This new labour history opens with a preface by the author, James Young, that goes to very unusual lengths to explain the author’s intentions. This is partially because he wishes to make his allegiances (sympathetic, but not uncritical) clear. It is mainly, however, because of the undeniably very specific nature of its focus. This the story of two branches of a single union in a relatively small American city…. | more…

Urdang’s memoir maps out her quest for the meaning of home, as she grapples with the power of nostalgia, and for the lived reality of revolution with empathy, courage, and a keen eye for historical and geographic detail. This is a personal narrative, beautifully told, of a journey traveled by an indefatigable exile who, while yearning for home, continues to question where, as a citizen of both South Africa and the United States, she belongs. “My South Africa!” she writes, on her return in 1991, after the release of Nelson Mandela, “How could I have imagined for one instant that I could return to its beauty, and not its pain?” | more…

Steve Early, author of Save Our Unions: Dispatches from A Movement in Distress and Embedded with Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home, looks at the role of labor unions in dealing with sexual harassment and how “to insure that the bullying, harassing, divide-and-conquer behavior of bosses, big and small, doesn’t infect and weaken the ‘house of labor’”… | more…

Ronnie Kasrils is the author of The Unlikely Secret Agent, an account of his wife Eleanor’s work as a clandestine agent for the underground ANC. Here, he talks with Jacobin‘s Marcus Barnett about his own work as a revolutionary, and the future of South Africa’s left: | more…

In his latest book, Eric Holt-Giménez takes on the social, environmental, and economic crises of the capitalist mode of food production. Drawing from classical and modern analyses, A Foodie’s Guide to Capitalism introduces the reader to the history of our food system and to the basics of capitalism. In straightforward prose, Holt-Giménez explains the political economics of why—even as local, organic, and gourmet food have spread around the world—billions go hungry in the midst of abundance; why obesity is a global epidemic; and why land-grabbing, global warming, and environmental pollution are increasing. | more…

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…