April 2021 (Volume 72, Number 11)
Many factors are involved in COVID-19 mortality rates. Nevertheless, it is clear that the more socialist-oriented countries—by prioritizing social needs and public health, plus aggressive testing, tracing, and enlisting the aid of their populations—have generally been more effective in limiting the effects of the disease on their societies. The failure of the wealthier capitalist countries to do so is largely a result of their prioritization of profits over people. | more…
Repairing the Soil Carbon Rift
Enhancing Agriculture and Environment
To create and preserve a permanent thriving agriculture for untold generations to come, it is essential to manage and care for soils using practices that build and maintain healthy soils. | more…
Building Communities of Solidarity
Bill Fletcher Jr. and Bill Gallegos interview Fernando Gapasin on race, class, and building communities of solidarity. | more…
History comes in bad cycles
A new poem by Marge Piercy. | more…
I wake to the possible
A new poem by Marge Piercy. | more…
What Sort of Kinetic Materialism Did Marx Find in Epicurus?
In his Theses on Feuerbach, Karl Marx suggests that the main flaw of all previous materialism has been to uncritically accept and champion a notion of matter that has its proper place in a dualistic framework, where matter is passive and the mind is active. If this is so, true materialism will conceive of matter as an active principle, and of material beings as perfectly capable of conscious sensation and agency. | more…
Engels’s Ecologically Indispensable if Incomplete Dialectics of Nature
Engels was neither a reductionist nor a positivist, and, far from being a political fatalist, he embraced a form of interventionist politics that was underpinned by a historically emergent ethics. It was this standpoint that he aimed to philosophically ground in Dialectics of Nature. | more…
These Brothers Chose Well
Writer, editor, and prison activist Susie Day has written a beautiful, heartrending, and inspiring account of the friendship between Paul Coates and Eddie Conway. Both were born in the late 1940s and grew up in Black communities—Paul in Philadelphia and Eddie in Baltimore. Both were members of the Black Panther Party in the late 1960s and early ’70s, and both were harassed by police for their radical activities as Party members. Eddie was wrongfully convicted of killing a Baltimore policeman and spent forty-four years in prison. Through it all, Paul was his steadfast friend and supporter, as well as partner in their political development and commitment to the liberation of Black people in the United States. | more…
Socialist Practice and Transition
In Socialist Practice, a collection of essays on leftist theory and experiences, Victor Wallis adheres to the view that the achievement of socialism is a drawn out, nonlinear process consisting of episodes that in many cases have a mixed impact on the revolutionary cause. He analyzes several, ranging from the seven decades of Soviet rule to the New Left of the 1960s. His main thesis is that over the last century pure socialism has never existed and that on all fronts socialist movements and governments have contained elements of the old—namely, capitalism. | more…
Was Folk Music a Commie Plot?
The revival of folk music—music derived from rural southern sources, unamplified, and, to a large extent, comprised of old songs of anonymous origin—was more than just another fad. Folk music encapsulated longings for an idyllic past, for a time before crass commercialism turned music into a commodity, and for relationships between musicians and audiences that were egalitarian and holistic. | more…
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…
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
- The Ideology of Late Imperialism by Zhun Xu
- Capitalism and Mental Health by David Matthews
- The Drain of Wealth by Utsa Patnaik
- Repairing the Soil Carbon Rift by Fred Magdoff
- Modern U.S. Racial Capitalism by Charisse Burden-Stelly
- Marx on Gender and the Family: A Summary by Heather Brown
- Marx and the Indigenous by John Bellamy Foster
MR Online
- Whose agriculture drives disease? April 23, 2021 Alex Liebman
- Cryptocrap April 23, 2021 Tony Norfield
- Revolution and counter-revolution in Myanmar April 23, 2021 Eds.
- Migrant women farmworkers: An invisible essential labor force April 23, 2021 Eds.
- A bit of hope that doesn’t come from Miami April 23, 2021 Vijay Prashad
- Should marine species own the high seas? April 23, 2021 Eds.
- Why China’s vaccine internationalism matters April 22, 2021 Qiao Collective
- A model U.S. “fair shares” pledge April 22, 2021 Eds.
- Another false start in Africa sold with green revolution myths April 22, 2021 Jomo Kwame Sundaram
- Report sheds light on the pattern of over-policing that led cops to pull over Daunte Wright April 22, 2021 Eds.
Climate & Capitalism
- Climate Scientists: ‘Net Zero’ is a dangerous trap April 22, 2021
- Ecosocialist Bookshelf, April 2021 April 17, 2021
- Indian monsoons becoming more chaotic April 14, 2021
- The ocean is becoming more stable – and that’s not good news April 10, 2021
- Carbon dioxide levels now at highest level in 3.6 million years April 8, 2021
- Intensive Fishing and the Birth of Capitalism, Part 3 April 5, 2021
- Tipping points confirmed for massive Antarctic glacier April 2, 2021
- Ecosocialist Bookshelf March 2021, Part Two March 26, 2021
- Protect fish to produce more food and reduce greenhouse gas March 25, 2021
- Can ‘ethical investing’ save the world? March 15, 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