It is 2017 and the critique of corporate school reform has been around for some time. Beginning with Pauline Lipman’s critique of the Chicago Commercial Club’s role in remaking Chicago’s public schools (2004, 2011), Mike Fabricant and Michelle Fine’s critique of charter schools (2012), Ken Saltman’s critique of privatization (2007), and Sarah LeBlanc Goff’s exposé of the move of New Orleans from a public to a privatized school system (2009), they exposed the shortcomings of corporate or neoliberal reform efforts… | more…
On July 7, 2017, a group of the world’s biggest economic powers, known as the G20, met in Hamburg, Germany. What happened at the event? What kinds of realignments happened among governments? How did the U.S. emerge the meetings? Margaret Prescod of SojournerTruthradio/KPFK discussed this on July 11 with Gerald Horne, Professor of African American Studies at the University of Houston and author of more than thirty books, including the forthcoming The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism | more…
John Bellamy Foster, editor of Monthly Review magazine and author of the forthcoming Trump in the White House: Tragedy and Farce, talks to Don Shafer of Roundhouse Radio 98.3 Vancouver on climate change, the fate of the earth, and how we can’t give up… | more…
Gerald Horne, historian and author of several books, including the upcoming The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in Seventeenth-Century North America and the Caribbean, talks to Jaisal Noor of The Real News Network about July 8 KKK rally in Charlottesville, VA—and the origins of one of America’s oldest hate groups. | more…
The following is the preface to the 2017 French-language edition of What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism by Fred Magdoff and John Bellamy Foster, originally published by Monthly Review Press in 2011. The French edition will be released by Éditions Critiques in September, and will appear as Ce que tout écologiste doit savoir à propos du capitalisme. | more…
Come to Chicago this weekend for Socialism2017, where thousands of organizers and intellectuals will participate in over 100 meetings—one of which will be with Monthly Review Press author Fred Magdoff and Socialist Worker writer Michael Ware.
Saturday, July 8, 2-3:30pm: Magdoff, author, with Chris Williams, of Creating an Ecological Society: Toward a Revolutionary Transformation, will discuss with Ware how, in fighting for environmental and social justice, reforms are vital but revolution is essential. | more…
Jaisal Noor of The Real News Network turns to Monthly Review Press author, Gerald Horne (Confronting Black Jacobins; The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism), for Horne’s historical perspective on Trump’s tweets and the National Rifle Association’s recent recruitment video | more…
Come to Central London, UK, to join organizers, intellectuals, and activists in a 4-day political festival of ideas, discussions, debates, art, films, and music! Speakers will include Ian Angus, author of “Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System”… | more…
The leaders of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR, 1922-1991) used the terms ‘real socialism’ and ‘actually existing socialism’ to ‘distinguish their real experience from merely theoretical socialist ideas.’ Lebowitz asks how that system actually functioned, how it reproduced itself, and why it ‘yield[ed] to capitalism without resistance from the working classes who were presumably its beneficiaries’. (p. 7) ¶ Interesting questions. Especially to those of us who want to construct a more humane system than the capitalism that defeated the USSR…. | more…
Rob Wallace, author of Big Farms Make Big Flu: Dispatches on Infectious Disease, Agribusiness, and the Nature of Science, is heard, along with other scientists, on CBCradio‘s ‘The 180 with Jim Brown,’ considering the question: Why do we name diseases the way we do? | more…
In his introduction to Educational Justice, Howard Ryan states that he and his coauthors ‘offer theory, strategy and organizing case studies to inform and inspire those who are working to rebuild public education and put an end to the corporate occupation of our schools.’ This is an apt description, and the reason anyone interested in that work should read this book. Ryan’s motivation for writing this ambitious book was his conviction ‘that the fight to defend public schools had particular potential for energizing larger movements for democracy and social justice.’ | more…
What happens to democracy when the president of the United States labels critical media outlets as ‘enemies of the people’ and disparages the search for truth with the blanket term ‘fake news’? What happens to democracy when individuals and groups are demonized on the basis of their religion? What happens to a society when critical thinking becomes an object of contempt? What happens to a social order ruled by an economics of contempt that blames the poor for their condition and subjects them to a culture of shaming? … ¶ What happens is that democracy withers and dies, both as an ideal and as a reality…. | more…
This new collection of essays from one of the world’s leading Marxist environmentalists is an important contribution to discussions about how we can fight for a sustainable world, one where, as Ian Angus says quoting Marx, we live as “a society of good ancestors”. More than this however the book is an important reassertion of how to approach questions of science and politics that strengthen our ability to understand the world and change it. | more…
