Monthly Review Press

New! Samir Amin’s Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism

New! Samir Amin’s Russia and the Long Transition from Capitalism to Socialism

Out of early twentieth-century Russia came the world’s first significant effort to build a modern revolutionary society. According to Marxist economist Samir Amin, the great upheaval that once produced the Soviet Union also produced a movement away from capitalism—a long transition that continues today. In seven concise, provocative chapters, Amin deftly examines the trajectory of Russian capitalism, the Bolshevik Revolution, the collapse of the Soviet Union, the possible future of Russia—and, by extension, the future of socialism itself.

Save the Georg Lukács Archive!

From the time the current rightist government in Hungary came into power, the archive of Georg Lukács–a preeminent Marxist of the 20th century–has been under a brutal attack. It has been gradually deprived of its subvention from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences and of its ability to pay its staff. Now, the government threatens to sell the property on which it is located and disperse the archive.

A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution reviewed in E-International Relations

A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution reviewed in E-International Relations

Drawing on exceptionally rare, difficult-to-access collections of underground publications, pamphlets, and oral testimonies—more difficult to access that the author admits—Cushion pushes back against several traditions of argumentation that have tended to cast labor struggle in the 1950s to the historiographical margins. Importantly, these lacunae in explaining the Cuban Revolution’s origins have remained equally persistent among Cuban and non-Cuban historians, the Revolution’s admirers and its fiercest critics.

Marciano: Steven Spielberg to direct another fantasy; this one about Walter Cronkite & the Vietnam War

Marciano: Steven Spielberg to direct another fantasy; this one about Walter Cronkite & the Vietnam War

The word out of Hollywood is that Steven Spielberg plans to direct a film about famed television commentator Walter Cronkite. According to Variety, it will highlight Cronkite’s protest against the War in Vietnam—especially ‘the role that he played in turning public opinion against the increasingly un-winnable conflict.’ So goes the myth. In reality, Cronkite never opposed the war itself; rather, he only came to question it after the Tet Offensive made it clear that the U.S. policy in Vietnam was not working.

Watch Left Forum Panel: Imperialism in the 21st Century

Left Forum, Saturday, May 21, New York City: John Smith, author of Imperialism in the Twenty-First Century: Globalization, Super-Exploitation, and Capitalism’s Final Crisis, John Bellamy Foster, Hannah Holleman, Intan Suwandi, and Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, discuss the accumulation of capital, cheap wage goods, and the super-exploited workers of the Global South.