Building on Marx’s own open-ended critique, three revolutionary new developments have recently arisen in Marxist theory, addressing social reproduction, the expropriation of nature, and racial capitalism. | more…
April 2018 (Volume 69, Number 11)
Notes from the Editors
The Apocalypse of Settler Colonialism
From the sixteenth through the nineteenth centuries, millions of Africans and Native Americans were enslaved and traded by European settlers in the Americas. This story of slavery, colonialism, and emerging capitalism—and their handmaiden, white supremacy—is integral to that of modernity itself. | more…
The New Service Proletariat
From call centers to fast-food restaurants, the future of service work is one of precarious employment, with no stable schedules, wages, benefits, or union representation. Should these workers be considered part of a new service proletariat, or treated as a new class altogether, the “precariat”? | more…
The Multiple Meanings of Marx’s Value Theory
This article will be made available online on April 9.
The Marxian critique of political economy is inseparable from the “labor theory of value.” But what exactly does this theory mean? This article considers Marx’s value theory from five perspectives: as a monetary value theory, a theory of exploitation, a macro-monetary theory of capitalist production, a theory of individual prices, and a theory of crises. | more…
To access this content, you must purchase a subscription to Monthly Review. If you are already a subscriber please please login here.
A Predatory System
This article will be made available online on April 16.
For several decades, intellectuals and economists who follow Marxist theory have hotly debated the financialization of capitalism. François Chesnais’s latest book represents the most thorough and polished attempt yet to clarify several lingering questions around the matter. | more…
To access this content, you must purchase a subscription to Monthly Review. If you are already a subscriber please please login here.
Marx’s Ecological Education
This article will be made available online on April 23.
Kohei Saito’s Karl Marx’s Ecosocialism: Capitalism, Nature, and the Unfinished Critique of Political Economy shows convincingly that Marx’s ideas about the interaction between humanity and nature did not arrive fully formed, but arose from his rigorous engagement with science and philosophy. His insights still offer unparalleled tools to understand capitalism’s current assault on the environment. | more…
To access this content, you must purchase a subscription to Monthly Review. If you are already a subscriber please please login here.
March 2018 (Volume 69, Number 10)
Notes from the Editors
Nuclear weapons have been used again and again—most often by the United States—as threats directed at various nation-states to achieve geopolitical ends. Each such use takes us closer to the precipice of all-out nuclear war. | more…
The Expropriation of Nature
To understand the present ecological crisis, it is necessary to dig much deeper into capitalism’s logic of expropriation, as first delineated by Marx during the Industrial Revolution. At the root of the problem is a spoliation of the natural environment—the expropriation of the earth itself. | more…
Invisible Exploitation
How Capital Extracts Value Beyond Wage Labor
An expanded Marxist understanding of capitalist exploitation is long overdue. There are many pathways of surplus extraction beyond the wage form, and understanding them is a task with profound implications for anticapitalist movements around the world. | more…
The Pharmaceutical Industry in Contemporary Capitalism
The pharmaceutical industry has been enormously profitable for many decades. The myth is that these windfalls are warranted by the therapeutic advances made by pharmaceutical companies—but the reality is far different. | more…
Thinking Clearly about the White Working Class
In his timely new book, David Gilbert addresses a subject that could not be more relevant: the white working class in the United States. He brings a much-needed historical perspective to current debates around the politics and identity of white workers, then and now. | more…