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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” […]

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 […]

  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 […]

  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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

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 Rene Villerme published a paper examining mortality patterns in different Parisian arrondissements (districts).

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 collapse of the Soviet Union and its ‘actually existing socialism’, the latter’s truly grave deformations notwithstanding, has had the consequence of a worldwide crisis of revolutionary politics, a crisis really of the social revolution of our times which, however, even in the failure of its first efforts, has left the world significantly changed for the better, and though in crisis, has enough resources left for revolutionary struggles of the future, a resumed struggle for socialism

A debate over the future of the AFL-CIO, the federation of most unions in the USA, has been underway for some months and, for the life of me, while the debate becomes more intense, the differences seem to blur. Yet, the feeling that one gets is that we are headed for a train wreck

Who is the most cited and discussed economist in the world? Don’t waste time looking among Nobel Prize winners and other stars of the mainstream media. André Gunder Frank is by far the most cited and most discussed, as shown by a number of studies on the subject and by the more than 30,000 entries he has on the Internet

I met André Gunder Frank and his wife Marta Fuentes in 1967. Our long conversation convinced us that we were intellectually on the same wavelength. “Modernization Theory,” then dominant, ascribed the “underdevelopment” of the Third World to the retarded and incomplete formation of its capitalist institutions. Marxist orthodoxy, as represented by the Communist Parties, presented its own version of this view and characterized Latin America as “semi-feudal.” Frank put forward a new and entirely different thesis: that from its very origins Latin America had been constructed within the framework of capitalist development as the periphery of the newly arising centers of Europe’s Atlantic seabord. For my part, I had undertaken to analyze the integration of Asia and Africa into the capitalist system in light of the requirements of “accumulation on a global scale,” a process that by its inner logic had to produce a polarization of wealth and power

In many parts of our country—in communities large and small—there are activists engaged in a wide range of struggles for social and economic justice. In some communities and states there is one person who stands out as a consistent force for social change. This person inspires others and provides continuity over the years. In Vermont, University of Vermont professor of philosophy Will Miller was such a major force for left education and change—in local communities, at the university, and in the state. A committed socialist and Marxist, Will’s devotion to activism was inseparable from his role as teacher. His devotion to change and knowledge and understanding of history and economics—and his willingness to discuss almost any issue at the drop of a hat—meant that he was an educator both inside and outside the classroom. Unlike most academics (radical or not), Will choose to concentrate on teaching and social change through various means instead of on publishing articles in scholarly journals

On May 2nd the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the New Jersey Troopers publicly announced a $1 million bounty for the capture of Assata Shakur. May 2nd also marked the 32nd anniversary of the fatal shootout on the New Jersey Turnpike that resulted in the deaths Trooper Werner Foerster andZayd Shakur, and left Assata Shakur and Sundiata Acoli wounded. Assata and Sundiata were both tried and convicted in separate trials for the deaths of Werner Foerster and Zayd Shakur

We have over the last four years periodically brought to your attention documents from the leadership of the revolutionary struggle in Nepal, together with our comments attempting to summarize the context. The first such document and commentary was posted in June 2001 https://monthlyreview.org/0601letter.htm, on the occasion of the massacre of King Birendra and his family in the Narayanhiti palace in Kathmandu. It was followed in January 2002 https://monthlyreview.org/0102bhattarai.htm with a discussion of the resumption of civil war that followed once the new King Gyanendra had established his personal control over the army. The growing success of the revolutionary forces, soon to bring the royal government to the negotiating table with a new truce early in 2003, was marked by a February 2003 https://monthlyreview.org/0203parvati.htm document on the role of women leadership in the struggle. The breakdown of the truce, caused by a massacre of unarmed political workers by the U.S. “advised” Royal Nepalese Army (“RNA”) on August 19, 2003, was analyzed in September 2003 https://monthlyreview.org/0903bhattarai.htm

An important debate has commenced within the ranks of organized labor regarding the future of the movement. From our experience we know that the ‘top-to-bottom’ approach to revitalizing workers’ organizations will not foster meaningful membership participation and support. The debate must be joined by rank-and-file union members and leaders, other labor activists, scholars and the broad array of supporters of trade unionism. It must be open, frank and constructive, recognizing that we all have a stake in the outcome of these discussions

When liberal writers Liu Xiaobo and Yu Jie were recently (and briefly) detained by Chinese police, there was a world wide chorus of denunciation. The liberal writers’ endorsement of the U.S. aggression in Iraq made them even more heroic in the eyes of the Murdoch-dominated press. Not surprisingly, there has been no coverage whatsoever of a more egregious case of crackdown on dissent—because it is dissent from the left. On December 21, 2004, four Maoists were tried in Zhengzhou for having handed out leaflets that denounced the restoration of capitalism in China and called for a return to the “socialist road.” The leaflets had been distributed in a public park in the City of Zhengzhou on the occasion of the 28th anniversary of the death of Chairman Mao Zedong. Two of the defendants, Zhang Zhengyao, 56, and Zhang Ruquan, 69, were both found guilty of libel, and each given a three-year prison sentence on December 24, 2004. The case has since generated a lot of expressions of solidarity in leftist circles within China. Postings to a leading leftist website in China in the last few days have set out an abridged translation of the incriminating leaflet, the commemorative piece titled “Mao Zedong forever our leader,” plus a commentary whose author went to Zhengzhou to show solidarity on the day of the trial on December 21. These pieces have been translated by our comrades at the China Study Group, who have asked that we post them here at the MR website. We are glad to do so, believing that a strong case can be made that the story of the left opposition inside China is the most important and least covered in the world

As some of you know, my wife and I retired from the world of regular wage labor in the Spring of 2001. Since then we have lived in many places, the last being Portland, Oregon. We spent fourteen months in Portland, along with our twin sons. We were attracted to this city because we wanted to see the Northwest and because of the publicity it has received as an environmentally conscious urban area with a very liberal politics. While the city is surrounded by a green belt of parks, fine for hiking, and while great trees and beautiful flowers abound, Portland’s reputation for liberal politics is mostly myth. Unemployment is very high, wages are low, and workers are treated poorly. One of my sons, a talented chef, was paid a wage much less than half of what he had earned in Pittsburgh and is now earning in Washington, DC., which included several one-day strikes with mass picketing He seldom worked full-time, and the manager of his last employer routinely went on the company com puter and stole hours from workers, a practice which I have come to learn is commonplace in the United States. Working people are almost never mentioned in the local newspapers or discussed by leading politicians. A valiant struggle by unionized workers at the famous Powell’s bookstore, which featured several one-day strikes and mass picketing, got no publicity at all. The labor movement, such as it is, is all but invisible.… [Parts 1-5]

William H. Hinton died in the early morning of Saturday, 15th of May. 2004. He was born in Chicago in 1919. At the age of 17 he worked his way to the Far East. Without money, he supported himself by washing dishes, and then got a job for six months as a reporter on an English language newspaper in Japan. He continued his travels by way of Japanese occupied Korea and Northeast China, then through the USSR to Poland and Germany, and finally returned to the United States by working as a deckhand on an American freighter

Radicals of every stripe believe that capitalist economies are incompatible with human liberation. That is, while human beings have enormous capacities to think and to do, capitalism prevents the vast majority of people from developing these capacities. Therefore if we want a society in which the full flowering of human competencies can become a reality, we will have to bring capitalism to an end and replace it with something radically different