Monthly Review Press

Reconstructing Lenin reviewed by Science & Society

February 20, 2024

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....

“The Movement and the Money” by David L. Wilson, via Jacobin

February 20, 2024

“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"...

Via Truthout: “Protect the Dreamers, but Don’t Fall for an E-Verify ‘Compromise’”

February 20, 2024

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)...

A Redder Shade of Green reviewed by The Progressive Populist

February 20, 2024

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...

New! Trump in the White House: Tragedy and Farce

February 20, 2024

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.

New! Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capital, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy

February 20, 2024

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.

Eve of Destruction…Or Revolution? Counterpunch reviews Creating an Ecological Society

February 20, 2024

‘In order to replace capitalism with an ecological society we need a revolution.’ That modest sentence is how Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams begin the last chapter of their new book. Although the chapter is the end of the book, it is also an opening to a new direction, a new movement. It is also the essence of the entire text. Capitalism is the reason our biosphere is collapsing and the only way humanity and the rest of earth’s species can survive is by ending capitalism….

Gerald Horne on the NAACP’s travel advisory for Missouri

February 20, 2024

Thinking of going to Missouri? Think again. Gerald Horne, author of several books on the history of racism and injustice in the Americas, including the forthcoming The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in Seventeenth-Century North America and the Caribbean, talks to Sharmini Peries of The Real News Network about the NAACP’s first statewide travel advisory, for the state of Missouri. ¶ “Not only may we be returning to the bad old days of Jim Crow and US apartheid, but we may be going beyond that to the era of 1857 Dred Scott…”

London: Ian Angus on the Anthropocene and Ecosocialism at Marxism 2017 Festival

February 20, 2024

Ian Angus, author of Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System and, more recently, A Redder Shade of Green: Intersections of Science and Socialism, speaks at the Marxism 2017 Festival in central London, July 8, 2017. (Questions and answers follow.)

Gerald Horne talks to Utrice Leid via the Progressive Radio Network

February 20, 2024

Historian Gerald Horne, author of over 30 books, including the forthcoming "The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, and Capitalism in Seventeenth-Century North America and the Caribbean," talks to veteran news anchor and analyst, Utrice Leid about some of the major trouble spots in the world today and their connections to U.S. globalist agendas.