series...

“Micromanaging Curricula to Miseducate Students”–Truthout considers Gerald Coles’s new book

February 20, 2024

Over the past year, the Trump administration’s science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) educational program garnered $300 million in pledges from big tech companies. Implicit in this push is the commonly accepted though questionable notion that millions of cutting-edge STEM jobs await US workers...

Capitalism: to be “rejected, root and branch”–Michael Yates via Counterpunch

February 20, 2024

There is much discussion on the left about the connections and relative importance of class, race, gender, and the environment. Some, like political scientist Adolph Reed, take a class-first approach and criticize those who place an emphasis on race and gender as engaging in an identity politics that often shades into support for the neoliberalism that has wreaked havoc on working people for the past several decades....

A “definitive one-volume anthology”: Marxism & Philosophy reviews Samir Amin’s “Modern Imperialism, Monopoly Finance Capital, and Marx’s Law of Value”

February 20, 2024

Last August, the world lost a great Marxist theorist, Samir Amin. Amin was politically engaged throughout his life, worked in planning agencies in Mali and Senegal, and contributed to the theoretical elaboration of Marxist theory. Amin published dozens of books that cover a wide range of topics, including, amongst other topics...

“The Logic of Human Survival”: Against the Current reviews A Redder Shade of Green

February 20, 2024

‘Anthropocene’ refers to a new geological period, where the activities of human beings have become the dominant factor shaping the planet’s changing geology, biology and climate, including effects on humanity. Angus, and increasingly geologists, are focusing on the period beginning around 1950, when humanity’s impact, which had been developing gradually, underwent a ‘great acceleration’ — a dialectical transformation of quantity into quality….

U.S. Must Take Responsibility for Asylum Seekers & the History That Drives Them: David L. Wilson, via Truthout

February 20, 2024

A large segment of the US public was horrified in May and June when they saw the Trump administration snatching toddlers away from Central American mothers who arrived at the US border seeking asylum. Many would still be appalled if they knew that the White House is seeking to continue the practice in a different form. Most undoubtedly feel genuine sympathy for young people trying to escape violent gangs or abusive partners. Still, a lot of these same sympathetic Americans don’t actually want the asylum seekers to come here….

New! Michael Tigar’s Mythologies of State and Monopoly Power

February 20, 2024

Mythologies,” writes veteran human rights lawyer Michael Tigar, “are structures of words and images that portray people, institutions, and events in ways that mask an underlying reality.” For instance, the “Justice Department” appears, by its very nature and practice, to appropriate “justice” as the exclusive property of the federal government. In his brilliantly acerbic collection of essays, Tigar reveals, deconstructs, and eviscerates mythologies surrounding the U.S. criminal justice system, racism, free expression, workers’ rights, and international human rights.