#53 - July 2010
Revolution
The end of 2008 marked the ten-year anniversary of Hugo Chavez’s first electoral victory (December 6, 1998), which initiated a new period marked by the emergence of progressive and left governments in South America. His clinching of the...
One of the main issues in recent years for those desiring profound social transformation – especially in Latin America – has been the question of taking power. Should we to some extent collaborate with State institutions, or should we...
Let him never dream that his bullet’s scream went wide of its island mark, Home to the heart of his darling land where she stumbled and sinned in the dark. – William Vaughn Moody, “On a Soldier Fallen...
Living Marx
Introduction
Despite the predictions that consigned it to eternal oblivion, Marx’s work has returned to the historical stage in recent years and a number of his texts have reappeared on bookshop shelves in many...
We have found no way to replace capitalism as an effective mode of production, and yet that capitalist society as it actually functions violates all defensible conceptions of a rational moral order. – Alasdair MacIntyre...
One of the most remarkable aspects of Marxist scholarship in recent decades has been the recovery and development of Marx’s argument on social and ecological metabolism, which was crucial to his critique of political economy. Marx...
Introduction
Back at the time of the initiation of the American Revolution against British colonialism, Adam Smith presciently commented:
The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little as...
Conjuncture
At the conclusion of his widely popular study of the global political economy, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, English-born and Oxford-trained Yale historian Paul Kennedy observed, “The task facing American statesmen over the...
Property and protection
What do composers of music have in common with Inuit women? What do open-source software developers share with the Maasai? What unites the demands of artists, scientists and educators for...
The great 30-year experiment in 401(k) and similar retirement financing schemes that depend on stock market investments has failed. Even before the stock market crisis of 2008, the signs were everywhere that very few workers would be...
This paper will analyze the successes and failures of Malta’s Labour Party since independence (1964), giving due attention to variables such the economy, class structure, politics, ideology and international factors. Particular emphasis...
Literature
I
B.S. Johnson (1933–73) remains a marginalised figure in 20th century British literature. Both as a novelist and documentary filmmaker, his working-class background and socialist convictions made him a constant...
Poetry
First the thunderheads of stormy statesmen,
Their voices sparking terror to our fear,
Then lofty slogans: Honor! Country! Valor!
From public servants, skillfully sincere.
What heart so dead to patriotic duty...
Parade
That it was a mini parade
on the national scene
counted for nothing
The gods of knowledge knew
This was a pastime
This was church between murders
The others sang paeans...
They’re downsizing Flint
bulldozing the living houses
(foreclosed)
leftover voices of families
loitering
Emergency trees will be carried
on stretcher-trailers
and speared into the ground....
Book Reviews
Hester Eisenstein, Feminism Seduced: How Global Elites Use Women’s Labor and Ideas to Exploit the World (Boulder, CO: Paradigm Publishers, 2009)
Hester Eisenstein’s Feminism Seduced presents a...
Ariel Salleh, ed., Eco-Sufficiency and Global Justice: Women Write Political Ecology (London: Pluto Press, 2009).
This collection of essays combines the work of preeminent feminist scholars and global...
Minqi Li, The Rise of China and the Demise of the Capitalist World-Economy (London: Pluto Press, 2008).
For those who concern themselves with the issue of global capitalist leadership and its transition...
Susan E. Mason, David L. Strug, Joan Beder, eds. Community Health Care in Cuba (Chicago: Lyceum Books, 2010).
For anyone who wants to learn the ABCs of the Cuban health...
Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities that Arise in Disaster (New York: Viking, 2009).
Disasters, more or less by definition, kill people and destroy property. But that...
Michael Lowy Morning Star: Surrealism, Marxism, Anarchism, Situation-ism, Utopia. Introduction by Donald LaCoss (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2009).
When members of the surviving old guard of...
Benjamin Shepard, Queer Political Performance and Protest: Play, Pleasure, and Social Movement (New York: Routledge, 2010).
Contemporary queer politics seems to be dominated by issues of social inclusion...
Mark Rudd, Underground: My Life with SDS and the Weathermen (New York: William Morrow, 2009).
Mark Rudd’s memoir is a welcome and intelligent addition to the growing catalog of books on the history of...
Stefan M. Bradley, Harlem vs. Columbia University: Black Student Power in the Late 1960s (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2009).
In the epilogue of his new book on the historic 1968...
Tim Wise, Between Barack and a Hard Place: Racism and White Denial in the Age of Obama (San Francisco: City Light Books/Open Media Series, 2009)
To what extent may the election of Barack Obama to the...
John Bellamy Foster, The Ecological Revolution: Making Peace with the Planet (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2009).
In The Ecological Revolution, John Bellamy Foster further develops his continuing...
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Philip Appleman has published eight volumes of poetry, including New and Selected Poems, 1956-1996 (1996); three novels, including Apes and Angels (1989); and nonfiction books, including the Norton...