In May 1949 Monthly Review began publication in New York City, as cold war hysteria gathered force in the United States. The first issue featured the lead article Why Socialism? by Albert Einstein. From the first Monthly Review spoke for socialism and against U.S. imperialism, and is still doing so today. From the first Monthly Review was independent of any political organization, and is still so today. The McCarthy era inquisition targeted Monthly Review's original editors Paul Sweezy and Leo Huberman, who fought back successfully. In the subsequent global upsurge against capitalism, imperialism and the commodification of life (in shorthand “1968”) Monthly Review played a global role. A generation of activists received no small part of their education as subscribers to the magazine and readers of Monthly Review Press books. In the intervening years of counter-revolution, Monthly Review has kept a steady viewpoint. That point of view is the heartfelt attempt to frame the issues of the day with one set of interests foremost in mind: those of the great majority of humankind, the propertyless.
In May 1949 Monthly Review began publication in New York City, as cold war hysteria gathered force in the United States. The first issue featured the lead article Why Socialism? by Albert Einstein. From the first Monthly Review spoke for socialism and against U.S. imperialism, and is still doing so today. From the first Monthly Review was independent of any political organization, and is still so today. The McCarthy era inquisition targeted Monthly Review's original editors Paul Sweezy and Leo Huberman, who fought back successfully. In the subsequent global upsurge against capitalism, imperialism and the commodification of life (in shorthand “1968”) Monthly Review played a global role. A generation of activists received no small part of their education as subscribers to the magazine and readers of Monthly Review Press books. In the intervening years of counter-revolution, Monthly Review has kept a steady viewpoint. That point of view is the heartfelt attempt to frame the issues of the day with one set of interests foremost in mind: those of the great majority of humankind, the propertyless. TODAY -- Monthly Review has had but 6 editors. The original editors were Paul Sweezy and Leo Huberman. Leo Huberman died in 1968, and Harry Magdoff became an editor in 1969. Ellen Meiksins Wood served ably as editor in the period 1997-2000. In May 2000 John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney, themselves of the "1968" generation and educated by Monthly Review, took over the primary editorial responsibilities. Founding editor Paul Sweezy died on February 27, 2004, and a special issue devoted to his work appeared in October 2004. On June 1, 2004 Robert McChesney ceased to be formally designated as an editor, while continuing as a contributor and a Director of the Monthly Review Foundation, the not-for-profit entity that operates both Monthly Review magazine and Monthly Review Press. Harry Magdoff died on New Year's Day, 2006. A special issue focusing on his contribution to the understanding of capitalism and imperialism appeared in October, 2006. John Bellamy Foster, the current editor, continues the tradition of combining accounts of what is new (without falling for fads) with the equally vital task of seeing the longer process. That tradition, as summarized by Paul Sweezy, is to see the present as history. On July 14th, 2006 we began a daily web magazine featuring a broad range of articles, reviews and commentary. Revenues from subscriptions and the sales of books have always fallen short of the demands on Monthly Review's resources. This is inevitable; in today's world any anti-imperialist and socialist enterprise that finds its resources sufficient to the tasks we face must either be moribund or false. The contributions—over and above subscriptions and book sales—of a global community of several thousand people sustain Monthly Review. Monthly Review today places most of its articles on the web and our daily web magazine has attracted a substantial and growing readership. If you have found our website of value, please consider subscribing to the magazine or, better yet, becoming an Associate.
Relatively impressive statement from GUE/NGL (European United Left/ Nordic Green Left) on climate change and capitalism.
The panic button needs to be hit to declare climate emergency. We need serious action now; there is no more time to waste.
Martin Hart-Landsberg: "Since we can be confident that this expansion will end and unemployment will once again become a serious problem, it is worth revisiting how mainstream economists and government policy makers treated the high rates of unemployment that marked the first five years of this expansion."
The current labor force participation rate of prime age workers, those 25-54 years, is a case in point. It remains below the previous peak rate in 2008, and even further below the peak rate at the…
“We are in grave danger of being sleepwalked into military confrontation with Iran over an incident that is blamed wrongly on Iran.” —Gareth Porter. From Common Dreams.
It’s obvious that Bolton and Pompeo are trying to create a Gulf of Tonkin incident with Iran.
On the farce that 20k Cuban soldiers are in #Venezuela: "A total of 140,000 Cuban health workers have provided their services in Venezuela, undertaking 3,300,000 operations, and saving 1,470,000 lives." Granma - English
Cubans are truly committed to the principle of sovereignty, we are protective of our independence, and we would never do to others what we would not allow to be done to ourselves.
"Those who avoided reading Karl Marx’s three-volume, 2,500 page magnum opus, Capital, in the improbable expectation that someday a movie version would come out, have finally got their wish. Boots Riley’s film, Sorry to Bother You, may indeed be the most marxist film ever made." From The Public Autonomy Project by Steve Darcy.
Can a film be true? More to the point, can a film about capitalism avoid being recuperated by the system as just another commodity to make money for the culture-industry? Predictably…
The Nineteenth Newsletter (2019) from Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.
When the late South African artist Tito Zungu wanted to depict the world of the migrant labourer, he settled on the envelope. It was by infrequent letters that the migrant would be able to be in touch…
"The failures of Richard Evans the biographer reveals the greatness of Eric Hobsbawm the historian." By Corey Robin from the blog Out of the Crooked Timber.
The failures of Richard Evans the biographer reveals the greatness of Eric Hobsbawm the historian.
Great interview of economist Pasqualina Curcio by Federico Fuentes focusing on the questions: "Why does Venezuela have the world’s highest inflation rate and what impacts have the sanctions really had on the country?" From Green Left Weekly.
“Unilateral coercive measures…[directed by the U.S. against Venezuela] affect the entire population in a deliberate and systematic manner. That is why, in accordance with the Rome Statutes [of the…
"The commune is the only space that disputes power… it is one of the few, genuine, self-convened spaces for building direct democracy,” —Atenea Jiménez, from the National Network of Comuneros. Green Left Weekly.
Federico Fuentes explores grassroots communal organisation, and the tension between popular power and sectors of the government.
RT's "Going Underground" host Afshin Rattansi, talks with South African activist and author, Ronnie Kasrils on Nakba Day...
Ronnie Kasrils, South African anti-apartheid activist, former South African Minister for Intelligence Services, and author of The Unlikely Secret Agent, appears on RT to talk with Afshin Rattansi…
!["While SouthCom are yet to confirm if they will meet Guaido’s team, [U.S. Admiral] Faller had earlier tweeted that he ...](https://img.medioq.com/2/safe_image.php?d=AQDYSBMgYz88dJCu&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmronline.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2019%2F05%2Fus_navy_flickr.jpg&_nc_hash=AQDAt0lUV7AhpHoh)
"While SouthCom are yet to confirm if they will meet Guaido’s team, [U.S. Admiral] Faller had earlier tweeted that he looked forward to discussing how to 'restore [the] constitutional order' in Venezuela and that his forces stood 'ready.'" Venezuelanalysis.com
A meeting between Guaido’s team and the U.S. Southern Command is being organised.
![Excellent review & reminder of Nicos Poulantzas analysis of fascism: "The main strength of [his analysis] is its strong ...](https://img.medioq.com/2/safe_image.php?d=AQADOKlosaUhJYtz&url=https%3A%2F%2Fmronline.org%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2017%2F02%2Fmronline_header.png&_nc_hash=AQDAWv2Fv7jC40uQ)
Excellent review & reminder of Nicos Poulantzas analysis of fascism: "The main strength of [his analysis] is its strong theoretical foundation & class analysis," in contrast to recent works, which have a "tendency to provide a descriptive account of contemporary fascism rather than a theoretical one." Marx & Philosophy Society / Review of Books
In the final stage of fascism, the fascist state has consolidated power and freed itself of its petty-bourgeois class origins. Poulantzas says that this is the most brutal stage…
"Former U.S. Air Force language analyst Daniel Hale has been arrested and charged with violating the Espionage Act and other offenses related to leaking classified documents to the press." From Caitlin Johnstone.
This outrageous explosion of watchlisting — of monitoring people and racking and stacking them on lists, assigning them numbers, assigning them ‘baseball cards,’ assigning them death sentences without…
"None of the dangers posed by the government & its henchmen have dissipated…. The grim realities of life in the American Police State" have simply "disappeared from our televised news streams." TruePublica.
What characterizes American government today is not so much dysfunctional politics as it is ruthlessly contrived governance carried out behind the entertaining, distracting and disingenuous curtain of…
Monthly Review Press %70 OFF Warehouse Clearance Sale! - https://mailchi.mp/monthlyreview/monthly-review-press-warehouse-clearance-sale-1347181
New this week! A critique of "transitional justice" by @MullinCorinna, @TrNada, and @ashahshahani: "#Transitionaljustice blindness to systematic & racialized violence the North inflicts on the South makes it highly functional to maintaining today's imperial world order."
This article will be released in full online May 13, 2019. Building on decades of struggle, the January 2011 Tunisian uprising triggered a wave of popular revolt that spread across North Africa and…
This Thursday, May 15, Brooklyn, NY, at Verso Books
Join us for lively debate and a glass of wine with panelists, including Voices of Latin America editor, Tom Gatehouse; Brooklyn Museum Director of Education, Adjoa Jones de Almeida.
Women's Media Center Live with Robin Morgan talks with author and journalist Stephanie Julia Urdang
Robin Morgan, poet, author, and political theorist, hosts a weekly, hour-long, nationally syndicated radio show based at the Women’s Media Center. On May 12, she talked with Stephanie J. Urdang…
Dossier 16 from Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research In this interview Gyekye Tanoh, head of the Political Economy Unit at the Third World Network-Africa based in Accra (Ghana), elaborates upon the themes of corporate plunder, resource nationalism and people-centered forms of resource management in Africa.
In this interview Gyekye Tanoh, head of the Political Economy Unit at the Third World Network-Africa based in Accra (Ghana), elaborates upon the themes of corporate plunder…
"What is the capitalist democratic state and how should it be confronted? The left has typically seen the state either as an instrument of class rule or as a neutral medium. In the following 7 theses, Michael A. McCarthy argues that both are wrong & that we need a reinvigoration of the late work of Nicos Poulantzas for a full, democratic understanding of the state." Verso Books.
What is the capitalist democratic state and how should it be confronted? This question has bedevilled the left for generations. On the one hand, a social democratic conception of the state as a…
Nice review of by Adam Tomes of Andrea Gibbons', City of Segregation: One Hundred Years of Struggle for Housing in Los Angeles (Verso, 2018). From Counterfire.
Andrea Gibbons’ history of the battle for equal housing in LA uncovers the intensity and injustice of segregation, which remains a highly visible aspect of US cities…
The struggle by Indian farmers against Pepsico and Monsanto is very important. This article provides an update on attempts to control seeds—the essence of monopolistic control by agribusiness giants. From NewsClick.in
NewsClick is a member-supported English language progressive, online video news network. NewsClick is a viewer funded news channel that produces news videos, partnering with YouTube and is based in New Delhi, India. NewsClick was launched in 2009.
MR author Andy Merrifield finds a few gems at "Mercer Books, along Mercer Street, smack in the heart of New York University’s ghetto.… My great find, though, was a 1978 issue of Dissent, containing Marshall Berman’s original take on 'All That Is Solid Melts Into Air.'"
Enter Marx, the first thinker, Marshall believes, to make these two worlds connect. It was Marx, after all, who wanted to discover the underlying unity of life. Marx’s horizon is vast and his vision…
While there are some shortcomings, this discussion of neoliberal fascism is nonetheless insightful. From Countercurrents.org.
Undoubtedly we live in the age of neoliberalism. There might also be a link between Neoliberalism and fascism. If one agrees with the rather enticing idea that Hayek’s ideology pamphlet The Road to…
MR author Atilio Borón annihilates Bolton by picking apart his press conference of April 30 on #Venezuela. "They lied to create a climate of opinion favorable to the coup against" Goulart in 1964, Allende in 1973, Bishop in 1983, & "now they are lying treacherously about the situation in Venezuela." Translated by Internationalist 360º.
Against this plan led today by Trump and his collaborators, free peoples from all over the world are on the front line with Venezuela. Therefore, international solidarity with their struggle is an…
The following account is by our comrade, Peter Lackowski, a retired teacher living in Burlington, Vermont, who was part of a delegation on a visit to #Venezuela during and after the failed right-wing coup d'état on April 30, 2019.
Today there was a farcical attempt to take a military airport that fizzled. It turned into a dozen or so guys throwing stones and being ignored. The Guardian is shamelessly running video of something…
Classic line from Glen Ford: "Like a crack dealer who has succumbed to smoking his own dope, U.S. corporate media (which includes public television and radio) have come to believe the official lies they transmit." From Black Agenda Report.
The U.S. press has routinely abused, disrespected and lied about Black, brown and yellow peoples and their heads of state, and now subjects its own top political figures to the same treatment.
Thursday, May 16, 6:30pm: BE at Verso Books in Brooklyn to discuss activism in today's Latin America with Tom Gatehouse, editor of the recently launched "Voices of Latin America," Cami Valle, Adjoa Jones De Almeida, Gabriel Hetland, and Casey Box
Join us for lively debate and a glass of wine with panelists, including Voices of Latin America editor, Tom Gatehouse; Brooklyn Museum Director of Education, Adjoa Jones de Almeida.
"The Atlantic blindly peddled the humanitarian pretext offered by Trump…officials…. Instead of recalling the US’s history of using sanctions to undermine popular leftist governments to 'make the economy scream,' installing reactionary dictatorships in countries like Chile, or supporting a failed 2002 Venezuelan coup to remove the popularly elected President Hugo Chávez." Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting.
“Trump’s Venezuela Policy: Slow Suffocation,” an Atlantic report (4/17/19) by Uri Friedman and Kathy Gilsinan, passed up a rich opportunity to expose the humanitarian pretexts for economic…
Great article from The Canary, providing context on crisis in #Venezuela: "Contrary to the media attacks on Venezuela’s democracy, the country’s electoral system has a long positive track record."
Rather than carry out conventional war, over recent months U.S. officials have sought to promote internal divisions, sabotage, and economic collapse within Venezuela. Here’s the full story of…
One of Hugo Chávez’s most wonderful & most important speeches presented artfully in a video as part of the Chavez the Radical series.
In this installment of Tatuy TV’s “Chavez the Radical,” Chavez discussed the role of the commune in the construction of socialism in Venezuela.
A report from The Grayzone on the sadistic U.S. fact sheet on its destruction of Venezuela, which, while it was deleted, was saved and made available by Grayzone.
The Grayzone has obtained a list of “key outcomes” on Venezuela deleted out of apparent embarrassment by the State Department. It boasts of wrecking the nation’s economy…
As usual, an excellent @FAIRmediawatch alert by Alan MacLeod: "Framing how readers see an issue is an incredibly powerful tool of persuasion.… In their efforts to refrain from using the negative—but accurate—term 'coup' to describe events they support, the media have sometimes had to go to bizarre, roundabout and garbled lengths to dance around it."
Media side with Trump cronies rather than common sense in labeling coup a ‘protest’.
The first of a new series—called Briefings—from Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, the aim of which is "to digest complex social dynamics into easily read texts, our team of researchers reading thousands of documents to produce a few pages in summary. These texts assemble key facts to illuminate power relations & to encourage debate on issues of importance."
Of the world’s mining companies, 60% are headquartered in Canada. In February 2019, 216 companies were listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX) and 961 companies were listed on the TSX-Venture…
Good critique of the Guardian and its ideological and financial manipulations. From Red Revolution Media by Michael East.
A lot of companies and entities folded, vanished or ended up in severe trouble in 2008. Bear Sterns, Alfred McAlpine, Virgin Megastores, Merrill Lynch. But perhaps one of the more overlooked and…
"The casualisation of work is no aberration of capitalism. It is the logical outcome of a system based on profit. Precarious work is the product of processes within capitalism that Karl Marx described over 150 years ago." From the Marxist Student Federation.
The casualisation of work is no aberration of capitalism. It is the logical outcome of a system based on profit. Precarious work is the product of processes within capitalism that Karl Marx described…
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