February 1, 2018
The experience of the British working class from the late nineteenth century to the current era of austerity illustrates that for labor, the welfare state is not just a mechanism to enhance the accumulation of capital or reinforce oppression. From the beginning, it was a vital part of the class struggle—and so it remains today.
September 1, 2017
Class conflict, from both below and above, has long shaped the history of housing in Britain. These struggles continue today, as the ravages of neoliberalism have forced public housing once again onto the agenda in the United Kingdom.
May 1, 2017
With the rise of Donald Trump, U.S. politics has descended, like never before, into a theater of the absurd. Unbridled anti-intellectualism, deception, and "vindictive chaos" recall a morally reprehensible past in the guise of "making America great again." But despite his populist posturing, Trump's contempt for democratic processes is matched by his commitment to economic policies that favor the financial elite.
March 1, 2017
There is a degree of unpredictability in politics today that presents opportunities for those who aren't too constrained by past experience to see them. We're seeing the possibility of regenerating a left that has previously been ground down to the scale of atoms, one that, if it adapts creatively to the coming defeats, can prepare the ground for success. But that means recognizing that the history of the left is a history of defeats; it is a history of the vanquished.
November 1, 2016
Next year will mark the eightieth anniversary of the Battle of Jarama.… In February 1937, eleven thousand Republicans…fought and died defending Madrid against Francisco Franco's fascist incursion. At this point in Spain's Civil War, the country was split evenly between west and east by rebel Nationalist and Republican forces. An earlier direct assault on Madrid had been repulsed. Republican troops subsequently consolidated their defenses along the Manzanares River. An assault through Madrid's southern barrios would have cost Franco's forces dearly. General Emilio Mora's men north of the city in the meantime were held in check by Popular Front forces in the Sierra de Guadarrama.… The Nationalists turned to cutting off Madrid from the Republic's provisional capital. They planned to march south before swinging north and capturing the road to Valencia. In early February, Franco ordered 40,000 of his battle-hardened Moroccan troops and an Italian unit provided by Mussolini to attack. The forces crossed the Jarama River on February 11. Republican General José Miaja countered the thrust with three battalions of the XV International Brigade, including the Dimitrov Battalion and the British Battalion.
October 1, 2016
At its best, the art of fiction reveals the underlying truth of human relations: we are communal and collaborative by nature. Selfishness and greed are social aberrations because, ultimately, they violate the principle of self-preservation. No wonder we are drawn to crime stories: they mirror our common experience. Capitalism is high crime disguised as church doctrine. Conspiracy is evident, though the evidence is concealed. Hence, our fascination with the detective genre. We are in dire need of Timothy Sheard's scrutiny—a detective who peers through a working-class eyeglass.
September 1, 2016
On July 14, 2016, Cornel West, a Monthly Review contributor and Monthly Review Press author (his 1991 book The Ethical Dimensions of Marxist Thought remains in print) issued a historic statement in the Guardian, under the headline "Obama Has Failed Victims of Racism and Police Brutality." West wrote:
A long and deep legacy of white supremacy has always arrested the development of US democracy. We either hit it head on, or it comes back to haunt us…. I have deep empathy for brothers and sisters who are shot in the police force. I also have profound empathy for people of color who are shot by the police. I have always believed deliberate killing to be a crime against humanity. Yet, Obama didn't go to Baton Rouge. He didn't go to Minneapolis. He flew over their heads to go to Dallas. You can't do that. His fundamental concern was to speak to the police, that was his priority. When he references the Black Lives Matter movement, it's to speak to the police. But the people who are struggling have a different perspective….
July 1, 2016
During the past decade, persistent excess productive capacity, at levels exceeding at times 25 percent, has blighted the British economy, along with rates of unemployment not experienced for two decades, with the result that a substantial proportion of the economy's productive resources remain underutilized. Orthodox economic theory often ascribes such phenomena to a lack of capital for investment. However, in the same period, interest rates have been historically low, and the UK corporate sector has accumulated increasing reserves of surplus capital. Clearly, there has been no shortage of capital for investment. The failure to invest stems not from the supply of capital, but instead from the paucity of investment opportunities, suggesting that British capitalism is mired in stagnation.
April 1, 2016
In the face of austerity cuts to state infrastructure provision, the British Broadcasting Corporation has recently generated something of a moral panic about the future of public sector broadcasting—mobilizing both its own news channel and its friends in the corporate media around the issue. Yet in the midst of this ongoing existential crisis, few have asked: What is it we are being asked to defend?… As in car manufacturing, what is provided is a limitedly resourced primary product, altered for different consumption demands, by add-on and take-off parts.
March 1, 2015
The London Times once referred to the famed Trinidad-born C.L.R. James as a "Black Plato." When asked about the phrase, James elliptically deflected it with a graciousness that should be noted, but the problems with being able to conceive of black intellect only within parallels within Western thought could take up pages. Christian Høgsbjerg's new biography of James focuses on his first years in Britain, from 1932 to 1938, and skillfully avoids either fetishizing his subject or reducing him to a glorious "black brain." The result is a riveting history that is bound to awaken the interest of those unfamiliar with him and add a dimension to what others already know of his life and work.
