February 1, 2020
Mike Gonzalez's new biography of Jos Carlos Maritegui is an important attempt to introduce the Peruvian socialist to an English-speaking audience. It constitutes not so much a rediscovery of Maritegui, but is itself part of a slow but steady embrace of a novel and innovative thinker broadly credited with the creation of a Latin American Marxism.
October 1, 2019
Monthly Review and Monthly Review Press author, world socialist activist, and theorist of revolution, Marta Harnecker, died on June 15, 2019, at age 82. In her memory, we republish an exchange between her and Greek journalist Tassos Tsakiroglou, conducted in advance of the 2017 conference on 150 Years of Marx's Capital: Reflections for the Twenty-First Century.
January 1, 2019
The presidential elections in Cuba in March 2018 has raised again the question of the country's survival. How can Cuba hold up and develop against the economic, cultural, and military encirclement of U.S. imperialism in particular and the capitalist system in general? An answer can be sought in the history of Cuba's socialist transition, the unique role played by Che Guevara, and the emergence of ideas regarding the possibility (and impossibility) of achieving socialism in one country alone.
May 1, 2018
Revolution is still on the agenda for the global periphery. Restorations in the course of socialist transition are not irrevocable—and in the weak links of the center, breaks in the imperialist front are not inconceivable.
May 1, 2018
The Manifesto's analysis of the capitalist crises that "put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society" remains central to any attempt to predict the events of the coming years.
November 1, 2017
We have entered a period of history fraught with danger but also rich with revolutionary potential. It is time to move beyond our illusions that electoral politics and reforms of the capitalist state can achieve the revolutionary changes that we all know are urgently needed. As we begin to reorient our struggles there are important lessons to be learned from the recent history of the global South.
November 1, 2017
President Chávez, in line with Marx, identified revolutionary praxis as the key link between human development and practice: "We have to practice socialism…and this practice will create us, ourselves, it will change us; if not we won't make it." From this standpoint, the material product of activity is always accompanied by a second product—the human product. Since the human product has historically been neglected in socialist theories of transition, it is worth considering its significance.
October 1, 2017
The Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela has always been shaped by the dangers and demands of achieving socialism through democratic means. Only by reckoning with that complexity can we understand both Venezuela's current crisis and its recent history.
July 1, 2017
For this special issue, MR has invited some of the most profound left thinkers in the world to reflect on the legacy of revolutions and counterrevolutions around the world since 1917. Naturally, these authors do not all offer similar perspectives or come to the same conclusions. Nor should they—the historical issues are too complex and the human stakes are too high.
July 1, 2017
If counterrevolution ultimately triumphed over the revolutionary waves of the twentieth century, how are we to understand this, and what does it mean for the future of world revolution? The answer requires a survey of the whole history of imperialist geopolitics over the last century.