Monthly Review Press

“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....

“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’….

“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….

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….

Fred Magdoff in Chicago for July 6-9 Socialism2017 Conference

Fred Magdoff in Chicago for July 6-9 Socialism2017 Conference

February 20, 2024

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.

“The earth shall rise on new foundations”: preface to Éditions Critiques publication of What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism

“The earth shall rise on new foundations”: preface to Éditions Critiques publication of What Every Environmentalist Needs to Know About Capitalism

February 20, 2024

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.

A Brief History of the KKK w/Gerald Horne, via The Real News Network

A Brief History of the KKK w/Gerald Horne, via The Real News Network

February 20, 2024

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.

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

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