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  • Monthly Review Essays
  • Lamartine rejects the Red Flag before the Hôtel de Ville, Paris, on 25th of February 1848 by Henri Felix Emmanuel Philippoteaux

    The problem with Liberalism

    Originally published: Simplifying Socialism on August 2026 by A. J. Horn (more by Simplifying Socialism) (Posted Aug 12, 2026)

    A philosophy of contradictions.

  • Anti-ICE protest in Minneapolis

    Individualism and collective action

    Originally published: Simplifying Socialism on July 25, 2026 by A. J. Horn (more by Simplifying Socialism) (Posted Jul 27, 2026)

    Far from being oxymorons, the two concepts form a unique paradox.

  • 1970 Townhouse Explosion by the Weather Underground in Greenwich Village.

    A duty to disobey

    Originally published: Simplifying Socialism on July 18, 2026 by A. J. Horn (more by Simplifying Socialism) (Posted Jul 20, 2026)

    We’re all terrorists now, maybe we should act like it.

  • Fred Hampton, of the Black Panthers, seated from left, Pablo Guzman, of the Young Lords of New York, Jose “Cha-Cha” Jimenez, founder of the Young Lords of Chicago, and Mike Klonsky, of Students for a Democratic Society, at a news conference in Chicago on Oct. 10, 1969.

    Fighting fire with water

    Originally published: Simplifying Socialism on June 26, 2026 by A. J. Horn (more by Simplifying Socialism) (Posted Jun 30, 2026)

    One problem immediately reveals itself: what is identity and why does it matter?

  • Black Panthers in a reading circle, credit: Pirkle Jones

    The politics of reading

    Originally published: Simplifying Socialism on June 12, 2026 by A. J. Horn (more by Simplifying Socialism) (Posted Jun 15, 2026)

    Why understanding a book means understanding the world that produced it.

  • Marx reading at his study, artist unknown.

    Marxism’s hidden hermeneutic

    Originally published: Simplifying Socialism on June 6, 2026 by A.J. Horn (more by Simplifying Socialism) (Posted Jun 09, 2026)

    Toward a method of critical inquiry.

  • The Empty Library, a public memorial to the 1933 Nazi book burnings, where over 20,000 books from mainly Jewish, communist, liberal and social-critical authors were burned.

    The war against critical thinking

    Originally published: Simplifying Socialism on May 31, 2026 by A. J. Horn (more by Simplifying Socialism) (Posted Jun 03, 2026)

    On historical interpretation, the false equivocation of academic revisionism & politically motivated negationism, and the need to reclaim terminology.

  • Marx & Engels

    Getting started with Marxism

    Originally published: Simplifying Socialism on May 16, 2026 by A. J. Horn (more by Simplifying Socialism) (Posted May 19, 2026)

    An in-depth look at the process, plus advice I wish I’d received when I first started learning.

  • The BASF factory at Ludwigshafen, Germany, pictured on a postcard in 1881. Courtesy Wikipedia

    Climate collapse is not an accident

    Originally published: Simplifying Socialism on February 13, 2026 by A. J. Horn (more by Simplifying Socialism) (Posted May 13, 2026)

    Capitalism, Fossil Finance, and the Structural Logic of Ecological Breakdown.

  • Art Young, The Masses, December 1915.

    On intervention and imperialism

    Originally published: Simplifying Socialism on March 3, 2026 by A. J. Horn (more by Simplifying Socialism) (Posted May 11, 2026)

    Why Imperialism Is the Greatest Threat to Humanity.

  • Friedrich Engels (left) and Karl Marx (right)

    What Marxism can—and cannot—do

    Originally published: Simplifying Socialism on January 20, 2026 by A. J. Horn (more by Simplifying Socialism) (Posted May 02, 2026)

    Marxism remains the most powerful tool for understanding capitalism, but it is not a formula for building socialism.

  • A lithograph of Gargantua by Honoré Daumier, December 16, 1831. (Wikimedia Commons)

    What does “exploitation” actually mean?

    Originally published: Simplifying Socialism on February 20, 2026 by A. J. Horn (more by Simplifying Socialism) (Posted Apr 30, 2026)

    Marx, Surplus Value, and the Structure of Capitalism.

  • President of Burkina Faso, Captain Ibrahim TRAORÉ

    The Western left misunderstands power

    Originally published: Simplifying Socialism on April 25, 2026 by A. J. Horn (more by Simplifying Socialism) (Posted Apr 27, 2026)

    A critique of Jacobin’s framing of Ibrahim Traoré, and the deeper problem of purity, legibility, and distance in Western left analysis.

  • A ceremony to inaugurate a restored supermarket in Havana, 2019. Photo by REUTERS/Alexandre Meneghini

    Cuba beyond the one-party myth

    Originally published: Simplifying Socialism on April 15, 2026 by A. J. Horn (more by Simplifying Socialism) (Posted Apr 22, 2026)

    Rethinking Cuba’s political system as a model of participatory democracy.

  • Pericles delivering his famous funeral oration in front of the Assembly, by Philipp Foltz

    Democracy against capitalism

    Originally published: Simplifying Socialism on April 12, 2025 by A. J. Horn (more by Simplifying Socialism) (Posted Apr 16, 2026)

    On social contract theory, economic power, and the limits of liberal democratic governance.

  • Karl Marx

    On the limits of Western Marxism

    Originally published: Simplifying Socialism on March 27, 2026 by A. J. Horn (more by Simplifying Socialism) (Posted Apr 13, 2026)

    Toward critical consciousness and the development of revolutionary capacity.

  • Karl Marx

    What Marx actually meant by dialectics

    Originally published: Simplifying Socialism on January 5, 2026 by A. J. Horn (more by Simplifying Socialism) (Posted Apr 10, 2026)

    Marx’s dialectic is misinterpreted, twisted, and vulgarized to this day, 180 years after he first expounded on his method.

  • Friedrich Engels and Karl Marx

    How to think like a Marxist

    Originally published: Simplifying Socialism on April 3, 2026 by A.J. Horn (more by Simplifying Socialism) (Posted Apr 06, 2026)

    Applying Marxist analysis to our daily lives.

Monthly Review Essays

  • Parallel Universes
    Andy Merrifield

    Anybody who’s ever leafed through Finnegans Wake will quickly recognize that we’re not dealing here with a standard novel, just as anybody leafing through Marx’s Capital will know we’re not dealing with standard economics.

Lost & Found

  • The Rise and Fall of the United Farm Workers
    Michael D. Yates Cesar Chavez (center) marches with United Farm Workers members in Redondo Beach, California, July 9, 1975.

    Chavez could not abide the idea, much less the reality, that the farm workers themselves could and should run the union.

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