Category: Monthly Review Press Blog

“Better than any author, Sheehan captures the profound disillusion of Syriza activists”: The American Hellenic Institute Fdn Policy Journal on The Syriza Wave

February 20, 2024

Helena Sheehan’s 'Syria Wave' moves from artistic culture to the mass culture that created and then abandoned (or was abandoned by) Syriza. The author, an Irish journalist and political activist who visits Greece frequently, offers a unique view of the Syriza phenomenon. The first of her six essays was written in 2012 and the last in 2016. Since the essays have not been revised, they convey the euphoria and heartbreak of the movement as they were occurring….

Facts, figures for chatting up anti-immigrant co-workers: Labor Notes reviews The Politics of Immigration

February 20, 2024

After Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials terrorized undocumented workers by raiding 7-Elevens nationwide last month, and with 800,000 federal workers’ jobs on temporary shutdown over the status of the Dreamers, now’s a good time to take a look at how U.S. immigration policies affect the workplace….

“A world worth fighting for”: Agrarian South reviews Creating an Ecological Society

February 20, 2024

At a time when capitalism is widely considered as the only and inevitable system, there are seldom critiques that go beyond understanding the inherent faults of the capitalist system to establishing the possibility of an alternative. This book is the latest contribution by Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams in their lifelong commitment not only to elucidate the ecological crises entailed in capitalism, but to provide the basis and the possibilities for an alternate system: eco-socialism....

ResoluteReader reviews A Foodie’s Guide to Capitalism

February 20, 2024

There is a growing movement of people thinking about how their food is grown, what it contains and its impact on their health and the environment. Often this is tied up with an individualistic view of improving the world – the idea that you can save the world by simply choosing the best food with the least impact on the planet. Eric Holt-Giménez explains he wrote "A Foodie’s Guide to Capitalism" precisely to argue that this approach is inadequate...

Ecosocialism or planetary barbarism: International Socialist Review considers Facing the Anthropocene

February 20, 2024

According to Stephen Bannon and Environmental Protection Agency head Scott Pruitt, poor little America got hoodwinked by devious Asians, signing a deal that would wreck the economy and throw millions of people out of work, especially (white) coal miners in Appalachia, whom the president loves dearly. Climate change is an insignificant issue compared to these hardships and injustices. Coal is a fantastic fuel that will return America to greatness. ¶ Contrast this with the closing of Ian Angus’s Facing the Anthropocene: Fossil Capitalism and the Crisis of the Earth System...

New! Rethinking Democracy: Socialist Register 2018

February 20, 2024

For years, intellectuals have argued that, with the triumph of capitalist, liberal democracy, the Western World has reached “the end of history.” Recently, however, there has been a rise of authoritarian politics in many countries. Concepts of post-democracy, anti-politics, and the like are gaining currency in theoretical and political debate. Now that capitalist democracies are facing seismic and systemic challenges, it becomes increasingly important to investigate not only the inherent antagonism between liberalism and the democratic process, but also socialism. Is socialism an enemy of democracy? Could socialism develop, expand, even enhance democracy?

Sabotaging Apartheid: A Jacobin interview with “Red” Ronnie Kasrils

February 20, 2024

Ronnie Kasrils is the author of The Unlikely Secret Agent, an account of his wife Eleanor’s work as a clandestine agent for the underground ANC. Here, he talks with Jacobin‘s Marcus Barnett about his own work as a revolutionary, and the future of South Africa’s left:

Steve Early on Unions Confronting “Weinsteins in the Workplace”

February 20, 2024

Steve Early, author of Save Our Unions: Dispatches from A Movement in Distress and Embedded with Organized Labor: Journalistic Reflections on the Class War at Home, looks at the role of labor unions in dealing with sexual harassment and how “to insure that the bullying, harassing, divide-and-conquer behavior of bosses, big and small, doesn’t infect and weaken the ‘house of labor’”...

New! Mapping My Way Home: Activism, Nostalgia, and the Downfall of Apartheid South Africa

February 20, 2024

Urdang’s memoir maps out her quest for the meaning of home, as she grapples with the power of nostalgia, and for the lived reality of revolution with empathy, courage, and a keen eye for historical and geographic detail. This is a personal narrative, beautifully told, of a journey traveled by an indefatigable exile who, while yearning for home, continues to question where, as a citizen of both South Africa and the United States, she belongs. “My South Africa!” she writes, on her return in 1991, after the release of Nelson Mandela, “How could I have imagined for one instant that I could return to its beauty, and not its pain?”

“Republicans Are Commodifying Immigrants at the Expense of US Students”: David L. Wilson via Truthout

February 20, 2024

David L. Wilson, author, with Jane Guskin, of The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers (2d ed.), and frequent contributor to Truthout.org, writes that the tax bill that just passed the U.S. Senate will “keep America Great” by putting Trump and his billionaire friends and donors first
Copyright, Truthout.org. Reprinted with permission