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California Deal Left Members Out of Organizing, Bargaining: Service Employees End Nursing Home Partnership
Following months of criticism and sharp internal debate, the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) ended its controversial partnership agreement with a group of California nursing homes on May 31. The four-and-a-half-year-old deal was a quid pro quo arrangement that brought over 3,000 workers into SEIU after the union secured higher state government payments to nursing […]
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Rescue Plan: Single-Payer System Is the Answer to Health Insurance Woes
Michael Moore’s documentary Sicko indicts private health insurance and calls for its abolition. Sicko joins an American tradition that includes Lewis Hine‘s photographs of child laborers (1908) and Harriet Beecher Stowe’s antislavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852), two examples among many. But can Moore’s theme change our nation in 2007? Private health insurance, usually obtained […]
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The Repressed History of the United States: Revolution, Egalitarianism, and Anti-imperialism [La historia reprimida de Estados Unidos: revolución, igualitarismo y antiimperialismo]
Recientemente, aprovechando un nuevo aniversario del nacimiento de George Washington, el presidente George W. Bush aprovechó para comparar la Revolución americana del siglo XVIII con la guerra en Irak. De paso recordó que el primero, como el último, había sido “George W.” La técnica de las asociaciones es propia de la publicidad. Según ésta, una […]
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The G8 Summit, Heiligendamm, and the Curse of Kempinski
The protest demonstrations have already begun, well in advance of the G-8 summit — and they are already sending strong messages. The big summit meeting on June 5th and 6th in the seaside resort of Heiligendamm on the Baltic coast aims at winning a row of Brownie points for Angela Merkel and improving the images […]
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The Big Picture
A People’s History of the World by Chris Harman Universal or synoptic histories are not favored by professional scholars. As specialists, they prefer the detailed monograph to sweeping world histories. They look askance at those naive enough to believe that global history can be encompassed in one volume. They know better, they say. It is […]
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The Monthly Review Story: 1949-1984
I wrote this as a paper for a seminar in history during my first year of grad school at the University of Washington in 1984. It was a labor of love for me because it gave me an opportunity to read every single issue of Monthly Review , all of which were carefully kept in […]
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Capital and Nature: An Interview with Paul Burkett
1. The year 2007 marks the 140th anniversary of the publication of the first volume of Marx’s Capital. In your perspective, what is the main contribution of that major work to the understanding of contemporary capitalism? Marx’s Capital establishes three essential contradictions of capitalism which grow in intensity as the system develops historically. These contradictions […]
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Capital and Empire: An Interview with John Bellamy Foster
Q. 2007 is the 140th anniversary of the publication of Volume One of Marx’s Capital. In your opinion, what is its main contribution to understanding contemporary capitalism? Marx’s object in Capital was to explain capital as a social relation in the fullest dialectical sense and in the process to describe its law(s) of motion. I […]
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Lessons of the War, for the Movement and the Media
From Protest to Resistance I didn’t make it to the march on the Pentagon. The storm up and down the east coast of the United States knocked down a thirty foot tree in my yard in Asheville, North Carolina, messed up my flight from Asheville to Washington, DC, and left me with a choice of […]
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A Red in the House
Stephen Fleischman, A Red in the House: The Unauthorized Memoir of S.E. Fleischman. New York: iUniverse, 2004. 366pp, $24.95 paperback. This review is late in coming because it has taken a couple of years for me to understand who this Fleischman fellow is, with the tough, brilliant commentaries on various issues in CounterPunch and elsewhere. […]
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Rock Democracies, Paper Freedoms, Scissors Securities [Democracias de piedra, libertades de papel, seguridades de tijera]
Hace diez años, en contradicción con la ola posmodernista, desarrollamos en Crítica de la pasión pura la idea de la moral como una forma de consciencia colectiva. De la misma forma que un cardumen o un enjambre actúa y se desarrolla como un solo cuerpo, de la misma forma que James Lovelock entendía Gaia — […]
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“There’s a Need to Be Hopeful”: The Radical Beats of Radio 4
It’s a rare thing to find a group of musicians who are willing to stick to their guns like Radio 4 has. Independently minded, with an eclectic sound and lyrics that eloquently call for radical social change, they have spent the better part of a decade carving out a niche for themselves. Not an easy […]
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Of the People: A Conversation with Howard Zinn
G.M.S.: Here in Tucson, Arizona, 70 miles from the border, we are feeling the effects of President Bush’s deployment of National Guard troops at the U.S. border. The first hundreds arrived last summer, and 2,500 are expected to be in our “Tucson Sector” by August. Moreover, the Border Patrol is to grow from 12,400 […]
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The Culture of Hate [La cultura del odio]
Annual Fundraising AppealFriends of MRZine and Monthly Review! The continuing existence of MRZine and Monthly Review depends on the support of our readers. Unlike many other publications, we make all new Monthly Review articles, as well as MRZine articles, available online, free of charge. We do so without drawing any advertising money at all […]
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A “Québécois Nation”? Harper Fuels an Important Debate
The House of Commons voted on November 27 to support a Tory government motion that “the Québécois form a nation within a united Canada.” What does it mean? And why now? The second question is easier to answer. The motion was triggered by an unexpected turn of events. Michael Ignatieff, in his quest for the […]
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Where We Are Headed [Hacia dónde vamos]
Annual Fundraising AppealFriends of MRZine and Monthly Review! The continuing existence of MRZine and Monthly Review depends on the support of our readers. Unlike many other publications, we make all new Monthly Review articles, as well as MRZine articles, available online, free of charge. We do so without drawing any advertising money at all […]
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Marxism and Religion
Annual Fundraising Appeal Friends of MRZine and Monthly Review! The continuing existence of MRZine and Monthly Review depends on the support of our readers. Unlike many other publications, we make all new Monthly Review articles, as well as MRZine articles, available online, free of charge. We do so without drawing any advertising money at all […]
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The Slow Suicide of the West [El lento suicidio de Occidente]
Occidente aparece, de pronto, desprovisto de sus mejores virtudes, construidas siglo sobre siglo, ocupado ahora en reproducir sus propios defectos y en copiar los defectos ajenos, como lo son el autoritarismo y la persecución preventiva de inocentes. Virtudes como la tolerancia y la autocrítica nunca formaron parte de su debilidad, como se pretende ahora, sino […]
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Bad Faith and the Common Good: The Road to Civic Republicanism
“Philosophy always comes on the scene too late.” — G.W.F. Hegel1 “They say we don’t stand for anything. We do stand for anything.” — Sen. Barack Obama2 For years it’s been a political commonplace to observe that the Republicans represent the party of ideas while the Democrats are the stupid party. Even Bush-phobic Democrats like […]
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The Irish Soldiers of Mexico
One of the least-known stories of the Irish who came to America in the 1840s is that of the Irish battalion that fought on the Mexican side in the U.S.-Mexico War of 1846-1848. They came to Mexico and died, some gloriously in combat, others ignominiously on the gallows. United under a green banner, they participated […]