Monthly Review Press

A World to Build reviewed in COUNTERFIRE

A World to Build reviewed in COUNTERFIRE

The reason for socialists to have an interest in the situation in Latin America today is simple; the most significant political advances in the world today are taking place in Latin America. The Chilean revolutionary Marta Harnecker’s book A World to Build is perhaps the most important English language attempt so far to analyse and to move forward the discussion on the left internationally around these changes.

Laurence Shoup interviewed by Z Magazine

Laurence Shoup interviewed by Z Magazine

My interests cluster around understanding and exposing both global power structures and alternatives to the existing system. I approach this from the point of view of someone who wants to help create a socio-economic and political system worthy of humanity’s best inclinations. This would be a society and civilization without racial, class, sexual and gender divisions and conflicts, one based on authentic democracy, equality, civil freedoms, respect for the natural world, generous social arrangements, empathy, peace, social justice, and solidarity.

Politics of the Right “essential reading” —The Progressive Populist

Politics of the Right “essential reading” —The Progressive Populist

Far-right forces are on the move in and out of the US. Socialist Register 2016: The Politics of the Right, edited by Leo Panitch and Greg Albo, delivers crisp analyses of this trend.... A recurring theme in the book is the process of political centrism drifting to the right. This move enhances authoritarianism, a cultural feature of modern politics in the post Sept. 11 era.... Hard right politics dovetails with policing of national minorities. Lesley Wood outlines three related trends: “intelligence-led policing, community policing and strategic incapacitation protest policing,” which confront movements such as Black Lives Matter, pushing back for public control over this state function.

Rage, Rebellion, Revolution … Register? Check out this year’s Left Forum

Rage, Rebellion, Revolution … Register? Check out this year’s Left Forum

Left Forum is the largest annual gathering of the broad Left in the United States. Each year thousands of conference participants come together to discuss pressing local, national, and global issues; to better understand commonalities and differences, and alternatives to current predicaments; or to share ideas to help build social and political movements to transform the world. Left Forum 2015 drew 4,000 participants for 400 panels and events. Recent speakers include Noam Chomsky, Angela Davis, Harry Belafonte, Arundhati Roy, Naomi Klein, Michael Moore, Bolivian Vice President Álvaro García Linera, Slavoj Zizek, Marina Sitrin, Amy Goodman, Immortal Technique, and Grace Lee Boggs.

Revealed! A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution

Revealed! A Hidden History of the Cuban Revolution

The working class of Cuba played a much more decisive role in the Revolution than previously understood. Steve Cushion contends that significant portions of the Cuban working class launched an underground movement in tandem with the guerrillas operating in the mountains. From illegal strikes to sabotage to armed conflict with the state, workers' efforts helped clinch the Revolution's victory. A fresh and provocative take on the place of the working class in Cuban history.

Marx’s Ecology reviewed by the Freedom Socialist

Marx’s Ecology reviewed by the Freedom Socialist

Many environmentalists disdain the ideas of Karl Marx. Some tout the spiritual virtues of environmental ‛ideals.’ Some argue for individual solutions like recycling, reduced consumption and “going back to the land.” Anti-communists claim that the ecological crimes of the Stalinist-era USSR flowed from Marxism itself. John Bellamy Foster’s Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature counters all these ideas. It is a dense and intricate analysis of Marxist theory, its historical and scientific foundations, and how central ecological concerns are to it.

Race to Revolution reviewed in Journal of American History

Race to Revolution reviewed in Journal of American History

Gerald Horne's latest book is an ambitious transnational history of the United States and Cuba from the 1700s to the 1959 Cuban Revolution. It focuses on the shared and interconnected histories of slavery, the slave trade, Jim Crow, and the struggles against these oppressive systems in the two regions.