March 2021 (Volume 72, Number 2)
Despite all of the inevitable contradictions, China stands out in the present planetary emergency in having advanced an ambitious vision of ecological civilization with the strong support of the Chinese population. Paraphrasing C. Wright Mills on Cuba, we do not worry about China’s struggle to create an ecological civilization. We worry with it. | more…
The Ideology of Late Imperialism
The Return of the Geopolitics of the Second International
In 1990, when renowned Indian Marxian economist Prabhat Patnaik asked “Whatever Happened to Imperialism?,” once vibrant and influential schools of theories on imperialism were at a postwar historic low. When he left the West to return to India in 1974, imperialism was at the center of all Marxist discussions. But when he came back to the West merely fifteen years later, imperialism already seemed out of fashion. The retreat from the question of imperialism has marked a return of what we can call Second International politics. | more…
Racial Capitalism and COVID-19
The COVID-19 pandemic has brought into sharp relief the deep structural problems affecting nonwhite racialized workers in the core and periphery. Yet, many social scientific analyses of the global political economy, at least in the pre-COVID era, are race neutral or willfully indifferent to the persistent racial pattern of global inequalities. Even if they do address legacies of colonialism, they ignore the ongoing racial logics of oppression embedded therein. | more…
Capital, Science, Technology
The Development of Productive Forces in Contemporary Capitalism
Capitalist modernity not only contains profound contradictions, but is also undergoing a significant transformation. Far from acting as a driving force for the development of social productive forces, it has become a parasitic entity with an essentially rentier and speculative function. Underlying this is an institutional framework that favors the private appropriation and the concentration of the products of general intellect. | more…
A Commodius Vicus of Recirculation
Encountering Marx and Joyce
“In the mid-1990s, when I lived in central London, I used to walk past the British Museum nearly every day. More often than not, I would pop in, did so for years, getting thrilled by a couple of things. The first was entering the great Reading Room, for which I had a Reader’s Card, glimpsing and even sitting in space G-7. I never ordered any books, had no need to order anything; all I wanted was to sit there, in Karl Marx’s seat, and try to feel the vibe. Usually, there was no vibe, only the hushed shuffling and page turning of others close by, mixed with the odd cough and splutter.” | more…
Whither China?
An Exchange from 2002–03
In December 2002, Isabel Crook, a Canadian anthropologist who had spent most of her life in China and a longtime friend and supporter of Monthly Review, wrote a letter to the MR editors questioning the critical nature of coverage of China’s capitalist road to socialism since the ascendance of Deng Xiaoping in the late 1970s. This short exchange with Harry Magdoff reflects the complex ways in which dedicated socialists sought to address changes in China and the clarity of the ideas expressed. | more…
What We Recovered in the Revolution
Álvaro Cunhal's Five Days, Five Nights
A prolific political writer, Álvaro Cunhal—leader of Portugal’s Communist Party for half a century and central figure of the 1974 Carnation Revolution—revealed in 1994 that he had also written several novels under the pseudonym Manuel Tiago. One of these novels, Five Days, Five Nights, was only translated into and published in English in 2020. The novella manages to capture the complexities, loneliness, and bravery of ordinary people, highlighting how we are the ones who keep us safe. | more…
February 2021 (Volume 72, Number 8)
We remember our good friend and comrade, Leo Panitch, one of the great socialist intellectuals of all time, who died on December 19, 2020, age 75. | more…
The Drain of Wealth
Colonialism before the First World War
The Western European powers appropriated economic surplus from their colonies, materially and substantially aiding their own industrial transition from the eighteenth century onward, as well as the diffusion of capitalism to the regions of new European settlement. In the case of India, the concept of drain is based on the fact that a substantial part of its earnings was never permitted to accrue to the country; it was instead appropriated by the ruling power: Britain. | more…
The Ecological State
Although natural constraints on supply are important, most economic scarcities that rule our lives are actually social and artificial. Supply and demand are not natural forces drifting through the air; they are contrived realities established by an interactive social environment involving governments, corporations, institutions, and classes. Supply and demand cycles are social constructs designed to answer a basic question: Who gets what? | more…
Manipulations of Freedom
The Dirty Fight for Prop 22 and the Gig Economy
On California’s November 2020 ballot were some contentious and important issues, including Proposition 22, classifying rideshare drivers and app-based delivery workers as independent contractors. Gig economy giants Uber, Lyft, Doordash, and others spent a whopping $111 million on Prop 22. Of course, the companies had a lot to lose. If they were made to treat their drivers or delivery people as employees and compensate them accordingly, they would be bankrupted, they claimed. | more…
Popular
- Why Socialism? by Albert Einstein
- Did Mao Really Kill Millions in the Great Leap Forward? by Joseph Ball
- The Contagion of Capital by John Bellamy Foster
- Engels’s Dialectics of Nature in the Anthropocene by John Bellamy Foster
- Capitalism and Mental Health by David Matthews
- Modern U.S. Racial Capitalism by Charisse Burden-Stelly
- Marx on Gender and the Family: A Summary by Heather Brown
- The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology by John Bellamy Foster
- The Drain of Wealth by Utsa Patnaik
- Marx and the Indigenous by John Bellamy Foster
MR Online
- Neoliberalism was born in Chile; Neoliberalism will die in Chile March 12, 2021 Vijay Prashad
- Ecuadorian Indigenous Leader: “We must get out of the Correaism-Anticorreism polarization” March 12, 2021 Eds.
- We need to decolonize our understanding of antisemitism March 12, 2021 Eds.
- Cuba’s contributions in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic March 12, 2021 Eds.
- NATO video talks ‘diversity, respect, embrace’ but critics see through the wash job March 11, 2021 Alan MacLeod
- Top Pentagon commander requests astronomical sum of money to prepare for war with China March 11, 2021 Eds.
- Displaced persons return home in Latakia, Syria March 11, 2021 Prensa Latina
- Anti-Asian racism never stopped being an outgrowth of U.S. imperialism March 11, 2021 Danny Haiphong
- Stand in solidarity with Ken Loach March 10, 2021 Gavin Lewis
- 100 days of revolt, & still raring to go March 10, 2021 Eds.
Climate & Capitalism
- The financialization of environment protection March 11, 2021
- Intensive Fishing and the Birth of Capitalism, Part 2 March 8, 2021
- GMO Soy, Popular Resistance, and Corporate Power March 4, 2021
- The Ministry for the Future: A passionate call to save the earth March 1, 2021
- Action Needed Now to Solve Triple Emergency February 18, 2021
- Global Ice Melt: Much Faster Than Predicted February 18, 2021
- Lithium, Batteries and Climate Change February 11, 2021
- Ecosocialist Bookshelf, February 2021 February 9, 2021
- Intensive Fishing and the Birth of Capitalism, Part 1 February 3, 2021
- Are UN climate talks leading to a global dictatorship? February 2, 2021
Michael Yates: Economist’s Travelogue
- What we sow is what we eat September 21, 2017
- A Land Grant in Maine: The Gift That’s Been Giving Since 1767 September 6, 2016
- Let’s Get Serious About Inequality and Socialism May 7, 2016
- Bernie Sanders’ “Political Revolution” February 29, 2016
- Geraldine July 7, 2015
- Dreaming of the Dead January 23, 2015
- Those Who Came Before Us* January 5, 2015
- Dolphins at the Hilton November 24, 2014
- Order-Givers and Order-Takers* October 27, 2014
- Sacco and Vanzetti* August 23, 2014