Second Annual Boston Socialist Unity Project Conference, April 21 and 22
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Edgerton Lecture Hall, Room 34-101
50 Vassar Street, Cambridge, MA
Come hear socialist scholars and activists including Vijay Prashad, Barbara Madeloni, Sherri Mitchell, the Green-Rainbow Party, and Fred Magdoff, co-author (with Chris Williams) of Creating an Ecological Society: Toward a Revolutionary Transformation | more…

Marx’s Capital after 150 Years: Critique and Alternative to Capitalism
May 24-26 at York University, Toronto, Canada
ADMISSION TO THIS CONFERENCE IS FREE
For many scholars, today Marx’s analyses are arguably resonating even more strongly than they did in Marx’s own time. This international conference brings together several world-renowned sociologists, political theorists, economists, and philosophers, from diverse fields and 13 countries. | more…

If Karl Marx were writing Capital today and had paid attention when Friedrich Engels and his publisher implored him to make the first chapters of volume one less abstract and more accessible, rather than dismissing their suggestions with declarations about a royal road, he might well have chosen a specific commodity from which he could unravel capital. And, if he wanted to choose a commodity in which the relations of the contemporary political economy had been crystallised, he might well have chosen an iPhone. In following the social relations that sit behind the iPhone, Marx would have observed children mining for cassiterite in the Congo; followed the global production chains from the neo-futurist Apple Campus in Cupertino … | more…

“[T]he universe is full of new opportunities for commodification. The question is, can the planet sustain them?”
Ursula Huws is the author of Labor in the Global Digital Economy: The Cybertariat Comes of Age. Recently, Huws wrote a follow-up article for the London School of Economics and Political Science Business Review. | more…

Zeljko Cipriš is the translator of Harbors Rich in Ships: The Selected Revolutionary Writings of Miroslav Krleža, Radical Luminary of Modern World Literature, coming very soon from Monthly Review Press. He was recently interviewed by Rade Dragojević for the Forum, a Croatian weekly, published in Zagreb… | more…

During a soliloquy in Julius Caesar, Brutus says, ‘The abuse of greatness is when it disjoins remorse from power.’ His words clearly apply to John Marciano’s book, The American War in Vietnam…. Whereas Brutus speaks of Caesar’s use of power, Marciano addresses the misuse of the Noble Cause principle espoused by the United States in the Vietnam War. ¶ Marciano, a Professor Emeritus at the State University of New York at Cortland, relates this principle to America’s employing military power in general—and in particular to what he calls the ‘staggering human and ecological losses’ resulting from ignoring remorse relative to the Vietnam War… | more…

During the nineteenth century, three US presidents died in office, or shortly after it, from drinking the water in the White House. This was probably because that water was drawn downstream from the marsh where the White House’s ‘nightsoil’ was dumped, including that of the slaves who helped build it. For Rob Wallace, this is therefore an ‘epiphenomenon of empire’, as ‘on what was a glorified plantation, growing not crops but imperial designs alienated from people and places alike, enslaved men and women were obligated to kill their masters bucket by bucket’… | more…

Henry Giroux is one of our foremost critical voices. With America’s Addiction to Terrorism, he once again applies his critical pedagogy to the US, finding a common thread of growing authoritarian state terrorism through 12 chapters on such varied phenomena as “selfie culture,” austerity, education, cinema, nuclear proliferation, and the state of public intellectuals, while neatly tying these threads to the more obvious tapestry of racism, police militarization, and torture…. | more…

Ursula Huws, author of Labor in the Global Digital Economy: The Cybertariat Comes of Age, recently gave a talk sponsored by the Contemporary Philosophy of Technology at the University of Birmingham, UK. Watch the video here. | more…

Say goodbye to March, but not to feminism!
Monthly Review Press is offering a 40% discount on selected books by and about women—both print and electronic (when available)—starting midnight March 30, and ending midnight April 2. Just enter the coupon code: whm331401 to receive 40% off at checkout. | more…

Jeb Sprague, author of Paramilitarism and the Assault on Democracy in Haiti is interviewed by Kim Brown of The Real News Network about Haiti, based on his earlier research on paramilitarism in the context of economic restructuring, social conflict, and political tensions in the country.
(In two parts; be sure and stay tuned for the 2nd half.) | more…

Come to the Athens Book Launch of The Syriza Wave: Surging and Crashing with the Greek Left
Wednesday, April 5, 7:30-9pm
University of Athens
School of Education
Navarinou 13A, Lecture room AA
Athens, Greece 10680
Author Helena Sheehan will discuss her book, along with event coordinator Kostas Skordoulis, and speakers Michalis Spourdalakis, Costas Isychos, Stathis Kouvelakis, and Aris Chatzistefanou | more…

The appointment of Betty DeVos as U.S. Secretary of Education aroused considerable opposition. Many of those challenging her were acting on the subtitle of Howard Ryan’s book, ‘organizing against the corporate juggernaut.’ ¶ Educational Justice is a rewarding mix of political analysis about the corporate forces pushing U.S. education in one direction and examples of grassroots union and classroom organizing as a way of challenging that direction. ¶ Ryan places the corporate program in the neoliberal context of what he calls a ‘bosses revolt.’ It includes transferring public funding for education to private education, limits on the union rights of teachers, control through testing and a dual expectations of schools—high quality education for the children of the well off and training for obedience for those on the bottom. | more…