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“The most important book…in years is John Smith’s Imperialism in the 21st Century”–OffGuardian review

“The most important book…in years is John Smith’s Imperialism in the 21st Century”–OffGuardian review

February 20, 2024

That first chapter goes on to consider two other products, iPhones and coffee. These too are produced in the global south for consumption in the north. Although very different products, Smith’s teasing out of the socioeconomic relations they embed shows their commonality. All are created under conditions of a super-exploitation which mainstream economics is at pains to conceal or obscure by a ‘value chain’ orthodoxy that would have us believe an iPhone made in China for $80 retails in the west for $800 not through exploitation but because the activities of shipping, advertising and packaging add $720 of value….

“A vital contribution to the ecosocialist argument”: Counterfire reviews Facing the Anthropocene

February 20, 2024

In August 2016, the International Geological Congress voted formally to recognise that the world has entered a new geological era, the Anthropocene. The effect of human activity on the planet has now become as significant as that of the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs and ended the Cretaceous era. In recognising this, it is important not to fall into a view of human effects on the Earth that idealises a separation between human society and a reified ‘Nature’….

“Living Well is the Best Revolution”: The Progressive Populist reviews Creating an Ecological Society

“Living Well is the Best Revolution”: The Progressive Populist reviews Creating an Ecological Society

February 20, 2024

A book for a future society of buen vivir, or living well, with nature and other people? Yes, write Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams in Creating an Ecological Society. How to achieve sustainability with humanity and the planet? Start with context and vision to transcend the status quo of bio-sphere destruction. Reform is a part of the revolutionary process, according to the authors. It is not an either-or binary. The vision thing matters when it comes to the false consciousness of blaming other people for the system’s baked-in flaws. Dividing the working class to weaken it is elites’ go-to tactic. We see that now....

“Refreshing and timely”: Marx & Philosophy reviews Samir Amin’s Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism

“Refreshing and timely”: Marx & Philosophy reviews Samir Amin’s Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism

February 20, 2024

Samir Amin’s Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism is a collection of essays written between 1990 and 2015 on Soviet and Russian history…. ¶ At first glance, the title might appear to be backwards, as the socialist Soviet Union no longer exists and the capitalist Russian Federation has been deemed to be its successor on the world stage. However, it is from this juncture that Amin asks the reader to look towards the future as a way to analyse the present in comparison with the past, rather than looking back at the past to better understand the present and the possible future. In short, the author’s aim is to juxtapose the future of communism (as a higher mode of production) against the present in comparison with Russia’s past

Howard Ryan’s Educational Justice reviewed by Teachers College Record

Howard Ryan’s Educational Justice reviewed by Teachers College Record

February 20, 2024

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...

G20 is now G19 + 1: Gerald Horne on US isolation at Hamburg

G20 is now G19 + 1: Gerald Horne on US isolation at Hamburg

February 20, 2024

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

OrganizeNorthCarolina.org reviews Michael Lebowitz’s The Contradictions of “Real Socialism”

OrganizeNorthCarolina.org reviews Michael Lebowitz’s The Contradictions of “Real Socialism”

February 20, 2024

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….

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