[“The Experience of China” is an excerpt from “Approaching Socialism,” published in the July-August issue of Monthly Review in print. The full text of the article will be soon avaialbe at . — Ed.] When the Red Army, led by the Chinese Communist Party, entered Beijing in 1949, the work needed to create a road […]
Archive | July, 2005
Lift the Cap on Social Security Taxes
My four-year-old son is fond of asking me, “how goes the work?” Well, if he means working for economic justice, the answer is, “not so well, Sam.” Oh, there are signs of hope. The anti-globalization movement has challenged prerogatives of capital in the international economy. And the Bush administration’s attempt to privatize social security by […]
Oklahoma: Many Shades of Red
I’m writing a preface for a new edition of my memoir, Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie, which first appeared in 1997 — it’s about my life growing up poor, rural, super-patriotic, and Christian fundamentalist in Oklahoma, and still becoming anti-imperialist, Marxist, anti-racist, and feminist. I am trying to deal with the red-state (the South and […]
“Allowed to Leave Canada”
On July 2, 2005 I took a flight from Chicago to western Canada where I was scheduled to give a lecture to a group of teachers at the University of Calgary. Clearing customs, I was directed to Immigration where a growing line of anxious or impatient arrivals — mostly dark-skinned, mostly young, I the glaring […]
Less than you bargained for
New bargains every day in our packed aisles, come on! Trappist jams, lamps in the form of buddhas, striped baskets, ceramic bowls of potpourri that will never scent a room after the first five minutes. All the gifts you buy friends who thank you profusely before stowing them in a closet or taking them to […]
“Can We Do Anything besides Watch?” Some Ideas for Addressing Labor’s Crisis
Most labor activists with whom I have spoken have had a similar reaction. Whether one supports positions taken by the Service Employees International Union, the Teamsters, et al.; whether one supports the positions advanced by the John Sweeney leadership of the AFL-CIO; or whether one falls into the ‘none of the above’ category, there is […]
An Interview with Samir Amin
MRZINE: In your essay in the November 2004 Monthly Review entitled, “U.S. Imperialism Europe and the Middle East,” you conclude that, “Europe will be of left, the term ‘left’ being taken seriously, or will not be at all.” As opposed to the views of almost all U.S. and U.K. commentators, are not then the “non” […]
Let’s Put the Nature of Work on Labor’s Agenda: Part One
Capitalism fails workers in at least three ways. It cannot guarantee that a job will be available to any worker who needs one. It cannot guarantee that a worker who has a job will receive adequate compensation for it. And it cannot guarantee that a worker who has a job with adequate pay will […]
Wal-Mart’s End Run around Organized Labor — Aided and Abetted by the State of Texas
Anyone who wants to understand the machinations of “free market” capitalism in the U.S. today needs only to take a look at Wal-Mart’s new 4 million-square-foot distribution complex near Baytown, Texas, which will become operational this summer. The primary purpose of building this massive facility (big enough to hold 30 downtown city blocks or 70 […]
A Debt to the World
from crush and splinter death in the market jeering robotic dryice disrupt to conjure mercy’s perishing persistent script blotted smeared and torn let hair, nail-cuttings nourish the vine and fig-tree let man, woman eat, be sheltered Marx the physician laid his ear over the heartbeat pressed the belly diagnosed the pain but did not […]
Greetings
Liza Featherstone Congratulations, Monthly Review, for embracing the opportunity to reach so many more readers through this webzine. Your truly internationalist perspective, and rigorous, independent socialist thinking, is so badly needed right now, and feels more relevant than ever. Eduardo Galeano Monthly Review in conquest of the air? Wasn´t it a private kingdom of weapons, […]
The Wall Street Journal Meets Karl Marx
Many reading the Wall Street Journal on May 13, 2005, must have rubbed their eyes in disbelief, looked back and then rubbed them again. A front page story headlined “As Rich-Poor Gap Widens in the U.S., Class Mobility Stalls” informed the largely business readership of that paper that the old Benjamin Franklin-Horatio Alger myth of […]
Social Medicine 101
Bastille Day 2005 inaugurates the new Monthly Review Webzine. Paris is also an excellent place to begin a series on social medicine. For it was in Paris, in 1830, that one of the seminal papers in social medicine appeared. While the Parisian workers overthrew Charles X, the last of the Bourbons, a French physician, Louis […]
