The first 25 years of the 20th century saw an extremely rich output of analysis by Marxist thinkers on imperialism. With the rise of an imperialism based on capitalism, the resulting conflict among the leading capitalist states, which resulted in the carnage of World War I and its profound impact on the workers movement, imperialism became the central international phenomena confronting Marxist political forces…. | more…

Renowned communications scholar and media activist Robert W. McChesney’s most recent work interrogates the state of U.S. politics, mass media, and social reform. Those already familiar with McChesney’s work gain greater insight into his experiences as an activist and his distinctive form of political, economic, and historical analysis beyond communication research. Blowing the Roof is expansive and thematic in organization… | more…

John Bellamy Foster, author of the recently published Trump in the White House: Tragedy and Farce, talks to Michael Smith and Heidi Boghosian, hosts of the weekly independent radio show, Law and Disorder, about Trump, the revolt from the right, and the breakdown of the liberal democratic state. | more…

Eric Holt-Giménez, author of the soon-to-be published A Foodie’s Guide to Capitalism: Understanding the Political Economy of What We Eat, recently talked to Katy Keiffer, host of What Doesn’t Kill You: Food Industry Insights on the Heritage Radio Network, “the world’s pioneer food radio station,” based in Bushwick, Brooklyn. Listen, below, or at What Doesn’t Kill You. | more…

Vladimir Lenin was the pivotal figure of the 20th century. His life and work dramatically pose the central dilemma of that century (and of our own): Should humanity progress by reforming bourgeois society along liberal social democratic lines, or should it move forward by overthrowing capitalism and establishing an entirely different social and economic system? Lenin’s life also suggests that social revolution remains a practical possibility even when historical circumstances seemingly render it unlikely…. | more…

“What’s behind the recent rise in wages for undocumented workers?” David L. Wilson asks. “It could be immigrants’ rights activism.” Wilson, with Jane Guskin, is author of the 2nd edition of “The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers”… | more…

E-Verify is back on the political agenda. ¶ For years, politicians have wanted to force all of the country’s 7.7 million private employers to check new hires against this online system–which compares employees’ documents with government databases in order to catch immigrants without work authorization–but so far, the efforts to impose a universal E-Verify requirement have failed. Now the idea has been given new life by a tentative agreement that President Trump and Democratic leaders made on September 13 to promote legislation protecting the immigrants previously covered by President Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA)… | more…

Society and nature are weighty topics. Ian Angus confronts them with force in A Redder Shade of Green: Intersections of Science and Socialism. ¶ We read of the related work of 19th century natural and social scientists, from Charles Darwin, Justus von Liebig and Karl Schorlemmer to Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. Their revolutionary critiques blend with those of Earth System scientists of the 21st century, from Paul J. Crutzen to John R. McNeill and Will Steffen. ¶ I read Angus’ informative and provocative book as Hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria pounded Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. Climate chaos is here. Blame fossil-fuel-driven imperatives of capitalism to grow endlessly… | more…

In Trump in the White House, John Bellamy Foster does what no other Trump analyst has done before: he places the president and his administration in full historical context. Foster reveals that Trump is merely the endpoint of a stagnating economic system whose liberal democratic sheen has begun to wear thin. | more…

Karl Marx has frequently been described as a “Promethean.” According to critics, Marx held an inherent belief in the necessity of humans to dominate the natural world, in order to end material want and create a new world of fulfillment and abundance through a planned socialist economy. Understandably, this perspective has come under sharp attack, not only from mainstream environmentalists but also from ecosocialists, many of whom reject Marx outright. Kohei Saito’s Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism lays waste to accusations of Marx’s ecological shortcomings. Delving into Karl Marx’s central works, as well as his natural scientific notebooks—published only recently and still being translated—Saito also builds on the works of scholars such as John Bellamy Foster and Paul Burkett, to argue that Karl Marx actually saw the environmental crisis embedded in capitalism. | more…

Thanks to climate change, science and socialism have become entwined in ways previously unimaginable. Science brings the news that, unless we act swiftly to control climate change, we will inhabit a dying planet. Socialism traces the causes of this catastrophe to the destructive and chaotic growth model of capitalism and advocates for a different system. Meanwhile, sensing the source of danger to their profits, corporate and government reactionaries fuel disinformation campaigns to discredit science and confuse the public. This has been going on for years, with disastrous results…. | more…

In John Bellamy Foster’s rousing foreword to Ian Angus’ “Facing the Anthropocene,” he notes that the Russian geologist and paleontologist Alexei Petrovich Pavlov (1854–1929) was the first to use the term “Anthropocene” in 1922. When it comes to the infighting on the left over what the term means and the denial by the right that it even exists, Ian Angus’ book makes quite clear that unless the left can focus on developing radical alternatives to fossil capitalism we will only be fooling ourselves…. | more…