November 1, 2024
In August 2020, ecosocialist thinker, MR author, and jazz musician Paul Burkett wrote to MR editor John Bellamy Foster about the latter’s recent book, The Return of Nature (Monthly Review Press, 2020). Burkett’s short correspondence revealed his deep understanding of the throughline tying the ecologically inspired thought of Marx and Engels to the later innovations of Roy Bhaskar, Richard Levins, Richard Lewontin, and others, all the way up to Foster’s own work demonstrating that these developments are not isolated, but part of an evolving ecosocialist tradition.
October 1, 2024
It is undeniable that the rapidly worsening ecological crisis is threatening not only future generations, but the youth of today. Why, then, is the U.S. educational system failing to teach students the reality of this human-caused catastrophe? “Even science itself,” MR editors write, “is to be sacrificed on the altar of capital.”
October 1, 2024
Shakespeare’s Richard III famously immortalized the eponymous king as a scoundrel and tyrant, thirsty for power and blood. Using economic data spanning centuries, Thomas Lambert questions the truth of this spurious reputation: Was Richard III indeed a murderous despot bent on absolute rule? Or a myth propagated by Tudor allies aiming to ingratiate themselves to the new dynasty?
October 1, 2024
Minqi Li and Lingyi Wei look to the Chinese and U.S. economies to illustrate the contradictions of secular stagnation, concluding that both economies will likely face great challenges in the decades to come. However, they write, progressive economic policies could change China’s future, encouraging massive investment into the state sector and bringing about the transition to a fully socialist society.
October 1, 2024
Since the 1980s, Chinese writers and thinkers have been engaging with Marxist ecology, constructing a theoretical system that starts with interpretation of Marx and Engels themselves. Chen Yiwen takes stock of how this framework progressed toward an overarching theory of ecological civilization, generating new questions to be answered at every stage of development.
October 1, 2024
Steve Ellner deconstructs the argument that Pink Tide governments elected since 2018 are in a state of “passive revolution,” having betrayed their progressive roots through concessions to conservative elements and capital. This analysis, Ellner finds, fails to capture the material impacts of Pink Tide governments, their strategic importance, or their potential to pull societies toward a more radical leftist future.
September 1, 2024
This month’s “Notes from the Editors” recounts the history of U.S. preparations for “prolonged and limited” nuclear war and Washington’s repeated refusal to abide by international agreements regarding nuclear weaponry. With the recent announcement that the United States will be stationing nuclear-capable Tomahawk missiles on German soil—within minutes’ striking distance of Moscow—this history is now, troublingly, more relevant than ever.
September 1, 2024
In an interview with Brazilian magazine Margem Esquerda, John Bellamy Foster shares with Fabio Querido, Maria Orlanda Pinassi, and Michael Löwy the formative experiences that contributed to his work as a young activist and, later, a preeminent scholar of ecological Marxism. The interview concludes with a message to the ecological left in Brazil and elsewhere: “Whatever solutions there are to the present planetary crisis must, in historical-materialist terms, arise from concrete social formations, on the basis of which the new revolutionary transformations will take place.”
September 1, 2024
Bernard D’Mello describes India’s role as a collaborator in the U.S. anti-China Indo-Pacific project. This role, he elaborates, grows directly from the imperial/sub-imperial relationship between the United States and India, which manifests itself in border disputes, military exercises, diplomacy, economic ties, and more, has heightened hostilities in the Indo-Pacific region while benefiting the power elite of both countries.
September 1, 2024
Sylvia Martin reveals the deep linkages between U.S. universities and the military-industrial complex through the Department of Defense’s University Affiliated Research Centers. These programs utilize colleges and universities as research and development labs for the U.S. imperial war machine, blurring the lines between ostensibly independent institutions and the military academy and enabling the further expansion and normalization of the warmaking apparatus throughout U.S. society.
