“This Is Not Populism,” Monthly Review vol. 69, no. 2 (June 2017), pp. 1-24. DOI: 10.14452/MR-069-02-2017-06_1 [HTML] Since Trump’s election, mainstream commentary has generally avoided the question of fascism or neofascism, preferring instead to apply the vaguer, safer notion of “populism.” In today’s political context, however, it is crucial to understand not only how the […]
“Foreword,” to Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams,” Creating an Ecological Society: Toward a Revolutionary Transofmration
“Foreword,” to Fred Magdoff and Chris Williams,” Creating an Ecological Society: Toward a Revolutionary Transofmration (forthcoming, Monthly Review Press, 2017), 10 pp.
Neofascism in the White House
“Neofascism in the White House,” Monthly Review vol. 68, no. 11 (April 2017), pp. 1-30. DOI: 10.14452/MR-068-11-2017-04_1 [HTML] Not only a new administration, but a new ideology has now taken up residence at the White House: neofascism. It resembles in certain ways the classical fascism of Italy and Germany in the 1920s and ’30s, but […]
Trump and Climate Catastrophe
The alarm bells are ringing. The climate-change denialism of the Trump administration, coupled with its goal of maximizing fossil-fuel extraction and consumption at all costs, constitutes, in the words of Noam Chomsky, “almost a death knell for the human species.” As noted climatologist Michael E. Mann has declared, “I fear that this may be game […]
Marx as a Food Theorist
Food has become a core contradiction of contemporary capitalism. Discussions of the economics and sociology of food and food regimes seem to be everywhere today, with some of the most important contributions made by Marxian theorists. Amid plentiful food production, hunger remains a chronic problem, and food security is now a pressing concern for many […]
Marxism and the Dialectics of Ecology
The recovery of the ecological-materialist foundations of Karl Marx’s thought, as embodied in his theory of metabolic rift, is redefining both Marxism and ecology in our time, reintegrating the critique of capital with critical natural science. This may seem astonishing to those who were reared on the view that Marx’s ideas were simply a synthesis […]
“Foreword” to English translation of Marta Harnecker, “Latin America and Twenty-First Century Socialism”
“Foreword” to English translation of Marta Harnecker, “Latin America and Twenty-First Century Socialism” (originally published as a book in Spanish), Monthly Review, vol. 62, no. 3 (July-August 2010), iii-xvii. Translation(s): Bangla translation in Bangla Monthly Review, vol. 3, no. 1 (December 2010). Translated by Ashish Lahiri.]
The Anthropocene Crisis
The Anthropocene, viewed as a new geological epoch displacing the Holocene epoch of the last 10,000 to 12,000 years, represents what has been called an “anthropogenic rift” in the history of the planet.2 Formally introduced into the contemporary scientific and environmental discussion by climatologist Paul Crutzen in 2000, it stands for the notion that human […]
Multinational Corporations and the Globalization of Monopoly Capital
“Multinational Corporations and the Globalization of Monopoly Capital: From the 1960s to the Present” (co-authored with Intan Suwandi, Suwandi listed first), Monthly Review vol. 68, no. 3 (July-August 2016), pp. 114-31. DOI: 10.14452/MR-068-03-2016-07_9 [HTML] In 1964, Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy wrote an essay entitled “Notes on the Theory of Imperialism” for a festschrift in […]
Marxism in the Anthropocene: Dialectical Rifts on the Left
Natural scientists have pointed to the Anthropocene as a new geological epoch, with the precise dating not yet decided, but often traced to the Great Acceleration of the human impact on the environment since 1945. Thus understood, the Anthropocene largely coincides with the rise of the modern environmental movement and corresponds to the age of […]