Carlos Latuff is a Brazilian cartoonist. | Print
Archive | Commentary
Monthly Review Magazine
Living in Two Cities: Tarif and Evelyn Warren
On May 14, Evelyn Warren and Michael Tarif Warren, attorneys at law, held a press conference. They stood outside the Brooklyn Federal Courthouse and announced that their case, Warren v. City of New York, had been settled. They had dropped their lawsuit against the city and the NYPD officers who had beaten and arrested them […]
Socialism in the 21st Century
“We have the objective ground for building an alternative historical bloc, to use Gramsci’s language. An alternative historical bloc — I would call it ‘anti-comprador.’” — Samir Amin Samir Amin is a Marxist economist. Video by NewsClick (14 May 2012). | Print
The Montserrat Drum
Goat a dance Goat a cry Drum a sing Always slain but always new. Drum A Dance Edgar Nkosi White is a poet and playwright. | Print
Democracy Imperiled: The Greek Political Crisis
Recent developments in Greece provide an acute illustration of the long-standing contradiction between capitalism and democracy. This contradiction has also been felt in Greece in the past, including in the history of military coups aimed at the repression of popular movements and at ensuring the country’s subordination to the wishes of the United States during […]
Impoverishing Europe
The crisis is not relinquishing its grip on Europe. From autumn 2008 to early 2009 the world market experienced the deepest slump in economic output since the Second World War. This is a global crisis. Even in emerging economies like China, Brazil, or India economic growth declined and could not compensate for the recession […]
Some Good News, and Lots of Bad News, from Germany
Here’s “good news” and “bad news” from Germany. The good news: the Christian Democratic Union of Angela Merkel took a real whipping in the election in North Rhine-Westphalia (usually abbreviated to NRW), the largest German state in terms of population. Her smiling, almost benign mien, with little bluster or braggadocio, disguises less and less her […]
Egyptian Workers Speak Out
“What were the reasons for this revolution if not for us to have a voice, to establish our worth, our dignity, to feel like we’re humans, with the right to say yes or no?” Video by Mosireen. | Print
The 67th Anniversary of the Victory over Nazi Fascism
No political action can be judged outside its epoch and circumstances. No one knows even one percent of the fabulous history of man; yet, thanks to that history, we know events that exceed the limits of the imaginable. The privilege of having known some of the people involved, including the places where some of the […]
Venezuela Strongly Condemns Terrorist Attacks in Syria
Communiqué The president of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Comandante Hugo Chávez, in the name of the Venezuelan people and its government, expresses his strongest condemnation of the series of terrorist attacks perpetrated over the last several hours in the Syrian Arab Republic, which tragically left at least 40 people dead and hundreds wounded. The […]
Double Standards Against Change in Bahrain: Interview with Maryam al-Khawaja
Protests against the Formula One Grand Prix held in Manama on 22 April could have reminded the world that repression in Bahrain is still ongoing. But once more the so-called international community by and large turned a blind eye: no diplomatic pressure, certainly no “crippling” international sanctions. The Grand Prix went ahead as planned. A […]
Self-Defense for Workers, Against Market Tyranny: An Interview with Michael Perelman
Carlo Fanelli (CF): Your early work pays a great deal of attention to the classical political economists (e.g. Ricardo, Smith, J.B. Say, J.S. Mill, Marx, etc.), with later writings engaging with economic luminaries such as Alfred Marshal and John Maynard Keynes. Could you briefly discuss how this research has influenced your thinking about economics? And […]
Argentina and the Magic Soybean: The Commodity Export Boom That Wasn’t
One of the great myths about the Argentine economy that is repeated nearly every day is that the rapid growth of the Argentine economy during the past decade has been a “commodity export boom.” For example, the New York Times reported last week: Riding an export boom for commodities like soybeans, Argentina’s economy grew at […]
Flipping the Race Card
Teaching ethnic studies is hard. You have, on one side, folks who would universalize all human experience, not out of meanness but out of sincerity: “I know how you feel,” they say, “because my uncle had a similar experience, and let me tell you. . . .” Of course the uncle’s experience is nothing like […]
“Fail Again and Fail Better”: Matan Kaminer on J14 Protests in Israel
I met Matan Kaminer in Tel Aviv in January 2012, and we agreed to do an extended interview about the state of the left in Israeli society after the controversial J14 social justice protests. Can you tell us a little about yourself and your background? How did you get involved in political activity? I was […]
Pursuing Impossible Objects: An Interview with Simon Critchley
You’ve written about Beckett, Stevens, Blanchot, and others. Literature seems a fundamental concern. Indeed, your own prose is somewhat more literary than other contemporary philosophers’. What is the significance of literature for you? Well, it’s very important. When I stopped playing in punk bands when I was about 19 or 20, I decided I was […]
An Imperialist Springtime? Libya, Syria, and Beyond
Samir Amin: You see, the US establishment — and behind the US establishment its allies, the Europeans and others, Turkey as a member of NATO — derived their lesson from their having been surprised in Tunisia and Egypt: prevent similar movements elsewhere in the Arab countries, preempt them by taking the initiative of, initiating, […]
General Strikes! Looking Backward, Looking Forward
It began on July 14, 1934. That day the San Francisco Labor Council pushed by radicalized rank-and-file workers declared a General Strike, and this led to four days of intense class struggle, the likes of which has rarely if ever been seen in this country. The aim of the General Strike was to support the […]
Lockdown on Zochrot in Tel Aviv, on the Eve of Israel’s Independence Day
On the eve of Independence Day, police imposed lockdown on the office of Zochrot (Hebrew for “remembering”), an Israeli activist organization dedicated to raising public awareness of the Nakba, the catastrophe of displacement and dispossession inflicted on Palestinians. Just as Zochrot activists tried to leave their office last night, around 10:30 PM, for a symbolic […]
“It’s Time to Invent”: Economist Prabhat Patnaik on the Global Crisis
After an engaging half-hour interview with India’s pre-eminent Marxist economist during a conference at New York University, I told a friend about my one-on-one time with Prabhat Patnaik. “There are Marxists in India?” came the bemused response. “I thought India was the heart of the new capitalism.” Indeed, we hear about India mostly as a […]
