The divide in Colombia between poverty-stricken rural masses and land-hungry ruling elements is famous for leading to serious conflict. Farmers, agricultural workers, truckers, and traditional miners revived that pattern on August 19 as they launched a nationwide agrarian strike. Government repression, true to form, was not lacking. Some farmers gain reasonable livelihoods from sales of […]
Geography Archives: United States
Who Really Benefits From Sweatshops?
Consumers are ultimately the ones responsible for dangerous conditions in garment assembly plants in the Global South, Hong Kong-based business executive Bruce Rockowitz told the New York Times recently. The problem is that improved safety would raise the price of clothing, according to Rockowitz, who heads Li & Fung Limited, a sourcing company that hooks […]
Killing Civilians to Protect Civilians in Syria
The drums of war are beating again. The Obama administration will reportedly launch a military strike to punish Syria’s Assad government for its alleged use of chemical weapons. A military attack would invariably kill civilians for the ostensible purpose of showing the Syrian government that killing civilians is wrong. “What we are talking about here […]
Wage Theft, Wage as Theft
I. On Thursday, June 27th, fast food workers gathered outside City Hall in New York before a hearing on low wages and wage theft. Some of the workers described to the reporters of the New York Times the difficulty of living on minimum wage, $7.25 per hour in the state of New York. One worker, […]
The Reality of Media in India
Analytical Monthly Review, published in Kharagpur, West Bengal, India, is a sister edition of Monthly Review. The text below is based on the editorial in its July-August 2013 issue. — Ed. In the by now tedious cliché, India, with a population of 1.22 billion (122 crores) and with an elected parliament, is supposed to […]
Michael D. Yates Interviewed by Cedric Muhammad (for the Final Call)
The following is an interview of me (MDY) conducted by Cedric Muhammad (CM), who is an aide to the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, the National Representative of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam. An abbreviated version of the interview appears in The Final Call, the Nation of Islam’s newspaper (available at www.finalcall.com/artman/publish/Business_amp_Money_12/article_100637.shtml). […]
The Struggle Continues: Seeking Compensation for Vietnamese Agent Orange Victims, 52 Years On
The drums of war are beating again. The Obama administration will reportedly launch a military strike to punish Syria’s Assad government for its alleged use of chemical weapons. A military attack would invariably kill civilians for the ostensible purpose of showing the Syrian government that killing civilians is wrong. “What we are talking about here […]
Municipal Bankruptcies, Pensions, and New Dimensions of Class Struggle in the United States
The news that Detroit has declared bankruptcy, the largest North American city to do so thus far, foreshadows an extension of the social crisis currently afflicting the centers of capitalism. As some observers have noted, Detroit is just the tip of the iceberg in what is sure to be a procession of indebted municipalities […]
The Complexities of Putting Ideals into Practice: Interview with Margaret Randall
Introduction Margaret Randall is a feminist poet, writer, photographer, and social activist. Born in New York City in 1936 and currently residing in Albuquerque, New Mexico, she has also spent a number of years outside the United States. Randall participated in the 1968 student movement while living in Mexico City, from where she was […]
Preface to the Indian Edition of Harry E. Vanden and Marc Becker’s José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology
Upon the release of the Indian edition of Harry E. Vanden and Marc Becker’s José Carlos Mariátegui: An Anthology (Kharagpur: Cornerstone Publications, 2013; originally New York: Monthly Review Press, 2011), Vanden is in India on a lecture tour to spread the word about the ideas of José Carlos Mariátegui. On this occasion, we are publishing […]
The Zimmerman Verdict: Three Uneasy Pieces
George Zimmerman Proclaimed Honorary White Man SANFORD, FL — The Volunteer Fire Department and the local chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution have united across class lines to declare George Zimmerman, recently acquitted of murdering African-American youth Trayvon Martin, an “Honorary White Dude.” Mr. Zimmerman, whose driver’s license lists him as Hispanic, was […]
An Interview with John Bellamy Foster (for the Sunday Eleftherotypia)
CJP: What began as a financial crisis in 2007 has become one of the biggest unemployment crises in the advanced capitalist world. Could this perhaps mean that the crisis of 2007-08 was not actually caused by finance itself but had its underlying causes in the real economy? JBF: No one doubts that it was […]
Who Can Best Help End the Colombian Government Repression of Catatumbo Peasants?
“Mr. President [Santos]: I would like to have you tell me to my face that I am a guerrilla. None of us are. We are workers, peasants who try to live as we can. It’s not easy to live here. Our crops produce only losses. We have to sell very cheap and can’t buy things. […]
Pork: The New Weapon of Mass Destruction
One of the greatest horrors of the US security and policy establishment is the prospect of terrorists sabotaging critical infrastructure and key resources — the only horror greatest than that is the prospect of turning the infrastructure itself into a weapon of mass destruction. Imagine a vast network of pipelines and storage units containing highly […]
ILWU’s Northwest Grain Conflict: Business Unionism or Fighting Class-Struggle Unionism
When Wisconsin state workers were courageously occupying the state capitol to protest Governor Scott Walker’s attack on their unions’ right to bargain, AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka trumpeted a call for solidarity actions throughout the labor movement on April 4, 2011, the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, killed during the Memphis sanitation […]
“The Economy Is Doing Fine, But the People Aren’t”: Some Facts on the Economic Background of the Protests in Turkey
Speaking about the then dictator of Nicaragua, US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt reportedly said: “Somoza may be a son of a bitch, but he’s our son of a bitch.” Whether or not Roosevelt actually said it in so many words is disputable, but there is no doubt that it — i.e., dictatorship is licensed in […]
Crises of Capitalism and Social Democracy
John Bellamy Foster is best-known as author of Marx’s Ecology (2000; in which he corrects the popular misapprehension that Marx did not ‘get’ environmental limits), and as editor of Monthly Review (monthlyreview.org), the journal founded by Marxist economist Paul Sweezy in the late 1940s. In his latest book, The Endless Crisis (2012; written with […]
International Crisis Group Against Venezuela
The International Crisis Group (ICG) sells itself as “working to prevent conflict worldwide” but there is one country where their mission looks more like promoting rather than preventing conflict. Exhibit A is their report on Venezuela, released on Friday. There is a lot wrong with this report — most of it reads like a statement […]
Immigrant Workers Are Organizing in New York — With or Without Immigration Reform
Some 50 to 60 union meat cutters and their supporters turned out on the afternoon of April 6 for a noisy protest against what they said was a lockout by Trade Fair, a chain of nine small supermarkets based in Queens, New York. Standing in a picket line on a busy sidewalk outside a Trade […]
A New Pakistan?
“These people who are commonly known as leaders view politics and religion as that crippled, lame and injured man, displaying whom our beggars normally beg for money. These so-called leaders go about carrying the carcasses of politics and religion on their shoulders, and to simple-minded people who are in the habit of accepting every word […]
