• Monthly Review
  • Monthly Review Press
  • Climate & Capitalism
  • Money on the Left
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Mastadon
MR Online
  • Home
  • About
  • Contact/Submission
  • Browse
    • Recent Articles Archive
    • by Subject
      • Ecology
      • Education
      • Imperialism
      • Inequality
      • Labor
      • Literature
      • Marxism
      • Movements
      • Philosophy
      • Political Economy
    • by Region
      • Africa
      • Americas
      • Asia
      • Australasia
      • Europe
      • Global
      • Middle East
    • by Category
      • Art
      • Commentary
      • Interview
      • Letter
      • News
      • Newswire
  • Monthly Review Essays

About Vijay Prashad

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He is a senior non-resident fellow at Chongyang Institute for Financial Studies, Renmin University of China. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power.
  • The art in this newsletter was produced by Tricontinental’s art department for our May dossier, Africa’s Faustian Bargain with the International Monetary Fund.

    How the International Monetary Fund underdevelopes Africa: The Twenty-First Newsletter (2025)

    Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on May 22, 2025 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)  |

    Once plundered of both its wealth and people by colonial powers, Africa now faces IMF-imposed austerity, obscene debt, and forced underdevelopment.

  • Dahlia Abdelilah Baasher (Sudan), Untitled, n.d.

    A language of blood has gripped our world: The Twentieth Newsletter (2025)

    Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on May 15, 2025 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)  |

    Sudan’s forgotten civil war has killed at least 150,000 and displaced nearly 13 million. Understanding its political details is key to tracing the causes and potential solutions to the conflict.

  • A large road sign in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, commemorating the 30 April 1975. Photo: Wikimedia Commons

    Vietnam celebrates 50 years of the end of its colonial period

    Originally published: Peoples Dispatch on May 12, 2025 (more by Peoples Dispatch)  |

    Reflections on Vietnam’s revolutionary reunification, post-war recovery, and socialist transformation–highlighting the enduring legacy of resistance and the challenges of building a sovereign economy.

  • Hands off Venezuela

    They are making Venezuela’s economy scream: The Eighteenth Newsletter (2025)

    Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on May 1, 2025 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)  |

    U.S.-led sanctions (more aptly referred to as Unilateral Coercive Measures) caused Venezuela to lose oil revenue equivalent to 213% of its GDP between January 2017 and December 2024, resulting in losses of roughly $77 million per day. Who is the real target of these and other unilateral coercive measures?

  • Jean-Claude Sévère (Haiti), L’ennemi attaqué chacun de sa propre volonté se tient debout pour défendre sa patrie (When the Enemy Attacks, Everyone Stands up of Their Own Free Will to Defend Their Homeland), 1970.

    Two hundred years ago, France strangled the Haitian Revolution with an inhumane debt: The Seventeenth Newsletter (2025)

    Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on April 24, 2025 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)  |

    On a stormy August night in 1791, Dutty Boukman (1767–1791) and Cécile Fatiman (1771–1883) conducted a Vodou ceremony at Bois Caïman in northern Saint-Domingue, in the French-owned part of Hispaniola.

  • Waiting for a New Bandung Spirit

    Waiting for a new Bandung spirit: The Sixteenth Newsletter (2025)

    Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on April 17, 2025 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)  |

    After many decades of stasis, we see the growth of a ‘new mood’ in the Global South. Though only a hint of a new possibility, it holds tremendous democratic potential, with sovereignty at its centre.

  • Boris Taslitzky (France), Insurrection à Buchenwald 11 avril 1945 (Insurrection at Buchenwald 11 April 1945), 1964.

    The Buchenwald concentration camp was liberated by Communist prisoners: The Fifteenth Newsletter (2025)

    Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on April 10, 2025 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)  |

    Eight decades ago, communist prisoners organised and liberated the Nazi concentration camp Buchenwald, where they were held. As the far right of a special type rises across Europe, these heroic victories of anti-fascist resistance are under attack.

  • Andrée Blouin

    Andrée Blouin is our kind of Pan-African revolutionary: The Fourteenth Newsletter (2025)

    Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on April 3, 2025 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)  |

    There is a rich tradition of women writers on the African continent who have played key roles in publishing and national liberation movements alike, from Andrée Blouin to Flora Nwapa. Learn more about their legacy and efforts to carry forward their torch today.

  • Demetrio Urruchúa (Argentina), Nuevo orden (The New Order), 1939.

    What Rodolfo Walsh would demand we write in his place: The Thirteenth Newsletter (2025)

    Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on March 27, 2025 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)  |

    As attacks on the media increase in Argentina and beyond, we reflect on the legacy of Rodolfo Walsh, a heroic journalist who fought the military dictatorship with his pen.

  • Alejandra Laprea (Venezuela), El acuerpamiento de las mujeres es nuestra estrategia de defensa (Women’s Embodied Solidarity Is Our Defence Strategy), 2022.

    Unilateral coercive measures and the war on women: The Twelfth Newsletter (2025)

    Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on March 20, 2025 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)  |

    Despite being among the most impacted by economic war, women continue to foster a sense of solidarity, care, and hope in humanity.

  • Rocio Navarro (Mexico), Watering Day, 2024.

    Twenty-five days of debt-service payments could emancipate African women from 40 billion hours of water harvesting: The Eleventh Newsletter (2025)

    Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on March 13, 2025 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)  |

    In the month of International Working Women’s Day, we explore how debt-austerity regimes and climate change impact women farmworkers across the Global South.

  • Featured

    The Global North has nine times more voting power at the IMF than the Global South: The Tenth Newsletter (2025)

    Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on March 6, 2025 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)  |

    In the deeply undemocratic IMF, where a country’s voting power is tied not to its population size but to the size of its economy, the U.S. effectively holds a veto over any major changes and moulds policies according to its whims.

  • Donald Trump. Photo: Dominique A. Pineiro / CC BY 2.0

    Impossible for a president of the imperialist U.S. to be a peacemaker

    Originally published: Peoples Democracy on March 9, 2025 (more by Peoples Democracy)  |

    ON Friday, February 28, when U.S. President Donald Trump sat in the Oval Office of the White House with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, Trump mused: ‘I hope I will be remembered as a peacemaker’.

  • Cao Fei (China), My Future Is Not a Dream 05, 2006.

    China has already become the leader in advanced critical technologies: The Ninth Newsletter (2025)

    Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on February 27, 2025 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)  |

    Will the U.S.’s geopolitical chess moves, from Greenland to Ukraine to Russia, be enough to eclipse China’s rapid advancement in critical technologies?

  • Katsukawa Shunshō (Japan), Japanese Women Reading and Writing, c. 1776.

    We want to build communities of readers, not turn readers into commodities: The Eighth Newsletter (2025)

    Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on February 20, 2025 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)  |

    Literacy gives us the power to build a collective life–it allows us to see our history with clarity, be critical of our present, and demand the impossible of the future.

  • Chitra Ganesh (United States), Sultana’s Dream, 2018, a series of 27 linocuts published by Durham Press, © Chitra Ganesh.

    Clean waters and green mountains are as valuable as gold and silver mountains: The Seventh Newsletter (2025)

    Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on February 13, 2025 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)  |

    What new worlds can science fiction imagine? From clean energy to ecological transitions, this newsletter explores how Global South writers and policymakers alike imagine–and create–futures beyond colonialism, pollution, and environmental destruction.

  • Umar Rashid (United States), I was dreaming when I wrote this. Forgive me if I go astray. The song of the four companions begins in the Sahel in the presence of the marabouts. Pandora comes from the north. The Harmattan approaches and beckon the storms and wars to come, 1799, 2023.

    Let us find our lost diamonds: The Sixth Newsletter (2025)

    Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on February 6, 2025 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)  |

    Since returning to office, Trump has made clear his intentions of ushering in a new Golden Age of imperialism. With NATO at his disposal, what will this new hyper-imperialism mean for the rest of the world?

  • Abdel Hadi el-Gazzar (Egypt), Popular Chorus, 1949.

    The life expectancy of Palestinians fell by 11.5 years in the first three months of the genocide: The Fifth Newsletter (2025)

    Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on January 30, 2025 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)  |

    The U.S.-backed genocide in Gaza has led to a precipitous loss in the population’s life expectancy. Even as the ceasefire allows aid to enter Gaza, this profound demographic loss will take generations to revert.

  • Baasanjav Choijiljavin (Mongolia), The Taste of Money In-Between Clouds, 2009.

    The Promethean aspirations of the darker Nations: The Fourth Newsletter (2025)

    Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on January 23, 2025 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)  |

    The U.S. sees the emergence of China and other Asian countries as a ‘fierce competition’. For the Global South, however, these developments bring new opportunities to pursue sovereign development.

  • Aisha Khalid and Imran Qureshi (Pakistan), Two Wings to Fly, Not One, 2017.

    All wars end in negotiations. So will the war in Ukraine: The Third Newsletter (2025)

    Originally published: Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research on January 16, 2025 (more by Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research)  |

    Mark Rutte, the current secretary general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), is not a poet.

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 6
  • 7
  • 8
  • 9
  • 10
  • ...
  • 24
Next →

Also By Vijay Prashad in Monthly Review Magazine

  • The Actuality of Red Africa June 01, 2024
  • Africa Is on the Move May 01, 2022
  • Preface January 01, 2022
  • Introduction January 01, 2022
  • Quid Pro Quo? October 01, 2011
  • Reclaim the Neighborhood, Change the World December 01, 2007
  • Kathy Kelly’s Chispa December 01, 2005

Books By Vijay Prashad

  • Washington’s New Cold War: A Socialist Perspective November 15, 2022
  • Washington Bullets: A History of the CIA, Coups, and Assassinations September 16, 2020

Monthly Review Essays

  • US Imperialism in Crisis: Opportunities and Challenges to a Global Community with a Shared Future
    Sam-Kee Cheng A late 1940s Soviet poster showing a US military service member lounging on top of a German factory, smoking a cigar. The text beneath reads DER DOLLARIMPERIALISMUS [dollar imperialism].

    1. Introduction The predominance of US economic, political and military power in the world was established at the end of the Second World War.1 With just 6.3 percent of global population, the United States held about 50 percent of the world wealth in 1948. As the only power which had used nuclear weapons on civilian […]

Lost & Found

  • Journalism, democracy, … and class struggle
    Robert W. McChesney Bob McChesney on Saving Journalism

    Our job is to make media reform part of our broader struggle for democracy, social justice, and, dare we say it, socialism.

Trending

  • Wood gavel and open handcuffs symbolizing freeing judge decisions
    High Court opens door to police accountability
  • President Maduro was unscathed from the attack (Hugoshi)
    ‘Neoliberal and authoritarian’? A simplistic analysis of the Maduro government that leaves much unsaid
  • Tianjin Qiaoyuan Park in Tianjin, one of the earliest sponge city projects in China. Credit: Wikimedia Commons
    Don’t believe the New Cold War lies, China is leading the world in climate solutions
  • An Israeli officer wears Microsoft’s HoloLens headset during military testing in Ramat Gan, Israel. Stefanie J’rkel | AP
    Microsoft’s role in Gaza goes way beyond the ICC email lockout
  • Boat house on Cameron Island on Lake Joseph in Muskoka
    The supply and demand myth of housing
  • South African President Cyril Ramaphosa / French President Emmanuel Macron
    The Colonial past haunts French Military operations in Africa
  • This series of photos was shared on the official Instagram account of the U.S. government-operated Voice of America - Africa radio network on Feb. 15, 2025, with the caption: "White South Africans gathered outside the U.S. embassy in Pretoria...to show their support for U.S. President Donald Trump after he criticized what he terms 'unjust' treatment of White South Africans." | Photos via @voaafrica on Instagram
    Afrikaner ‘refugee’ arrival is latest tactic in Trump’s South Africa destabilization campaign
  • Floyd
    People get ready: Protest on the anniversary of George Floyd’s murder
  • Aerial view of Santa Rita strip copper mine near Silver City, NM
    Donald Trump’s feverish lust for green energy resources
  • Secretary Marco Rubio departs Instanbul, Türkiye May 16, 2025. (Official State Department photo by Freddie Everett)
    Under Trump, NED to continue weaponizing “democracy” in Venezuela, Nicaragua and Cuba

Popular (last 30 days)

  • Langley/Burkina Faso
    The U.S./EU/NATO’s Regime change playbook for Burkina Faso and Captain Ibrahim Traoré
  • Cpt. Ibrahim Traoré
    The rising star of Cpt. Ibrahim Traore – Burkina Faso’s spirit of Sankara
  • Tump and Putin
    Russia rejects Trump’s freeze of the war in Ukraine
  • Trump's Tariffs: Economic Warfare or Winning Strategy?
    The Trump Tariffs and the U.S. Labor Movement
  • Why does the US support Israel?
    Why does the U.S. support Israel? A geopolitical analysis with economist Michael Hudson
  • Wood gavel and open handcuffs symbolizing freeing judge decisions
    High Court opens door to police accountability
  • BAP demonstration in Washington DC gathered outside the Embassy of Burkina Faso, in defense of the Alliance for Sahel States, October 2024.
    Now is the time for all anti-imperialists and all justice loving people to stand unequivocally in defense of Burkina Faso
  • Karl Marx
    Marx’s ontology: A clarification
  • Karl Marx
    150 years since the Critique of the Gotha Programme
  • President Maduro was unscathed from the attack (Hugoshi)
    ‘Neoliberal and authoritarian’? A simplistic analysis of the Maduro government that leaves much unsaid

RSS MR Press News

  • EXCERPT: Colonial dreams, racist nightmares, liberated futures (from the introduction to A Land With A People) May 19, 2025
  • LISTEN: Erald Kolasi on the podcast ‘Real Progressives’ (The Physics of Capitalism) May 19, 2025
  • On the brilliant Bob McChesney April 21, 2025
  • Andy Merrifield, author of Roses for Gramsci, at The Marxist Education Project April 20, 2025
  • NEW! ROSES FOR GRAMSCI by Andy Merrifield (EXCERPT) April 7, 2025

RSS Climate & Capitalism

  • Ecosocialist Bookshelf, May 2025 May 19, 2025
  • Humans have observed less than 0.001% of the deep seafloor May 8, 2025
  • Ecosocialist Bookshelf, April 2025 April 10, 2025
  • Against the Crisis: Economy and Ecology in a Burning World April 2, 2025
  • Will Mpox be the next global threat to human health? April 2, 2025

 

RSS Monthly Review

  • May 2025 (Volume 77, Number 1) May 1, 2025 The Editors
  • The MAGA Ideology and the Trump Regime May 1, 2025 John Bellamy Foster
  • Neoliberalism and Neofascism May 1, 2025 Robert W. McChesney
  • Decolonization and Its Discontents May 1, 2025 Pranay Somayajula
  • China’s “Triple Revolution Theory” and Marxist Analysis May 1, 2025 Cheng Enfu

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Creative Commons License

Monthly Review Foundation
134 W 29TH ST STE 706
New York NY 10001-5304

Tel: 212-691-2555