Ronnie Kasrils, activist, intellectual, and author of The Unlikely Secret Agent, recently wrote a paper, picked up by South Africa’s Daily Maverick, in which Kasrils discusses Karl Marx and what Marx can bring to the work of today’s South African activists:
“Karl Marx, who developed the philosophy of dialectical and historical materialism, scientific and political economy, the founder of scientific socialism and communism, and teacher and leader of the international working class for whom he created a new, purposeful world outlook, was born at Trier, in the Prussian Rhineland, on May 5, 1818. One must include Frederick Engels (1820-1895), his closest friend and collaborator…”
Come to the 2016 Left Forum!
Friday, May 20 – Sunday, May 22
John Jay College of Criminal Justice
524 W 59th St., NYC 10019
Drop by the Monthly Review book tables!
Pick up discounts on new books, classics, the Monthly Review magazine, the Socialist Register, and Merlin Press books! | more…
When Ian contacted me late last year and asked if I’d be interested in reading his manuscript, I have to say I was somewhat wary. As many of you probably know the term ‘Anthropocene’ has become something of a buzzword de jeure in academic circles. Every day it seems there is a new
April 15, Baltimore, at Red Emma’s Bookstore Coffeehouse: Gerald Horne discusses his latest two books: Paul Robeson: The Artist as Revolutionary and Confronting Black Jacobins: The U.S., the Haitian Revolution, and the Origins of the Dominican Republic. | more…
Americans live in a historical moment that annihilates thought. Ignorance now provides a sense of community; the brain has migrated to the dark pit of the spectacle; the only discourse that matters is about business; poverty is now viewed as a technical problem; thought chases after an emotion that can obliterate it. The presumptive Republican Party presidential nominee, Donald Trump, declares he likes “the uneducated”—implying that it is better that they stay ignorant than be critically engaged agents—and boasts that he doesn’t read books. Fox News offers no apologies for suggesting that thinking is an act of stupidity…. | more…
“In the Dominican Republic, as in many other countries around the Caribbean, the political strategy of leading dominant groups in recent decades has been one of polyarchy—that is to say, the options in democratic elections have been limited to voters selecting between different factions of elites. Since the 1970s, U.S. foreign policymakers, along with an increasingly wide array of UN, EU and other international agency officials have come to promote this approach. If
Bill Fletcher (Longtime labor and social justice activist, host of The Global African TV show author of Solidarity Divided: The Crisis in Organized Labor
and Chip Berlet (Award-winning investigative journalist, author of Right-Wing Populism in America: Too Close for Comfort will discuss the rise of the right | more…
SR:Can you explain the concept of the Anthropocene and its importance for understanding the current climate crisis?
IA: Anthropocene is the proposed name for the present stage of Earth history: a time in which human activity is transforming the entire planet in unprecedented and dangerous ways. Scientists divide Earth’s 4.5 billion year history into time intervals that correspond to major changes in the conditions and forms of life on Earth….
Please come hear John Bellamy Foster deliver Burns Sisters Public Lecture at the National University of Ireland, Maynooth, on “The anthropocene and the crisis of civilization: climate change and capitalism” | more…
On April 27, MRP author Jane Franklin, aided by Sandra Levinson, discussed her new book, Cuba and the U.S. Empire: A Chronological History at the Center for Cuban Studies in New York City. | more…
Author of The Economic War Against Cuba and Cuba, the Media, and the Challenge of Impartiality, Salim Lamrani is a university professor who specializes in relations between Cuba and the United States. In this interview, he turns to the issue of human rights, a point of divergence between the two countries. The United States accuses Cuba of not respecting human rights, while Cuba demands a change in the criteria. | more…
In this updated edition of her classic, Cuba and the United States, Jane Franklin chronicles U.S.-Cuba relations from the time both were colonies, through each country’s revolution, to the present. Since its first edition in 1992, published with the Center, Jane’s book has been an essential resource for all trying to understand the fraught relationship between the island and the U.S. For the traveler to Cuba. | more…
