NEW DEPARTURES IN MARXIAN THEORY by Stephen A. Resnick and Richard D. Wolff BUY THIS BOOK Being a Marxist requires considerable gumption — especially in the United States. Those who take Marxism seriously in a hostile intellectual and political environment are only too aware of this struggle. At worst, interest in Marxism is perceived […]
Geography Archives: United States
We Are All Prophets Now: Responsibilities and Risks in the Prophetic Voice
Sermon delivered August 5, 2007, at St. Andrew’s Presbyterian Church. It may be the fate of humans always to believe that we live at the most important time in history, that our moment is the decisive moment. But even factoring in this tendency toward collective self-centeredness, it is difficult to ignore that today we face […]
New Element Discovered: Capitalisium
A public university sociology department has recently announced the discovery of the most toxic element yet known to social science. This new element has been named Capitalisium (Cp). Capitalisium is a very volatile, dynamic, and toxic element, containing 1 positron, 1 neutron, and 1 huge electron along with boards of electrons, various vice electrons, […]
Empire and Its Fixers
Ayub Nuri, a Kurdish man from Halabja, was a fixer for the Western media in Iraq (he is now based in New York City, having received a scholarship from Columbia).1 A fixer, in the words of Nuri, is “a journalist’s interpreter, guide, source finder and occasional lifesaver.”2 Local fixers, more or less, shape what foreign […]
Community Protests Human Rights Violations against Transpeople in California Prisons
Join the silent protest at the courthouse, make calls to Attorney General Jerry Brown and Federal Receiver Robert Sillen to support a transgender woman rape survivor. When: 8:00am – 9:30am Monday July 30th, 2007. Where: Civic Center Courthouse, 400 McAllister Street @ Polk St, San Francisco. Clothing: Wear RED, as Alexis has chosen the […]
Profit without End: Capitalism Is Just Getting Started
Debates concerning the “Socialism of the 21st Century” are experiencing an upswing at the moment. However, this century will initially be rather one of capitalism than socialism. Not because there is once more an economic recovery. Prosperity and crisis alternate constantly in capitalism, but behind this up-and-down process are tendencies towards an extension and further […]
Fighting with Audacity, Intelligence, and Realism
Achievements of the Cuban Revolution are well known to Monthly Review readers. What is striking about Raúl Castro Ruz’s address on 26 July 2007 (an excerpt from which is reproduced below), on the occasion of Cuba’s National Day of Rebellion, is not his tribute to them but his candid assessment of the “errors which […]
Raul Castro: Open to Dialogue with Next American President [Raul Castro se dit ouvert au dialogue avec le futur président américain]
Le chef de l’Etat cubain par intérim, Raul Castro, s’est dit ouvert au dialogue avec le futur président des Etats-Unis, afin de pacifier les relations entre les deux pays, lors d’un discours à Camagüey, à l’occasion de la fête nationale cubaine, jeudi 26 juillet. La future administration américaine “devra décider si elle maintient la politique […]
Oaxaca: A Call for International Solidarity
Oaxaca, 20 July 2007 — The struggle between the popular movement of rebellion and the government’s actions to totally crush it is at a critical point. I believe the situation is extremely dangerous for many oaxaqueños. Five days ago the governments (Oaxaca State and Mexican Federal — fully backed by the United States, I’m […]
The Prophecy of Bolívar: US Interventions in Latin America [La Profecía de Bolívar: Intervenciones de EEUU en Latinoamérica]
“Estados Unidos parece destinado a plagar la América de miserias en nombre de la libertad”. Con esta profética frase de Simón Bolívar en 1826, el Libertador hizo la crónica anunciada de una historia de intervenciones, militares y políticas, disfrazadas unas y en forma abierta otras, con las cuales el gigante del norte impuso su dominio […]
The Putin Charisma
Vladimir Putin has not been getting good press in the United States or even Western Europe in the last year or so. He has been charged with being authoritarian, with attempting to recreate Russia‘s imperial control over its neighbors, and with reviving Cold War obstructionism in the United Nations. So it is with some surprise […]
Containing Russia: Back to the Future?
“Containing Russia: Back to the Future?” by Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov was published on the Web site of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation on 19 July 2007. The account of Lavrov’s conflict with the journal Foreign Affairs, which follows his essay, was published on the same Web […]
Privatizing the Leviathan Immigration State
The post-911 immigration regime originates in 2003 when immigration control shifted from the Department of Justice to the new Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The Immigration and Naturalization Service was abolished March 2003, and its functions were transferred into the newly created DHS, in a merger of some 180,000 employees from 22 different agencies. […]
We Can Strengthen Worker Rights Now
The March 1 House of Representatives vote for the Employee Free Choice Act (EFCA) was an important milestone for legislation intended to help employees form and join unions, but that vote was as close as this bill would get to becoming law for the next two years. Even if the Senate had passed EFCA, neither […]
Stop Collaboration in Torture: Psychologists for an Ethical APA
Since the first pictures of Abu Ghraib, the collusion of medical personnel, including psychologists, in the torture of prisoners at Abu Ghraib, Gitmo, Bagram, and CIA detention centers is no longer open to question: Mark Benjamin, “The CIA’s Torture Teachers,” Salon.com, 12 June 2007; Valtin, “Fact Sheet: Psychologist Participation in Torture,” Invictus, 6 July […]
Lessons from the Lal Masjid Tragedy
ISLAMABAD, Pakistan — For my first three days in Pakistan, no conversation could go more than a few minutes without a reference to the crisis at the Lal Masjid (Red Mosque) compound. I had landed in Islamabad on July 8, and by then it seemed clear that government forces would eventually storm the mosque and […]
The Fight of Our Lives: The War of Attrition against U.S. Labor
1. Introduction: The War We are in the fight of our lives. The hostile onslaught against U.S. labor that was launched after the Second World War and redoubled in the 1980s is entering a new phase that will profoundly influence the future of all working people in North America. How we respond to this latest […]
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 […]
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 […]
Achievements and Limits of the First United States Social Forum
The first US Social Forum wrapped up on Sunday, July 1 in Atlanta, Georgia. That it happened at all seems almost miraculous. It is hard to remember any previous comparable gathering of diverse currents of US social movements. This is not a particularly dynamic moment in their history — the anti-war movement is bland […]
