Monthly Review Press

The first war the U.S. lost: Korea, not forgotten, hidden (Tim Beal in ‘Pearls and Irritations’)

Wars never start on the date given in history books. There is always a pre-history, a series of events and decisions that lead to the outbreak of fighting. The war in Korea has been called in America the ‘Forgotten War’ and it is not difficult to see why it was soon shunted out of public sight, consigned to oblivion. It was the first war that the United States did not win and it ended in an armistice, a concession of stalemate, but also an ominous indicator of unfinished business...

“A lofty dream” (Work Work Work reviewed in ‘Dissident Voice’ and ‘Countercurrents’)

“A lofty dream” (Work Work Work reviewed in ‘Dissident Voice’ and ‘Countercurrents’)

'Work Work Work' sounds similar for working boys in many countries. Anyone can find them at any hub of exploitation and profit making. A visit to the Tipu Sultan Road or the Dolaai Khaal or Taatee Bazaar area in the capital city of Dhaka, a visit to automobile repair shops around Dhaka or to the marine vessel making yards along the Buriganga near Dhaka will find them. Boys picking torn papers, discarded plastic pieces of innumerable shapes and sizes from street sides, tearing down old posters from walls of the city buildings, looking for whatever is saleable in garbage heaps, selling kitchen items or flowers from morning to night, until may be 10 or 11 PM....

An invaluable warning against the State as a neutral tool (Beyond Leviathian reviewed by ‘Counterfire’)

The state cannot be ‘reformed’ since it is not, despite what liberal theory would insist, a neutral institution. The state historically developed in order to enshrine class power, and so traps us ‘within the paralyzing confines of the hierarchical and antagonistic framework of the political/military domain’. This can only be broken through a ‘radical transformation’ in ‘our social metabolism’, that is in the relations of production of capitalism.

“So much drama, infighting, passion” (Radek: A Novel reviewed during #Germanlitmonth)

Admittedly he was Lenin’s man rather than Stalin’s. He was a passenger on Lenin’s famous sealed train. He made the mistake, however, of aligning himself for ideological reasons with Trotsky after Lenin died, a decision he never really recovered from. I got the impression, from Heym’s telling, that Stalin played cat to Radek’s mouse ever afterward.

NEW! SOCIALIST REGISTER 2023 (EXCERPTS)

NEW! SOCIALIST REGISTER 2023 (EXCERPTS)

The 59th annual volume of the "Socialist Register" examines the growth of corporate power and other important organizational trends in global capitalism. Rejecting such notions as “stakeholder capitalism,” it reviews the organization and strategies of unions and the left as it searches for new routes to socialism. Read on for excerpts from the likes of Adam Hanieh, Patrick Bond, Charmaine Chua and Spencer Cox...