July 1, 2025
Inspired by the Venezuelan project of building socialism via the commune, this special issue looks at attempts to use communal models in socialist projects in a range of different contexts, as well as the theoretical bases for such an endeavor. In their introduction, guest editors Chris Gilbert and Cira Pascual argue that the theme of
Communes in Socialist Construction is an important opportunity for engaged Marxist reflection of a kind that offers valuable contributions to the universal body of socialist thought.
July 1, 2025
Ángel Prado, a founder of El Maizal Commune and Minister of Communes since 2024, discusses Venezuela's communal project as both a response to urgent material needs and a long-term strategy for building socialism. Drawing on his experience as a grassroots organizer, he explores how communes are structured, how they relate to the state, and how they embody a vision of popular power. He also reflects on the need for unity within the Chavista movement.
July 1, 2025
João Pedro Stedile, founder and spokesperson of Brazil's Landless Workers' Movement (MST), reflects on the movement's efforts to build a socialist alternative through land occupations, cooperative production, and political education. He highlights the importance of collective struggle and the MST's deepening ties with Venezuela's communal movement as part of a broader project to construct a just and solidarious society.
July 1, 2025
"To tell the history of resistance," Roberta Traspadini writes, "we need to investigate the territories where people live their daily lives." Using both historical analysis and contemporary data, Roberta Traspadini reveals the importance of Brazilian Quilombola communities as local sites of struggle against colonialism, capitalism, and imperialism. These quilombagem, she argues, reveal the revolutionary legacy that persists among the most marginalized in Brazilian society.
July 1, 2025
Kali Akuno of Cooperation Jackson outlines the ongoing projects and objectives of the Mississippi-based collective Cooperation Jackson. Akuno enumerates the many ways Cooperation Jackson has worked toward improving material conditions and building dual power in support of the Black working and peasant classes in the Mississippi Delta region.
June 1, 2025
This month, the editors dive into the history of Nazi Germany for a discussion of
Gleichschaltung, which in this instance describes the "falling into line" of institutions and individuals under fascism. As the editors point out, the extralegal and norm-breaking actions may be justified rhetorically by the fascist regime but require the acquiescence of the larger society in order to become effective—a process we are currently watching in real time.
June 1, 2025
In this third installment of
MR's series on the MAGA movement, John Bellamy Foster explores the dramatic shift in U.S. imperialism that began with the first Trump presidency and has accelerated in his second. The shift, Foster explains, is not one driven by anti-imperialism and anti-militarism but rather represents a hard shift to the right fueled by hypernationalism and the goal of recapturing U.S. power on the world stage.
June 1, 2025
A new poem by Marge Piercy.
June 1, 2025
In this excerpt from John Bellamy Foster's
Trump in the White House (Monthly Review Press, 2017), Foster expands on the concept, origins, and practical effects of
Gleichschaltung (falling into line) in Nazi Germany and its relevance today. As Foster writes "to put such a neo-fascist strategy in place requires a new kind of
Gleichschaltung"; one in which all of society—from the judiciary to Congress to cultural and media institutions—are brought into line.
May 1, 2025
In the Notes from the Editors,
MR editors dissect the true meaning behind the right-wing obsession with "Cultural Marxism" and its use to justify the right-wing takeover of the administrative state and the spread of the New McCarthyism threatening all those who oppose the administration. However, the editors point out, what the right fears is not a culturally based, postmodern approach to Marxism, but Marxism as it is historically and materially grounded and its true potential for building a proletarian movement against fascism.
