Just hours after its release, the first interview with Chris De Ploeg has already gone live!

Adnan Husain‘s Office Hours 39

Taking the ongoing genocide in Palestine as a point of departure, The Exterminating Empire traces capital’s centuries-long war against life itself. From the slave plantations and scorched-earth campaigns of early colonialism, to Vietnam, Haiti, Iraq, and today’s climate apartheid, Chris de Ploeg shows that, not only has exterminatory violence against peoples and ecosystems been central to the imperial project, but omnicidal tendencies—the drive to kill everything—have always been present. Operating at different scales, these tendencies possess the potential to annihilate even the imperial core itself, along with the rest of the planet. Read more….

The post New! Chris dePloeg’s “The Exterminating Empire” appeared first on Monthly Review.

DIGEST: Reviews, interviews, appearances

Marx Memorial Library in London hosted a dual book launch for Requiem for French Theory and Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? with Gabriel Rockhill, Aymeric Monville, and Jennifer Ponce de León, who engaged in a discussion regarding the effects of imperialism on the production and dissemination of knowledge. Far from simply engaging in a critique of the faux radicalism of the prominent discourses within the imperial theory industry, the discussion was grounded in a reasoned defense of the vibrant international tradition of anti-imperialist Marxism. Topics included the imperial promotion of Western Marxism and postmodern French Theory, the international war of ideas, the failed efforts to discredit anti-imperialist Marxism, culturalism and identity politics vs. a materialist analysis of the colonial question, fascism past and present, the dialectics of actually existing socialism, and the current state of global class struggle in theory and practice. Watch here or below

The Left Chapter, reviewed by Leo Schwarz:

“Shortly before his death, Herbert Marcuse wrote an essay on Rudolf Bahro’s book The Alternative in Eastern Europe. In the essay, Marcuse hailed Bahro’s ‘critique of actually existing socialism’ as ‘the most important contribution to Marxist theory and practice in decades.’ This statement was part of a coordinated campaign for the book and for Bahro that swept through the major media outlets of the Western world between 1977 and 1979–80. As we now know (or can know), a striking number of the key figures in this campaign maintained connections in the postwar decades to the Central Intelligence Agency or to various institutions and organizations that were either controlled, funded, or considered ‘friendly’ by the CIA or the U.S. State Department. In the first volume of his three-volume reconstruction of the ‘intellectual world war’ against actually existing socialism, Gabriel Rockhill examines the history and specific function of these networks of the ‘imperial theory industry’ that emerged after 1945, with his interest focused primarily on the Frankfurt School and the academic “Marxisms” of the Western world, which are usually categorized as ‘Western Marxism’…..” Read more….

Kaanan, reviewed by Adel Samara

“…I was among those who criticized the Soviet system in its post-Stalin decades, and the lesson learned was that the greatest losers were the peripheral countries, especially the Arab nation, since the Soviets had long acted as a force restraining the imperialist beast. More importantly, this collapse was, in historical-materialist terms, a setback—an exception—because history fundamentally advances upward. Though our wounds were deep, the class enemy emerged victorious but also wounded, most notably by becoming the sole superpower, exposing its flaws and unleashing its brutality. In this brief context, I attempt to summarize Gabriel Rockhill’s book—a painstaking and rigorously documented scholarly work. Yet its timing is no less important than the work itself, for it constitutes a bold revolutionary confrontation that demonstrates the author’s profound communist commitment in an era when loyalty to communism has become rare and the fungi of internalized defeat have spread everywhere, filling the burrows with fleeing rats….” Read more at Kaanan.online

Red Ant Collective: “Checking out of the Hotel Abyss,” by Brendan Duncan-Shah

“Marxism in the imperial core is currently going through a process of reorientation, regroupment, and renewal. The period from 1991 to 2008 constituted what Samir Amin has called the second belle epoque of capital.¹ Emerging out of a period of relative defeat for socialism, capitalism was ascendant. The wave of privatisations and the relocation of manufacturing to the Global South injected a wash of surplus into the system. Emboldened by the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the U.S. led imperialist alliance consolidated its hold on the world capitalist economy through its organs, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the World Trade Centre. The U.S. itself indulged in unrestricted, ‘naked’ imperialism, carrying out a slate of invasions with complete impunity in Iraq (1991), Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq again (2003), to mention just the well known ones.² In the Global North, “radical” thought withdrew from Marxism. Laclau and Mouffe’s Hegemony and Socialist Strategy in 1985 heralded a trend that was to consolidate itself up to 2008: the retreat from class politics. Various kinds of “post-Marxisms” emerged and became dominant in the centres of intellectual production. Non-class based forms of political organisation entered the scene with increasing frequency—tailed theoretically by works like Hardt and Negri’s Multitude (2004). The spontaneous working class movement itself fell into a lull, settling into a total divorce from Marxism. Unions, softened by the sop from half a century of unequal exchange, either made peace with their integration into the bourgeois state or vanished as a serious social force. The result was that working people were deeply unprepared to contest the slow rollback of the social wage. All of these trends should be seen for what they were: symptoms of a period of defeat for the real movement….” Read more….

Morning Star: “What is (or was), ‘Western Marxism?'”

“The term “Western Marxism” was popularised by Perry Anderson, editor of the journal New Left Review, in his book Considerations on Western Marxism, published in September 1976. For Anderson Western Marxism was “a product of defeat”: of the failure of the Russian Revolution to spread throughout Europe and the impact on the Soviet Union’s development by its encirclement by hostile forces — before, during and subsequent to the second world war.  Some “left” intellectuals were unable to come to terms with the contradictory realities of building a state capable of withstanding the military and economic aggression of imperialism and dismissed or ignored the way that the consolidation of power in what became the USSR inspired anti-colonial revolutions elsewhere, not least in China, Vietnam and Cuba as well as Africa and Latin America….’

Counterview: “Patronage of dissent? Examining the cold war roots of western Marxist thought’, by Harsh Thakor

“…The narrative begins with the CIA’s pursuit of Che Guevara, using it as an entry point to discuss ideological warfare. Rockhill highlights Guevara’s own belief in the importance of media and ideology, shaped by his experience of U.S. propaganda during the Guatemalan coup. The book is structured in three parts: first, outlining the “imperial intellectual apparatus” of the Cold War; second, a detailed examination of the Frankfurt School’s integration into U.S. and West German institutions, with a focused case study on Herbert Marcuse’s documented ties to U.S. government projects; and finally, a conclusion contrasting what he terms “imperial” Marxism with anti-imperialist traditions. Rockhill’s work challenges the perception that “Western Marxism” emerged organically solely from within the Western workers’ movement or intelligentsia. He proposes that powerful external forces consciously nurtured certain theoretical directions. His ultimate conclusion is that the dominant Marxist tradition inherited in Western academia is a depoliticized one, shaped by the very powers it claimed to critique, and thus ill-suited for building concrete revolutionary alternatives…. Read the rest

MR Online: “An Insider Critique of the Imperial Theory Industry: Gabriel Rockhill Interviewed by Michael D. Yates”

“Michael Yates: Gabriel, what we are as adults is conditioned by our childhoods. Tell us something about where and how you grew up. How do you think this influenced who you are now?

Gabriel Rockhill: I grew up on a small farm in rural Kansas, and manual labor was an integral part of my life from an early age. This included work on the farm, of course, but I also worked construction. My father is a builder and an architect, so when I wasn’t working on the farm, I spent most of my time, outside of school and sports, on construction sites.   

Before I even knew the word, I had the lived experience of exploitation (farm work was never waged, nor was construction work early on). This is clearly one of the things that drove me to the life of the mind: I enjoyed school as a welcome reprieve from manual labor. 

My father is deeply passionate about design, and his motto is ‘hand and mind,’ meaning that to be a true architect, you need to have the practical knowledge to build (hand) what you design (mind). I was desperate for more of the latter when I was young, but I have also remained deeply attached to the former. In retrospect, this approach obviously had a lasting impact on me, since I have definitely embraced what I would now call the dialectical relationship between practice and theory….”

Excerpt of a book review by Gabriella Golea, RN, MN, CPMHN(C), Ontario, for the Canadian Federation of Mental Health Nurses newsletter:

“The Book as a Psychological Case Study: As a seasoned mental health nurse, the writer of this review was particularly intrigued by some of the psychological perspectives that Rockhill appeared to offer. From a psychological standpoint, Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism?, offers several important lessons about how power, especially institutional power, can shape cognition, identity, motivation, and collective belief systems. Below are some psychological insights that appear to be weaved throughout the book, presented here without judgement, so that readers of the book can form their own opinions….

1. Critical Thinking Is Not the Same as Political Agency
   •High levels of sophisticated thinking can coexist with low capacity for collective action.
   •Intelligence does not immunize people against ideological conditioning.
   •Overemphasis on critique can weaken confidence in action (“analysis paralysis”)
   •Endless critique can undermine people’s belief in change and alternative possibilities. (Should there be an online link to the CPMHN newsletter, we will link to it here…)

MLT – Marxism-Leninism Today: Joseph Jamison on Rockhill vs. Saunders and the term “Western Marxism”

“’He who pays the piper calls the tune’ is the proverb alluded to in the title of Gabriel Rockhill’s outstanding new book Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? subtitled “The Intellectual World War. Marxism Versus the Imperial Theory Industry.” [1] The title of Rockhill’s book calls to mind the British title of a well-known earlier book Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and The Cultural Cold War by Frances Stonor Saunders.[2] While rich in factual detail, the Saunders work rarely went beyond liberal outrage about CIA deceit, corruption, contempt for democracy, and brutal violence.

Gabriel Rockhill’s book is a far deeper and more ambitious work. It strives to make a number of advances in Marxist theory, and it focuses on a specific aspect of the Cold War of ideas by concentrating on the capitalist ruling class’s attempt to destroy its communist nemesis by consciously shaping a form of bogus ‘Marxism’ — ‘Western Marxism’ — that would not threaten the capitalist status quo.

Rockhill’s main contention is that much of what is known as ‘Western Marxism’ — especially the strain associated with Frankfurt School and what he calls French Theory — was not a genuine revolutionary or anti-capitalist current. Rather, it functioned as a vehicle of ideological control under capitalism and imperialism. Rockhill shows through a massive amount of archival evidence that powerful capitalist interests — including states, foundations, and institutions tied to imperialist powers — actively funded and promoted this so called ‘critical theory’ tradition.  The aim of all this funding and promotion was to produce a ‘compatible left’ — a left-leaning intelligentsia that would appear critical but would ultimately serve the needs of the ruling capitalist order by diverting attention away from systemic class struggle, revolutionary social change, and the achievements of actual socialism.” Read the rest here…

Counterpunch: “When Marxist Intellectuals Collaborated With the CIA“, by Charles Reitz

“In agreement with the highly respected recent work of Daniel Immerwahr and David Vine and other contemporary radical scholars, Gabriel Rockhill’s new book, Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism, The Intellectual World War. reinforces the by now quite widely-held notion that there is a US empire. Following World War II and the establishment of cold war and the US national security state, a global intellectual contest was underway between those promoting and those opposing the political/philosophical hegemony of US imperial interests. A key element in the political economy of the US knowledge production system was (and is) a CIA partnership with elite universities and Cold War scholars, key corporate foundations, federal research projects, and the top leaders of the corporate mass media. Utilizing wide-ranging archival documentation, Rockhill’s book establishes these interconnections anew (previously adumbrated by Parenti, Mills, Domhoff, etc), and he does so in admirable depth. There was a concerted endeavor to draw critical social commentary into the ‘compatible’ (150) Western Marxist camp and away from what Rockhill sees as the incompatible revolutionary Marxism practiced by Che (whom he lionizes in his first several pages and sees as emblematic of a Marxist fighter and leader in Cuba and Bolivia, in the end assassinated by CIA-linked operatives. Rockhill views Che’s legacy as consistent with other leading lights, such as Lenin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, and Fidel Castro (338), who were at the helm of real socio-economic alternatives to capitalism in practice.

Given the accompanying context of ideological contestation, Rockhill investigates the systems of US knowledge production and counterrevolution for what they were [and continue to be]. This is a worthy project, and Rockhill’s skepticism is warranted with regard to radical intellectuals (like Marcuse, Neumann and many others) serving with the intelligence services of the US government during and after WW II, especially in connection with certain New Left criticisms of Old Left policies. He sees himself as defending anti-imperialist Marxism against the ‘imperial theory industry.’ This industry is considered to be part of the US imperial project, and his mission is unveiling the intellectual ‘pipers’ it paid and those who paid them.” Read more at Counterpunch….

Weaponized Information: Who Paid the Pipers? Empire’s Safe Marxism and the War on Revolutionary Consciousness, by “Prince Kapone”

“This book arrives not a moment too soon. Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? is not a contribution to academic debate. It is an intervention into a global struggle over consciousness, one that determines whether the working classes of the world will recognize their enemies—or continue to fight shadows while empire tightens its grip. Gabriel Rockhill’s work speaks directly to the material reality facing billions of people today: escalating imperial violence, permanent war, economic strangulation, ecological collapse, and an ideological environment carefully engineered to make all of this appear inevitable….” Read more here…

Beyond the anglosphere….

Parabol: “Did Western Marxism serve the interests of the United States?” by Mikael Lovgren

“What was it above all that hindered imperialist expansion during the 20th century? Gabriel Rockhill argues that it is not about the theory generated by the intellectual labor aristocracy in our universities or about the left that has flirted with the reactionary philosophy of Nietzsche or Heidegger – but about actually existing socialist states. Rockhill therefore argues that a successful anti-imperialist policy has historically run parallel to and in symbiosis with the expansion of these states. So-called critical theory, which primarily prizes more and more theory over socially transformative and emancipatory practice for the majority, is, according to this reasoning, hardly fleas in the coat of empire. This is an aspect of so-called Western Marxism that Rockhill explores by following the Frankfurt School and the leading names of critical theory on their heels….” Read more… (also in the original Swedish)

Le Monde, by Pascal Riché:

“Une polémique agite la gauche intellectuelle marxiste. Elle concerne une icône internationale de la contre-culture des années 1960, le philosophe Herbert Marcuse (1898-1979). Penseur révolutionnaire, mentor d’Angela Davis dont il a dirigé la thèse, Marcuse aurait été lié dans les années 1950 au gouvernement américain, et notamment à la CIA, que ce soit directement ou à travers la Fondation Rockefeller qui a financé ses recherches….”Read more…

‘Imperialism med mänskligt ansikte, in Parabol, by Kajsa Ekis Ekman:

“Under de två och ett halvt år som folkmordet på palestinier i Gaza pågått har vi inte sett någon svensk partiledare delta i de massiva folkliga demonstrationer som ordnats varje vecka över hela landet. Att högern inte är där förvånar inte – men var är vänsterpartiet och socialdemokraterna? När en kolonialmakt och tillika apartheidstat genomför ett folkmord med hjälp av USA-imperialismen, vem ska vara där om inte vänstern? Visst, deras medlemmar är där, deras väljare är där, men ledarskapet syns inte till. Normalt sett hade ett socialistiskt parti i en sådan situation arrangerat demonstrationer, forslat dit högtalarutrustning, hållit brandtal och stigit fram som en central kraft i protesterna. Kort sagt, visat det ledarskap så många hett trängtar efter, att de är beredda att kasta sig i armarna på vem som helst vid det här laget….” Read more…

‘Nymarxister ble sponset av CIA’, in Klassekampen:

“….Over dammen var livet enklere. I løpet av krigen utviklet Frankfurterskolen sin virksomhet og bygget opp det som skulle bli deres ubestridte merkevare: «kritisk teori». Gjennom de neste tiårene skulle denne gruppa av tyske eksilanter opparbeide seg heltestatus blant akademikere over hele verden. Nå har imidlertid den amerikanske filosofen Gabriel Rockhill kastet sine kritiske øyne på aktiviteten til dette intellektuelle arbeidslaget – også kjent som Frankfurterskolen….” Read more…

In Cuba Debate:

“Conocí a Gabriel Rockhill por casualidad, mas no por azar. Nos presentó Helen Yaffe, amiga entrañable de Cuba, en enero de este año durante el Congreso Internacional que conmemoró —en la Universidad de La Habana— los 60 años de la Conferencia Tricontinental (1966). La actual coyuntura política le agregó al evento una peculiaridad: los allí presentes estaban desafiando esa reciente manifestación de agresividad contra nuestro país que incluye la posibilidad de una agresión armada. De ahí que la confluencia no fuera por azar. Fue por convicciones….” Read more…

In Canarias Samanal:

“Durante décadas, la lucha de clases no solo se libró en fábricas, calles y frentes militares, sino también en universidades, en las editoriales y en círculos intelectuales. Bajo la apariencia de un “debate teórico” , el imperialismo desplegó una estrategia sistemática para vaciar al marxismo de su potencia revolucionaria y sustituirlo por una “izquierda aceptable” al orden capitalista. El último libro de Gabriel Rockhill desvela con rigor histórico esta ofensiva ideológica…..” Read more…

In Batalla de Ideas, “Marxismo occidental e imperialismo: Un diálogo”, John Bellamy Foster y Gabriel Rockhill

Editor of MR Magazine, John Bellamy Foster spoke with Rockhill about his book on the Monthly Review Magazine website, and this was quickly translated into Spanish at Batalla de Ideas. Read here or see below…

And the same dialogue in French, in Histoire et Societe:

Voilà un très bon sujet soumis à notre réflexion par Danielle, et qui mérite un moment d’étude ce dimanche. Il donne envie de lire Samir Amin et Losurdo au plus vite. En guise d’entrée en matière et d’illustration j’ai mis en ligne samedi « Alex Nodinot et le pacifisme de l’agneau pascal« , mais ici il s’agit plutôt du combat contre l’idéalisme que de celui contre la métaphysique. Si Marcuse, « qui appartenait généralement à la tradition philosophique marxiste occidentale, a été profondément touché par la révolution vietnamienne », il n’y croyait pas, ajoutant dans la préface de « L’homme unidimensionnel » : « même si ces hommes sont à la fin battus ce qui est vraisemblable… ». Et c’est bien souvent sa conception charitable, pitoyable et non marxiste, qui a inspiré nombre de progressistes opposés à la guerre aux USA et en Europe. Mais la particularité de cet homme unidimensionnel écrasé par la « société de consommation » c’est-à-dire une société de l’abondance (on pourrait dire du « communisme déjà là » de Friot), c’est que cet homme est un pur consommateur. Il ne produit pas. Il est en somme un rentier, pur produit lui-même d’un impérialisme qui aurait externalisé toute sa production dans le tiers monde. Cette réflexion critique et autocritique nous est nécessaire pour nous différencier de la social-démocratie et du « communisme de bobos« , celui-là même qui a coulé le parti communiste dans la considération populaire….” Read more….

WATCH:

Marx Memorial Library

Watch their interview with Rockhill, here: https://www.marx-memorial-library.org.uk/events-archive/who-paid-pipers-western-marxism-gabriel-rockhill-interview

Bad Faith

Read more here….

Red Scare

Hakim: “The Latest Developments in Socialist Theory and Analysis (Must-Reads!)”

Critical Theory Workshop book launch

Also! You can follow Rockhill’s substack here, or see more press on Rockhill’s website, here.

The post Gabriel Rockhill’s “Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism?” appeared first on Monthly Review.



Is race subsumed by class, with the latter the sine qua non of capitalism? 



Do race and class act independently within modern societies? 



Or does capitalism inevitably express a deeper racial impetus in the West?

August Nimtz defends Marxism from Robinson’s accusations of myopia on matters of race, suggesting that, in charging Marx and Engels with Eurocentrism, he either failed to understand, or misrepresented, their work—and that, in effect, many thinkers inspired by Black Marxism blatantly misrepresented Marxist texts… Get your copy here

REVIEWS:

Cosmonaut: ““Black Marxism” Under Debate, 40 Years On” by Gary Levi

Cedric Robinson’s 1983 Black Marxism^[1] is a work that has had a second, and even third life. First revived in academic circles by the proselytizing of his acolyte, acclaimed historian Robin D.G. Kelly, the book was again revived in popular circles by the waves of Black Lives Matters protests that sought in it (along with works of prison abolitionists) a theoretical and historical narrative to broaden the immediate convulsive moment of protest towards a vision of how society might change, and under the impact of what form of mobilization. In this sense, it played a role in BLM protests similar to Graeber’s Debt during Occupy. One couldn’t find a prescription of how to protest in it, nor could one find among most protesters a familiarity with its core ideas, but nonetheless those set into motion found themselves drawn to it, and searching for guidance in its pages….For August Nimtz, at the time a former nationalist and pan-Africanist who had moved towards the interracialism and Trotskyism of the Socialist Workers Party, the answer was straightforward. His 1985 review in Journal of African Marxists was one of the first confrontations with Robinson’s text, where he characterized it as a book by a nationalist who “has had to familiarize himself—if not always understand—class analysis.” Nimtz’ insightful review has languished for forty years in even more obscurity than Robinson’s book, until it has now been reprinted as a central element of the subject of this review — Black Marxism: A Marxist Critique, a book which collects various material Nimtz has published over the years, as well as autobiographical materials and new essays, into Nimtz’ most sustained literary confrontation with nationalist thought….”

Counterpunch, and Morning Star: “On Cedric Robinson’s “Black Marxism”, by Seth Sandronsky

“….A corollary across the Atlantic was the division between black and white labor. To wit, Nimtz details Robinson’s misreading of Marx and Engels. For instance, Marx’s journalism during the U.S. Civil War shows his understanding of the importance of ending chattel slavery to liberating enslaved blacks and white workers from their domination under the regime of private property that reproduced labor’s subordination as it created an economic surplus. As we know, private property weathered the storm of Reconstruction, destroying it and the promise of a society based on substantive equality…” Read more

APPEARANCES:

Opera Mundi and Autonomia Literária (Brazil)

iMWiL!, with Jared Ball

The post New: “‘Black Marxism’: A Marxist Critique”, by August Nimtz appeared first on Monthly Review.

Against the Current, by Paul Buhle:

“…Would-be farmers and merchants streamed in during the first half of the 19th century, often traversing westward and northward from the upper South, bringing along their genetic Anglo-Saxonism and their cultural politics. These regions carried subsurface coal waiting to be mined for the rising industrial machine….Political advocates of “free white labor” against potential competition of a geographically advancing slave system found their way into the Freesoil Party, a precursor to the Republicans. Democrats, for their part, believed that the safety of the Republic depended upon the defense of slavery in the South. Abolitionists and social reformers of all kinds, with a wide Yankee following augmented by many recent German immigrants, sought to take things beyond the uneasy accommodation of white populations to each other across existing political lines. In Wisconsin and in Chicago most notably, these would include “Abe’s Boys” enrolling in the army of the Union. Not so in the Southern Illinois, two hours’ drive from my hometown. The whites who immigrated northward from the near South, largely uneducated and lacking skills, came to be considered almost a species in themselves. Journalists at mid-century began to treat them with a relish shown a few decades earlier, in the popular press, about the ‘New Southwest’ created by the purchase of Louisiana…..” Read more…

Midwest Book Review:

“A seminal and groundbreaking study…Exceptionally well written, documented, organized and presented, “The Ragged Edge of Freedom” is an deftly crafted and unreserved recommended addition to community and college/university library American Political/Economic History collections and supplemental African-American History curriculum studies lists.” More here…

The post New: Matthew Stanley’s “The Ragged Edge of Freedom” appeared first on Monthly Review.

Einstein’s prescient article “Why Socialism?”, first published by Monthly Review in its inaugural 1949 issue, has to say the least, been circulating for some time. Yet it has never been more relevant than today. Monthly Review Magazine republished the article online in 2009, making the article even more widely available. Monthly Review Press‘ recent reprint, ‘Albert Einstein’s “Why Socialism?”‘ stands out, however, for the extremely enlightening and thorough introduction written by magazine editor, John Bellamy Foster. In defiance of those who would like to, not only re-write history, but erase the future, please help us get this book out to as wide an audience as possible.

In the Public Eye

One of the many places you can find this classic essay, which just happens to be more relevant now than perhaps at any time in history. Pictured here at Labyrinth in Princeton.

GPEnewsdocs, with Lynn Fries:

In the last segment of an interview series on ecology and materialism conducted by journalist Lynn Fries, John Bellamy Foster reflects on the enduring relevance of Einstein’s “Why Socialism?”. Marx’s foundations of ecological materialism are blended with the work of natural scientists and the Greek philosopher Epicurus. Socialism, as a transformational project whose intellectual birthplace is materialism, had to be forcefully defended by Albert Einstein, the preeminent scientist of the 20th century. Bellamy Foster, discussing his Introduction to Einstein’s essay, explains the importance of Einstein’s contribution in the postwar context and into the present. Read more here, and watch here.

A note: Almost as soon as Fries released the Einstein piece, it made the rounds, circulating to such outlets as Naked Capitalism, The Analysis, and the like.

REVIEWS

For Green Socialist, Vol 114, by Bryn Glover:

“Mention the name Albert Einstein in any modern context and the most likely images it will provoke would be of a wild-haired old man, and his famous equation, E=mc2. It may also conjure cartoon caricatures of such a person advertising an energy supply company. Given the real man’s unwavering dedication to international socialism, the likelihood of his actually allowing his name to promote a capitalist enterprise is extremely remote…. …Einstein strongly supported the founding of the journal, Monthly Review, and was persuaded by a mutual friend of one of the founding editors, Leo Huberman, to contribute an article. Einstein’s short piece was not given any special prominence….”

For Marx & Philosophy Review of Books, by David C. Perlman:

“In the current era in which anti-science ideology, disinformation and ‘the destruction of reason’ are again increasingly being utilized as key components of a broader anti-materialism which reinforces a transition from neoliberalism to neofascism in response to crises of capitalism, Albert Einstein’s ‘Why Socialism?’: The Enduring Relevance of His Classic Essay is timely. It brings to the fore the links between science and the struggle for justice, a rich meaningful life, and environmental sustainability of humanity and other species….”

On Open Culture: ‘Einstein saw a public role for scientists in matters social, political, and even economic. In 1949, he published an article in the Monthly Review titled “Why Socialism?” Anticipating his critics, he begins by asking “is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism?” To which he replies, “I believe for a number of reasons that it is.” ….Einstein goes on, sounding something like a combination of Karl Marx and E.O. Wilson, to elaborate the theoretical basis for socialism as he sees it, first describing what Marx called “primitive accumulation” and what the socialist economist Thorstein Veblen called “’the predatory phase’ of human development.” …most of the major states of history owed their existence to conquest. The conquering peoples established themselves, legally and economically, as the privileged class of the conquered country. They seized for themselves a monopoly of the land ownership and appointed a priesthood from among their own ranks. The priests, in control of education, made the class division of society into a permanent institution and created a system of values by which the people were thenceforth, to a large extent unconsciously, guided in their social behavior.…The science of economics, as it stands, writes Einstein, still belongs “to that phase.” Such “laws as we can derive” from “the observable economic facts… are not applicable to other phases.”

EINSTEIN IN THE ART WORLD

In October, not so long after the book’s release, the NYC/Mexico City gallery Kurimanzutto convened a show curated by Gabriel Orozco, featuring Ariel Schlesinger of Forensic Architecture, Minerva Cuevas, Petrit Halilaj, Robert Longo, Roman Ondak, Wilfredo Prieto, Zoe Leonard, and special guests. The prompt to which the artists responded, Einstein’s article, “Why Socialism?” The show was listed as a “Must See” in ARTFORUM magazine. Kurimanzutto excerpted the article in full, and e-flux Agenda excerpted the same portion of the article that we excerpted in the animated short above.

In Autre: “While visitors are left with political thoughts ruminating, they enter the almost all black-and-white main room of the exhibition and approach large grayscale flags of United Nations members, made by Wilfredo Prieto in a piece called “Apolitico.” Their loss of color strips away any signs of allegiance or patriotism and presents these flags as interchangeable. Other works, such as Ariel Schlesinger’s “Burnt Newspapers,” show the fragility of historical records, which is brought up again in the final and most shocking part of the exhibition, “The Pegasus Stories” by Forensic Architecture….” Read more….

FURTHER ACCLAIM

As seen listed as one of Book Culture‘s “top titles from university presses”:

The post “Albert Einstein’s ‘Why Socialism?'” appeared first on Monthly Review.

By Justin McCurry, for The Guardian

Kohei Saito’s book “Capital in the Anthropocene” (Editor’s note: Building upon his first ever book, published by MRP in 2017, and not to be confused with John Bellamy Foster’s new book Capitalism and the Anthropocene) has become an unlikely hit among younger readers.

The climate crisis will spiral out of control unless the world applies “emergency brakes” to capitalism and devises a “new way of living”, according to a Japanese academic whose book on Marxism and the environment has become a surprise bestseller.

The message from Kohei Saito, an associate professor at Tokyo University, is simple: capitalism’s demand for unlimited profits is destroying the planet and only “degrowth” can repair the damage by slowing down social production and sharing wealth.

In practical terms, that means an end to mass production and the mass consumption of wasteful goods such as fast fashion. In Capital in the Anthropocene, Saito also advocates decarbonisation through shorter working hours and prioritising essential “labour-intensive” work such as caregiving.

‘I was as surprised as everyone else’

Few would have expected Saito’s Japanese-language solution to the climate crisis to have much appeal outside leftwing academia and politics. Instead, the book – which was inspired by Karl Marx’s writings on the environment – has become an unlikely hit, selling more than half a million copies since it was published in September 2000.

As the world confronts more evidence of the effects of climate change – from floods in Pakistan to heatwaves in Britain – rampant inflation and the energy crisis, Saito’s vision of a more sustainable, post-capitalist world will appear in an academic text to be published next year by Cambridge University Press, with an English translation of his bestseller to follow.

“It is broadly about what’s going on in the world … about the climate crisis and what we should do about it,” Saito said in an interview with the Guardian. “I advocate for degrowth and going beyond capitalism.”

The mere mention of the world degrowth conjures negative images of wealthy societies plunged into a dark age of shrinking economies and declining living standards. Saito admits that he thought a book that draws on strands of Marxism as a solution to modern-day ills would be a tough sell in Japan, where the same conservative party has dominated politics for the best part of 70 years.

“People accuse me of wanting to go back to the [feudal] Edo period [1603-1868] … and I think the same sort of image persists in the UK and the US,” he said. “Against that background, for the book to sell over 500,000 copies is astonishing. I was as surprised as everyone else.”

The 35-year-old needn’t have worried about using the language of radical change; as the world emerges from the pandemic and confronts the existential threat posed by global heating, disillusionment with the economic status quo has given him a receptive audience.

The pandemic has magnified inequalities in advanced economies, and between the global north and south – and the book struck a nerve with younger Japanese.

Saito’s academic text, Marx in the Anthropocene, will be published later this year, with an English translation of his bestseller to follow.

“Saito is telling a story that is easy to understand,” says Jun Shiota, a 31-year-old researcher who bought Capital in the Anthropocene soon after it was published. “He doesn’t say there are good and bad things about capitalism, or that it is possible to reform it … he just says we have to get rid of the entire system.

“Young people were badly affected by the pandemic and face other big issues such as environmental destruction and the cost of living crises, so that simple message resonates with them.”

Saito agrees that growing inequality has given his writing more immediacy. “Many people lost their jobs and homes and are relying on things like food banks, even in Japan. I find that shocking. And you have essential workers who are forced to work long hours in low-paid jobs. The marginalisation of essential workers is becoming a serious issue.”

The response to Covid-19 had shown that rapid change is not only desirable, but possible, he says.

“One thing that we have learned during the pandemic is that we can dramatically change our way of life overnight – look at the way we started working from home, bought fewer things, flew and ate out less. We proved that working less was friendlier to the environment and gave people a better life. But now capitalism is trying to bring us back to a ‘normal’ way of life.”

‘Marx was interested in sustainability’

Saito is deeply sceptical of some widely accepted strategies for tackling the climate emergency. “In my book, I start a sentence by describing sustainable development goals [SDGs] as the new opium of the masses,” he said in reference to Marx’s view of religion.

“Buying eco bags and bottles without changing anything about the economic system … SDGs mask the systemic problem and reduce everything to the responsibility of the individual, while obscuring the responsibility of corporations and politicians.”

“I discovered how Marx was interested in sustainability and how non-capitalist and pre-capitalist societies are sustainable, because they are realising the stationary economy, they are not growth-driven,” Saito said.

Since the book was released, Saito has made Japan noticeably less squeamish about the German philosopher’s ideas.

The conservative public broadcaster NHK gave him four 25-minute segments to explain his ideas for its Masterpiece in 100 Minutes series, while bookshop chains cleared space for special displays of revivalist Marxist literature.

Now he hopes his message will appeal to an English-language readership.

“We face a very difficult situation: the pandemic, poverty, climate change, the war in Ukraine, inflation … it is impossible to imagine a future in which we can grow the economy and at the same time live in a sustainable manner without fundamentally changing anything about our way of life.

“If economic policies have been failing for 30 years, then why don’t we invent a new way of life? The desire for that is suddenly there.”

You can find this interview at The Guardian

The post Notice what Kohei Saito was reading when his career went soaring? appeared first on Monthly Review.

Jesse Jackson’s first presidential primary race in 1984 should have been a wakeup call for the Democratic Party. Without a large campaign chest, money for advertising, or seasoned political consultants he amassed 3.5 million votes (winning nearly the entire popular vote in the Deep South states of Mississippi and South Carolina, registering 2 million new voters, and winning 21 percent of the total votes cast). The press, the pundits, the pollsters, and the Democratic Party elites could not believe that the American people would vote for a Black man, let alone a man with such a progressive message, so they characterized him at first as a charlatan, then as a spoiler, and finally as a candidate who spoke only for African Americans. They had accepted the idea that Ronald Reagan’s election in 1980 meant that the New Deal reforms were over, that the growing polarization of the electorate could not be overcome, and that the Great Society had been defeated. Their marginalization of Jackson’s message of economic and social justice and international peace through cooperation, and their failure to imagine that anything else could be different, ceded the playing field to the Republican right. Walter Mondale’s tepid, neoliberal message could not compete with Reagan’s sunny, simplistic optimism; Reagan won by a landslide.[i]

When Jackson ran again in 1988, laying out a coherent, progressive, populist agenda he was hailed for his soaring rhetoric, but his message was still dismissed as being too “radical” for him to win. It was a social democratic message with a moral underpinning and was consonant with most of the values and issues that public opinion polling showed Americans supported. Jackson drew the largest crowds of any of the candidates, but after he won the Michigan caucuses in March 1988, with the largest number of committed delegates, the media coverage turned toward alarm. Despite having apologized numerous times for having used the term “Hymietown” to characterize New York City in a private, overheard conversation during the 1984 election, that term was trotted out again to undermine his appeal to Jewish Americans. And although he was drawing white voters against all expectations, it is likely that the fear of the residual racism of the white population played a role in the belief held by Democratic elites that he was unelectable. This led to a “stop-Jackson” narrative in many mainstream editorial circles.

Thanks to Jackson’s race in 1984, Democrats had won back both the House and the Senate in the 1986 midterms and thus could have capitalized on their majorities by putting forward a progressive charismatic candidate like Jackson. Instead, after a crowded and messy primary fight, Massachusetts governor Michael Dukakis, a moderate, centrist technocrat, emerged as the Democratic Party’s choice. Dukakis’s lack of passion did not inspire the Democratic base, and it is likely that Jackson’s dismissal by the party convinced many African Americans to stay home. In at least twelve states the number of unregistered and non-voting African Americans exceeded the number of votes by which Dukakis lost.[ii] Moreover, Dukakis was never able to overcome Republican accusations that he was weak on crime after a convicted murderer, Willie Horton, absconded from a weekend furlough program in Massachusetts and went on to commit kidnapping, rape and attempted murder in Maryland. On election day only half of those eligible to vote turned out. George H.W. Bush won with the votes of only 26 percent of all Americans of voting age.[iii]

If Jesse Jackson was dismissed in 1984 and 1988, in death he finally received his due appreciation.  At the announcement of his passing on February 17, 2026, a blizzard of articles written with a whiff of nostalgia for lost opportunity appeared in the major media and all over the Internet, lauding his moral and political vision. The New York Times hailed his gospel of “seeking common ground, his pleas to ‘keep hope alive’ and his demands for respect for those seldom accorded it . . .”  Mr. Jackson, they said, enunciated in his 1984 and 1988 speeches at the Democratic conventions “a progressive vision that defined the soul of the Democratic Party, if not necessarily its political policies in the last decades of the 20^th century.”[iv] “Quite simply,” Michael Eric Dyson wrote, “Jesse Jackson led one of the most consequential American lives. He was a genuine populist who stood in stark contrast to the ersatz populists of today.”[v] Historians Clayborne Carson and Jon Meacham called Jackson the most significant political figure between Martin Luther King and Barack Obama. Said Carson, “Jesse Jackson played as central a role in his era as King did in his era. But it was not the kind of heroic struggle as in the 1960s. You’re not going to get a Nobel Prize for what Jesse Jackson did, but it took a lot of talent, initiative, energy, imagination and charisma, and he had those in full supply.”[vi]  Jackson’s campaigns, said another New York Times journalist, “created a path for scores of Black democrats to run for office while demonstrating for the first time that white Americans would vote for a Black presidential candidate.”[vii] Without him Barack Obama could never have won. Read more

What accounts for this revisionist version of history? Perhaps the realization of what this failure to take Jackson seriously has finally dawned on at least a segment of the center left establishment. Perhaps Donald Trump’s blatantly racist, misogynistic, and antisemitic language and policies, perhaps the wrecking ball he has taken to all the institutions of democracy has finally led them to see the light. Perhaps the rise of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, affectionately known as AOC, and the stunning electoral victory of democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani to the mayoralty of New York City, or the courageous resistance of the people of Minneapolis to the fascist thuggery of ICE and Border Patrol agents has given these elites a picture of how far removed they have been from their core constituencies.  

It is far past time to reassess what we lost when the Democratic Party and even some of the left marginalized Jesse Jackson’s candidacies. In 1988, he increased his share to nearly 7 million votes, beating out future Vice President Al Gore, future President Joe Biden, and Dick Gephardt, coming in second against Michael Dukakis, and forcing a change in the delegate selection process to enable more minorities to run and win. The failure to recognize what the two Jackson campaigns could have done for the country has led to the increasing polarization of the electorate, the neoliberal capture of the Democratic Party under Bill Clinton, and eventually to the election of Donald Trump. Even Barack Obama could not escape the racist backlash this rejection of the Rainbow Coalition portended nor the neoliberal pull of economic elites.

While many, in retrospect, have lauded Jackson’s charisma and his populist message, this book should be re-read for the specific lessons it can teach us about the nuts and bolts of running a progressive populist campaign. It contains positive lessons and points to some of the errors that were made. To be sure, we live in very different times. We are faced not with an encrusted political establishment that at least still played by rules established by the Constitution, but with a neo-fascist movement that has captured the presidency, the Republican Party, and the Supreme Court. Moreover, we face a media landscape dramatically altered by social media controlled by tech billionaires in which conspiracy theories run rampant; and we now have Artificial Intelligence beginning to zap our brains and eliminate our jobs, not to mention its potential for mass surveillance and for starting wars without the consent of humans. And Christian Nationalism, with its frightful messianic ideology, appears to have become the new public religion.

All of these new dangers will have to be addressed if we are to survive as a civilization. 

Thus, the stakes today are monumental and the time frame for action is both short and long term—short term because we have only a few months, in the face of Republican states imposing voter identification laws, making registration more difficult, aggressively purging voter rolls, and gerrymandering districts to mount a political campaign that can put a brake on the Trump administration’s worst impulses. The next two national elections are critical. The time frame is also long term because it will take decades of careful organizing to build the structures of a revised political system and economy that can work for all.

Some have lamented the lack of a visible charismatic leader like Dr. King or Reverend Jackson to mount a counteroffensive to the Trump administration. “The Black church isn’t as important as it was. It’s harder to have a figure come out of that tradition and command the power and respect that Jesse Jackson did,” Claflin University historian Robert Greene II said. “It’s hard to imagine someone today being able to enter the political realm already seen as a moral authority.” Institutional religion just doesn’t have the authority or power it once did in the in the United States, experts have said.[ix]  

But that may be changing. The moral clarity in the Minneapolis resistance movement was largely fueled by churches. Reverend William Barber’s Moral Monday and Repairers of the Breach movements have taken the ethical teachings of Jesus into the public square with multiracial marches, rallies and sermons. In his reverential post-mortem Substack on Jesse Jackson’s legacy, Reverend Barber vowed to carry on building the Rainbow Coalition for the new age. Jewish Voice for Peace seeks to apply the ethical teachings of the Prophets to matters of war, peace and social justice. In February 2026, 700 people of various faiths carrying signs that said, “Respect our Humanity” and “ICE Out “marched and sang as they surrounded the Federal building in lower Manhattan where immigrants are processed; and in that same month, over 2,000 United Methodists gathered in the nation’s capitol to witness on behalf of undocumented immigrants and make visits to their congressional representatives.  

Precisely because we are living in such fraught times, we may now have the constituency that is needed for this work. When he ran for president in 1984, Jackson had to build the Rainbow Coalition from the many identity movements that existed in those days (for example, the civil rights and Black nationalist movements, the Arab-American Anti-Discrimination Committee, the Latino movement, the Native American movement, the peace movement, the environmental movement, rank and file labor, the low-income tenants’ movement, the women’s movement, the LGBTQ movement, the disabled movement, and so on). In the intervening years, the right-wing assault on identity movements has left many of them weaker than they were in the 1980s. But Trump’s attacks on just about everything we hold dear, the blatant cruelty and immorality of his administration, have inadvertently created what amounts to a new Rainbow Coalition. When, in 1984, Jackson spoke for “the desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, and the despised,”[x] we knew whom he meant. It was the largely brown and Black underclass. In 1988, he had a related but somewhat different message.

“We meet tonight at the crossroads, a point of decision. Shall we expand, be inclusive, find unity and power; or suffer division and impotence? . . . Tonight, there is a sense of celebration, because we are moved, fundamentally moved from racial battlegrounds by law, to economic common ground. Tomorrow we will challenge to move to higher ground. . . . Common ground! Think of Jerusalem, the intersection where many trails met. A small village that became the birthplace for three religions—Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Why was this village so blessed? Because it provided a crossroads where different people met, different cultures, different civilizations could meet and find common ground. When people come together, flowers always flourish – the air is rich with the aroma of a new spring. Take New York, the dynamic metropolis. What makes New York so special? It’s the invitation of the Statue of Liberty,” Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses who yearn to breathe free.” Not restricted to English only. Many people, many cultures, many languages—with one thing in common, they yearn to breathe free. Common ground!“

            Tragically, that call for common ground was not heeded. The country became even more polarized and the calls for social and economic justice went unanswered. But today the great majority of us are the “desperate, the damned, the disinherited, the disrespected, the despised and the locked-out.” Think of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, executed by ICE; but think also of the Black and brown people who have routinely been killed by police. Think of the people who have lived and worked here for years, started families, and paid their taxes being dragged out of their cars and homes and sent to American style concentration camps awaiting deportation to countries from whose violence many of them had fled. Think of the single mothers who must decide whether to pay the rent or put food on their tables, or the young couples starting out in life who cannot afford to buy their own home. Think of the displaced industrial workers whose desperation leads them to fentanyl addiction or the professional federal government workers who have lost their jobs. Think of the young people just graduating from college whose once secure job prospects are being taken over by Artificial Intelligence, or the low-income families without Medicaid and the middle-class families who will be bankrupted by soaring health care costs. Think of the home care workers who are losing their livelihoods and their elderly and disabled patients who will lose their care. Think of the gay, lesbian, and trans community whose very identities are threatened. Think of all of us facing a rapidly warming climate.

Jesse Jackson’s concept of the Rainbow Coalition was not new, but he elevated it into a powerful symbol of unity. He made concrete the phrase imprinted on the Great Seal of the United States, e pluribus unum. “Our flag is red, white and blue, but our nation is a rainbow —red, yellow, brown, black and white—and we’re all precious in God’s sight. America is not like a blanket—one piece of unbroken cloth, the same color, the same texture, the same size. America is more like a quilt—many patches, many pieces, many colors, many sizes, all woven and held together by a common thread.”

Read more – get the book!

The post Recently reissued! The Rainbow Challenge (Excerpt) appeared first on Monthly Review.

The Critical Theory Workshop

The Critical Theory Workshop was first to launch John Bellamy Foster’s excellent new work. Speakers alongside Foster included Boris Hennig and Paul Schafer, with Jennifer Ponce de León of The Critical Theory Workshop serving as the moderator: https://www.youtube.com/live/1PrDLsHiKkk

REVIEWS

Socialism and Democracy, by Mat Callahan

“The title of John Bellamy Foster’s latest book, Breaking the Bonds of Fate, derives from Lucretius’s famed De Rerum Natura, usually translated as On the Nature of Things. Lucretius wrote:
“Again, if all movement is always interconnected, the new arising from the old in a determinate order – if the atoms never swerve so as to originate some new movement that will break the bonds of fate, the everlasting sequence of cause and effect – what is the source of the free [will] … .” ([On the Nature of Things,] Book II, 251ff)
This exact quotation, moreover, was one made by Karl Marx in his Epicurean Notebooks, compiled in preparation for his doctoral thesis: “The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature” of 1841. From this point of departure, Foster initiates the reappraisal of two thousand years of philosophical controversy…

…Breaking the Bonds of Fate is a major contribution to our understanding of the history of philosophy. Furthermore, it demonstrates the continued relevance of philosophy today. Especially at a time like ours, when social disintegration, irrationalism and reaction are rampant, the praxis and enduring influence of Epicurus and the Garden is an inspiration. By reaffirming basic principles of materialism, dialectics, and the work of Marx and Engels, Foster has provided persuasive arguments for their propagation. It is to be hoped that this wonderful book will be read and discussed by many. We will be better equipped for the struggle to emancipate humanity.” Read more…

Theory and Struggle, by Richard Clarke

Foster’s latest blockbuster Breaking the Bonds of Fate though the most recent, fits logically as the first of the trilogy. It dismantles another myth: that Marx’s own doctoral thesis ‘The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature’5 (completed in 1841 and dedicated to Ludwig von Westphalen, his friend, mentor and future father-in-law) was merely an aberration or youthful enthusiasm soon surpassed by his developing political awareness and activity. On the contrary, it was central to the development of Marx’s world view….Often presented as a private retreat into tranquillity, Foster emphasises that Epicureanism was a materialist challenge – not limited to the elite – to the ideological forces that told ordinary people their suffering was predestined and divinely ordained. Epicurean communities (the Garden) sought friendship and liberation from fear in a world where political agency had been eroded. Foster highlights Epicurus as the pinnacle of ancient materialism, who introduced the idea of the clinamen (swerve), a spontaneous slight, unpredictable deviation in the motion of atoms, acknowledging causality but allowing for chance, emergence, responsibility and human volition. The ‘original constitution’ of humans had itself become modified including development of new mental powers and (non-metaphysical) ‘free will’, based on an objective understanding of the world, rejecting inevitability or ‘fate’ within a thoroughly material universe….”

Socialist.ca, reviewed by Brian Champ:

“Foster starts by situating Epicurus in his time. He was the son of colonists of the island of Samos in the Aegean Sea, which had been seized by Athenian forces from the Persian empire. Shortly after his birth, Alexander the Great of Macedonia incorporated Athens into his empire, though allowing relative autonomy for the city-state. At about the time of Epicurus’s mandatory military service, Alexander died, leading to “an ‘empire of chaos’ during the Wars of the Diadochi (or Successors) of the Macedonian Empire”.
 
After studying the philosophy of the Pre-Socratics, Plato and Aristotle, Epicurus set up schools, first in Lampsacus (in modern day Turkey), then later in Athens.
 
Other philosophical schools in the city used public space for lectures and attracted young, well educated, aristocratic Greek men. His critique of the ruling classes that dominated these schools that “Nothing is enough for those for whom enough is too little” is as applicable today as in his age…. Read more

Marx & Philosophy Review of Books, reviewed by Alex Adamson:

“…Living in the fallout following the death of Alexander that threw the Hellenistic world into chaos, the wars of the Diadochi created a situation of precarity and uncertainty. Within these uncertain times and famines caused by war, Epicurus’s school was called ‘the Garden,’ in part because of the necessity for planting vegetables to sustain their community. Food was grown both for self-sufficiency as well as to provide for those in need- one could say Epicurus was one of the first to perfect the anarchist bean-stew for his comrades. Given current climate crises and devastation of the earth by imperialist wars and capitalist agriculture, this grounding of Marxism within the soil of Epicurus’s garden is a welcome contribution to the history of ecological philosophy….” Read more

Morning Star, “New light on the origins of Marx’s thought”, by Richard Clarke:

“Epicurean is commonly understood as a reference to gourmet food and drink, or more generally to a hedonistic lifestyle. Google a little deeper and you’ll find that Epicurus was a Greek philosopher who tells us that pleasure is the highest good; not wild indulgence but a tranquil state (ataraxia) achieved by removing pain (aponia) through simple living, friendship, limiting desires to natural and necessary ones (food, shelter, safety), and working collectively to secure true, lasting happiness.  

And if you’ve read up on the origin of Karl Marx’s world view you’ll have come across the argument that his doctoral thesis, The Difference Between the Democritean and Epicurean Philosophy of Nature (completed in 1841 and dedicated to Ludwig von Westphalen, his friend, mentor and future father-in-law), was merely an aberration or youthful enthusiasm soon overtaken by his developing political awareness and activity.  

In reality, argues John Bellamy Foster, the opposite is the case. Marx’s study of Epicurus and his relation to it was central to the development of Marx’s world view.  

Foster is one of the most prominent of today’s Marxist academics who have “rescued” the ecological Marx (and Engels), and promoted the notion of a “second foundation” of Marxism; extending our understanding of Marxism beyond human society (historical materialism and the critique of political economy) to encompass the whole of nature.  

For Foster, Epicurus and Marx are individuals of equivalent stature: even Marx couldn’t “make bricks without straw”. One example: Marx’s well known statement about standing Hegel on his feet seems to have come from Epicurus’ Roman populariser, Lucretius, who said of the idealist philosophers of his day that they stood with their heads where their feet belong….” Read more

The post John Bellamy Foster’s “Breaking the Bonds of Fate” appeared first on Monthly Review.

REVIEWS

Marxism-Leninism Today, by Greg Godels:

“During the 1960s and 1970s, it was an oft-repeated quip that the European left was long on theory and short on practice, while the North American left was strong on action, but allergic to theory. In West Germany, Italy, and France, young leftists would often passionately debate theoretical questions deep into the night, while seldom coming to a common commitment to action the next day. Their youthful U.S. counterparts—revived after the retreat from High McCarthyism–counted on spontaneous action and a firm commitment to common, inherited political values rather than the ideas buried in deep theoretical tracts. But those observations were far from completely true. The often student-driven U.S. New Left developed a thirst for a broader, deeper explanation of the injustices that they were rejecting. Many of those committed to action turned to left classics–quite often a reconsidered Marx–and others favored a wave of West European radical-oriented thinkers….” Read more…

ZZ’s Blog, as reviewed by Zigedy:

“During the 1960s and 1970s, it was an oft-repeated quip that the European left was long on theory and short on practice, while the North American left was strong on action, but allergic to theory. In West Germany, Italy, and France, young leftists would often passionately debate theoretical questions deep into the night, while seldom coming to a common commitment to action the next day. Their youthful US counterparts–revived after the retreat from High McCarthyism– counted on spontaneous action and a firm commitment to common, inherited political values rather than the ideas buried in deep theoretical tracts. But those observations were far from completely true. The often student-driven US New Left developed a thirst for a broader, deeper explanation of the injustices that they were rejecting. Many of those committed to action turned to left classics– quite often a reconsidered Marx– and others favored a wave of West European radical-oriented thinkers. It is the rise and importation to the US of one particularly influential “brand” of European theory to which Aymeric Monville and Gabriel Rockhill’s new book is devoted. In Requiem for French Theory: Transatlantic Funeral Dirge in a Marxist Key (New York, Monthly Review Press, 2026, $22.00, 168 pp.), Monville and Rockhill show that what became known as “French Theory” in the US was both a calculated interruption of the rediscovery and study of Marxism and an intellectual trend hostile to anti-capitalist and socialist currents….”

In translation….

Al-Akhbar (UK), by Said Mohammed:

يقدّم كتاب «مرثية للنظرية الفرنسية» مساهمة نقدية لافتة في تشخيص البنية المؤسسية التي احتضنت” صعود النظرية الفرنسية في الأكاديميا الغربية، وإعادة فتح الجدل الماركسي مع التيارات التفكيكية وما بعد البنيوية التي هيمنت على قطاعات واسعة من الفكر النقدي خلال العقود الأخيرة…يمثل كتاب «مرثية للنظرية الفرنسية: نشيد جنائزي عبر الأطلسي على مقام ماركسي» («منشورات مونثلي ريفيو»، 2026) للمفكرين أيمريك مونفيل وغابرييل روكهيل، بالاشتراك مع جينيفير بونسي دي ليون وتقديم جون بيلامي فوستر، محطة مهمة في مسار نقدي يهدف إلى مساءلة البنية المادية والمؤسسية لإنتاج المعرفة داخل الأكاديميا الغربية، وربط التحولات الفكرية نحو ما بعد البنيوية وما بعد الحداثة بالشروط السياسية والاقتصادية التي سمحت بصعودها وانتشارها….”

La Haine: In advance of the book’s release in summer of 2026, John Bellamy Foster’s introduction to Requiem for French Theory has already been translated into Spanish by the publication La Haine: “Del 18 al 21 de octubre de 1966, se celebró en el Centro de Humanidades de la Universidad Johns Hopkins de Baltimore una conferencia internacional aparentemente inocua titulada «Los lenguajes de la crítica y las ciencias del hombre». La conferencia se anunciaba como un encuentro en EEUU de las principales figuras del pensamiento estructuralista francés. Entre los ponentes de la conferencia se encontraban filósofos y críticos literarios franceses de renombre como Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Lucien Goldmann, Jean Hyppolite y Jacques Lacan. Michel Foucault no pudo asistir, pero desempeñó un papel fundamental en la organización de la conferencia. Gilles Deleuze, aunque invitado, tampoco asistió, pero envió una comunicación para que fuera leída. En la conferencia, Derrida conoció a Paul de Man (antiguo colaborador nazi), que se convirtió en uno de los principales deconstructivistas de la crítica literaria estadounidense….” Read the rest at La Haine

APPEARANCES

Marx Memorial Library in London hosted a dual book launch for Requiem for French Theory and Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism? with Gabriel Rockhill, Aymeric Monville, and Jennifer Ponce de León, who engaged in a discussion regarding the effects of imperialism on the production and dissemination of knowledge. Watch here or below

Far from simply engaging in a critique of the faux radicalism of the prominent discourses within the imperial theory industry, the discussion was grounded in a reasoned defense of the vibrant international tradition of anti-imperialist Marxism. Topics included the imperial promotion of Western Marxism and postmodern French Theory, the international war of ideas, the failed efforts to discredit anti-imperialist Marxism, culturalism and identity politics vs. a materialist analysis of the colonial question, fascism past and present, the dialectics of actually existing socialism, and the current state of global class struggle in theory and practice.

Watch Rockhill speak about this collaborative work, below…

Requiem for French Theory soundly criticizes this tradition’s chameleonic ideological permutations under new names, such as postcolonial thought, decolonial theory, new materialism, and other trendsetting discourses. But it also reveals how these theoretical developments are all part of a broader anticommunist cultural front. Most importantly, Monville and Rockhill develop the positive project of anti-imperialist Marxism as the ultimate antidote to French theoretical sophistry. Far from indulging in the political defeatism characteristic of the Western Marxist critiques of postmodernism, this intellectual exchange issues a clarion call for revitalizing revolutionary theory and putting it into practice.

EXCERPTS

From the Introduction (by Monthly Review editor John Bellamy Foster)

On October 18–21, 1966, a seemingly innocuous international conference titled “The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man” took place at the Humanities Center of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. The conference was billed as bringing the main luminaries of French structuralist thought to the United States. Those who spoke at the conference included such celebrated French philosophers and literary critics as Roland Barthes, Jacques Derrida, Lucien Goldmann, Jean Hyppolite, and Jacques Lacan. Michel Foucault was unable to attend but played a principal role in the organization of the conference. Gilles Deleuze, though invited, was also not in attendance, but sent a communication to be read. At the conference, Derrida met Paul de Man (the former Nazi collaborator) who was to become a leading deconstructionist within U.S. literary criticism. The Johns Hopkins conference was to be universally designated as the point of origin of what came to be known in the late 1960s and ’70s as “French Theory,” a term never fully accepted in France, but representing an international amalgamation of French and American structuralist thought that generated what came to be known as postmodernism.1

Despite all appearances, the 1966 Johns Hopkins conference was not simply an ordinary academic meeting, on no matter how grand a scale, but rather a politically motivated attempt to create a beachhead for French structuralism in the United States that would counter the radicalization then taking place. French philosophical thought in the 1960s, emerging from a period in which Jean-Paul Sartre was the preeminent philosopher, was increasingly enamored with the anti-humanist philosophies of Fredrich Nietzsche and Martin Heidegger, the latter an unrepentant Nazi ideologue. The turn to Nietzsche and Heidegger was combined with the French tradition of structuralism, based in linguistics, anthropology, and Freudian psychoanalytic theory. Structuralism was opposed to all traditional forms of inquiry that relied principally on historical analysis, the (human) subject, and dialectics. The organizers of the conference at Johns Hopkins, Richard Macksey and Eugenio Donato, indicated their intention to bring together thinkers in the traditions of Nietzsche and structuralism, thus casting the conference in conservative and anti-Marxist terms.2

In 1966, French thought was moving away from Karl Marx at the very same time that a reemerging radicalism in the United States was generating an increasing interest in Marxism. Lacan’s Écrits and Foucault’s The Order of Things both appeared in 1966 and became bestsellers in France. Both works trivialized G. W. F. Hegel and Marx. In France, the examination of Hegel’s philosophy was highly selective and approached subjectively, heavily influenced by Alexandre Kojève’s interpretation of Hegel’s Phenomenology, focusing on the master-slave dialectic. In Écrits, Lacan presented Hegel’s master-slave dialectic as an “iron law” of conflict prior to Charles Darwin, which Lacan was to incorporate into his Freudian structuralism.3 Foucault dismissed Marxism by claiming that it had existed “in nineteenth-century thought like a fish in water,” which was “unable to breathe anywhere else.” In contrast, Nietzsche, with his combination of philosophy and philology and his eternal return, had a meaning that “burned for us” in the twentieth century.4

The intellectual trends on the left in the United States in 1966 were then quite different from those most fashionable in France. The emerging U.S. student movement, which was then focused on the Vietnam War and the critique of capitalism, was reading such radical bestsellers as Herbert Marcuse’s One-Dimensional Man (1964, not translated into French until 1968, when it influenced the student movement there) and Paul A. Baran and Paul M. Sweezy’s Monopoly Capital (1966) (Monthly Review’s editors at the time)…..

As part of the general Cold War offensive, and with the aim of promoting ideas that would constitute a bulwark against Marxist ideas, the Ford Foundation agreed to underwrite the 1966 Johns Hopkins conference, bringing French structuralist theorists as a group to the United States. The Ford Foundation was then headed by McGeorge Bundy, Lyndon B. Johnson’s former National Security Advisor, who was closely connected to the entire range of U.S. intelligence agencies. Bundy was one of Johnson’s fourteen “wise men” who advised him on the Vietnam War.6

Significantly, it was within months of the Johns Hopkins meeting, in April 1967, that Ramparts magazine, which was closely associated with the growing student radicalism, broke the full story of the CIA’s funding through its intellectual front organization, the Congress for Cultural Freedom, of dozens of prestigious putatively left journals in Europe and elsewhere, all of which had adopted an explicitly anticommunist stance…..

From the Preface

Jennifer Ponce de León: We collectively decided to undertake this book project because of the unique positions that Aymeric and Gabriel occupy. From opposite sides of the Atlantic, you have both reached similar conclusions regarding the legacy of French Theory and its relationship to the tradition of dialectical and historical materialism, widely known under the moniker “Marxism.” I would like to begin, therefore, by asking you to situate yourselves and your work, elucidating how it is that you came to the positions that we will be discussing.

Gabriel Rockhill: Having grown up on a farm in Kansas, where I worked construction and as a farmhand well into my twenties, my first intellectual activities were driven by a desire to understand exploitation and how to overcome it. When I went to college in Iowa in the early 1990s, I encountered French Theory, which was presented as the most radical form of analysis on offer. With the naïveté of an uneducated farm boy whose intellectual horizons were being dictated by a system he did not fully comprehend, I dove in and ambitiously sought to acquire all the languages and background knowledge necessary to understand it. I was later able to obtain a scholarship to study in France, beginning in 1996. Living like a bohemian pauper and working odd jobs before eventually teaching, I did my graduate and postdoctoral work in Paris, remaining there until 2007. Naturalized as a French citizen around that time, I have continued to return to Paris every year…. I was, at the time, engaging in a process of empirical verification, which I also did with other French theo­rists, and their slipshod scholarship left something to be desired. I began to perceive their idealism, as well as their dogmatism. At the same time, I was increasingly drawn to forms of materialist analysis that did not only exam­ine isolated texts but studied the broader context that had produced them. The historically oriented work of thinkers like Foucault and Rancière was initially appeal­ing for this reason, as well as the sociological research of Bourdieu and others engaged in an analysis of the mate­rial world. Although this process took more time than the empirical textual verification just mentioned, I eventually became aware of their blind spots, methodological limita­tions, contortions, and misrepresentations….

Aymeric Monville: …I put more energy into breaking away from the prepackaged framework of analysis offered to me by the left-wing intellectuality of my time and into founding a publishing house conceived as a veritable counter-univer­sity: in other words, one with an objective methodology, meeting the criteria of research, but completely indepen­dent of the Zeitgeist in its approach to subjects. In terms of political orientation, my family was left-wing (for anecdotal value, one of my great-great-uncles, Charles Longuet, mar­ried Jenny, the eldest daughter of Marx), and I was con­fronted, like all my generation, with Mitterrand’s treasons. François Mitterrand, elected on an almost Marxist pro­gram of appropriation of the major means of production and exchange in 1981, took the Reagan-Thatcherite turn of austerity in 1983. Then came the triumph of the gen­eration of former sixty-eighters [soixante-huitards], right up to Emmanuel Macron, who has adopted some of the same codes and themes. These obvious dead ends, these paths that led nowhere, therefore led me to systematize my personal Marxist training by clinging, in contrast, to the dignity of what the heritage of Jacobinism may have represented, still structuring our country, but also French Communism, which I believe saved my country twice in a row during the Second World War, from the Nazi occu­pation but also from the U.S.-American takeover of France planned by Roosevelt shortly before the Normandy land­ings (a government called AMGOT, which was intended to take the same occupation measures as those used for the Sicily landings, thus treating France not as an ally but as an enemy).

What is more, when I was twenty, around 1998, I dis­covered the reprinted version of Néo-fascisme et idéol­ogie du désir [Neo-fascism and the Ideology of Desire] by Marxist thinker Michel Clouscard, and there I understood the exact nature of the system put in place since May ’68: the liberal-libertarian compromise as a balancing solution to save capitalism in crisis.9 I then had the good fortune of frequenting the Clouscard circle for several years of intense philosophical exchanges, with Clouscard himself, until his death in 2009, but also Dominique Pagani, his main collaborator. I’m still convinced that French Theory found its antidote in France, at the same time, in the person of Clouscard.10 Then there were other Marxist authors whom I had the pleasure of meeting and publishing, such as Domenico Losurdo, Jean Salem, and Georges Gastaud. They have played a decisive role in making me aware of the need to activate the potential of Marxism, which not everyone has yet fully grasped. But, let’s be clear, this gal­lery of portraits of illustrious thinkers in no way exempts me, or anyone else, from the necessary work of analyzing ideologies in their internal contradictions. This of course applies to French Theory, which needs to be examined in detail, and only then can we propose to see how Marxism can resolve some of the aporias we have observed.11

From Part 1 (p.50)

JPL: Aymeric, in a talk you gave at the Critical Theory Workshop’s Summer School in July 2023, you noted that the intellectual roots of much of French Theory—including the versions that are cast as “radical” and leftist—can be found in anti-humanist thinkers like Heidegger and Nietzsche, whose politics were, in fact, deeply reactionary.17 Relatedly, you addressed French Theory’s embrace of an irrationalist philosophical orientation, which György Lukács famously critiqued, and you also noted John Bellamy Foster’s recent writing on this topic. I know you have written at length on these issues in your book The Poverty of Left Nietzscheanism (forthcoming in the Studies in AIM series with Brill and Iskra Books). Could you map out the intellectual traditions that French Theory draws upon and help us understand the political-ideological orientation of these traditions?

AM: Yes, there has been a French particularism since the post–Second World War period, which is the left’s valorization of Nietzsche and Heidegger through a truncated reception, an eclectic reading, with, at the end of the day, a form of political manipulation. Hence the fact that “left- wing Nietzscheanism” and “left-wing Heideggerianism” constitute two veritable pillars of French Theory. It’s also a kind of metaphor for all the ambiguity of this so-called French Theory, presented as revolutionary but in fact profoundly anti-Marxist. Even if comparison is not reason, let’s not forget that fascism, in the same way, presented itself as both revolutionary and anti-Marxist.

These truncated readings are in any case impossible in Germany, simply because access to the works of these thinkers is in the text itself and not through euphemistic translations. Just read Adorno’s Jargon of Authenticity, for example, to understand that, to a German ear, Heidegger renders music that is quite Germania triumphans, as could be said of certain interpretations of Wagner. And everything that has been published since, from the Rector’s address to the Black Notebooks, has only confirmed this impression.

To acclimate Nietzsche and Heidegger to postwar France could only be done with a minimal claim, a form of dandyism clearly displaying indifference to political content. Then, very quickly, from this fairly banal posture, we move on to formalist arguments, such as the glorification of the aphorism as a method. Finally, a systematization transforms things into a rejection of Hegelianism, hence Deleuze’s essay Nietzsche and Philosophy and what he calls “the production of concepts” in a deliberately affirmative sense, in short the will to power versus dialectics (“We no longer believe in the dull gray outlines of a dreary, colorless dialectic of evolution, aimed at forming a harmonious whole out of heterogeneous bits by rounding off their rough edges,” he would later say in Anti-Oedipus).18 I am thinking of his vitalist philosophy of immanence, which owes much to Bergson. And yet here we are well before his encounter with Guattari, anti-Oedipus, desiring machines.

the 1970s, but all this had been prepared for long before, by anti-Marxism. There is reason to wonder whether this Deleuzian voluntarism, by rejecting the patience of the Hegelian concept—Hegel’s intention was to “renounce personal incursions into the immanent rhythm of the concept”—does not in itself carry with it an aristocratic vision of the world, akin to Schelling’s intellectual intuition, reserved for an elite, whereas Hegel, in an approach that profoundly links rationalism to democracy, accepts only science as the path to knowledge.

As for Derrida, his relationship with Nietzsche can be summed up by the following judgment: “Nietzsche said everything and its opposite.” This was a way of saying that the political question was of little interest to him, even though he could devote an entire chapter of his book Spurs: Nietzsche’s Styles to a note in which the German thinker declares: “I’ve lost my umbrella.” This is a philosophical position that is embraced: eclecticism. However, the fact that Nietzsche said everything and its opposite is by no means obvious. On the question of his opposition to socialism, for example, Nietzsche has always shown undeniable consistency, right from the Paris Commune, which for him meant the ruin of civilization.

As for Foucault, the Heideggero-Nietzschean influence can easily be seen in his anti-humanism, the death of man, the reduction of epistemology to genealogy and Nietzschean infinite interpretation, which counteracts the role of the economy in the last instance. Foucault proposed an archaeology of knowledge in which the “epistemes” succeeded one another without any prior material foundation, social groups being merely the passive supports of this history of knowledge. This amounted to perfectly assuming discontinuity, based on the pretext of rejecting the dialectical method. As for Claude Lévi-Strauss, he fantasizes about what he calls “societies without history,” even though these are, of course, subject to the historical process just like any other. This naturalization of the human sciences is in conscious conflict with the Marxian adage that ‘we know only one science, that of history.’19

In the end, infinite interpretation and anti-historicism give way to a single injunction, brutal in the extreme: “You must become what you are.” This Nietzschean adage is the Bible of identitarianism. At the end of the chain, I see these identity movements inspired by French Theory, which start from anti-racism, which is obviously laudable, but end up only claiming identity, instead of dialecticizing it, and I say to myself that we don’t have fascism in its entirety, but one part of fascism: the division of the working people into conflicting entities. Michel Clouscard rightly said, “Capitalism will bring civil war to the poor.”

I think we can understand better why French Theory was promoted in the United States by propagandists who saw its reactionary potential much better than the theory’s promoters. The underlying idea, for those who understand what is at stake, is to rehabilitate nothing less than part of the reactionary software. Clouscard has spoken of “neo-fascism and the ideology of desire.” If we don’t use these categories, we can’t understand what happened, we’re just skimming the surface.

From the Conclusion:

Jennifer Ponce de León: We have discussed the various ways in which French Theory is an ideological product of the imperial core that obscures material reality and disorients people politically, highlighting that this is precisely one of the reasons why it has been so widely promoted by power­ful forces in the capitalist world. You have both juxtaposed to the ideology of French Theory the tradition of dialectical and historical materialism, explaining its theoretical and practical superiority, and highlighting that this has been proven by material history. In bringing our conversation to a close, I want to ask both of you to explain the fundamen­tal stakes of class struggle in theory, particularly regarding the battle that we’ve been discussing between French The­ory and Marxism. Why is such an ideological confronta­tion important, and why should it be waged today? Why dedicate time and energy to a Requiem for French Theory, instead of—for instance—simply ignoring it?

Gabriel Rockhill: We are living in the end times, which Georges Gastaud has theorized as the age of exterminism. If it be imperialist warfare verging on a nuclear apoca­lypse, the brutal intensification of capitalist social murder, or the catastrophic decimation of the planet, the stakes of class struggle have arguably never been higher. It is a ques­tion of life or death for the species and even the biosphere. This is no longer—if it ever was—a time to indulge in the theoretical games of the petty-bourgeois intelligentsia. It is a time to call the latter out for what they are and engage in serious ideological warfare.

French Theory is part of a much broader intellectual world war aimed at discrediting dialectical and historical materialism, as well as actually existing socialism. It has had an expansive and deep influence, including within the Marxist intelligentsia around the world and, most impor­tantly, progressive organizing. For those of us who know this tradition from the inside, we have a responsibility to clarify its function within international class struggle, in order to both defend Marxism against its reductive dis­missals and to go on the offensive by demonstrating the power of dialectical and historical materialism. As an innovative, collective, practical science of liberation, we can draw on it and further develop its tools to understand and transform the world before it is too late.

Aymeric Monville: To conclude, I’d like to mention a very inspiring U.S.-American game—because contrary to what you might think, there are lots of things that interest me in your country!—and that game is poker. Marxism and French Theory can evolve in two separate spheres, giving the impression that we’re not evolving in the same world, or even that we don’t belong to the same world (since French Theory is also based on Bourdieusian “distinction”). But there comes a time when you have to lay your cards on the table and compare. It’s up to readers to have the last word, as referees. Put simply, that’s the rule: at some point you have to lay your cards on the same table, because there is only one game, one table, one world. Monism is indeed the basis of materialism, isn’t it?

Read more!

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Australia! 11 to 13 September Ecosocialism 2026: Resistance, Decolonisation, Liberation

If you’re in Australia, make sure to go see Ian Angus at Ecosocialism 2026, representing the journal Climate and Capitalism, and offering his book in person! Capitalist imperialism is promoting the far right everywhere, enforcing neoliberal policies, and imposing military aggression and recolonisation on weaker nations. It has no answers to the climate crisis and no solutions for housing and cost of living. The Ecosocialism 2026: Resistance, decolonisation, liberation conference will bring together activists from across the Asia-Pacific and beyond to share experiences in how we can resist Capitalism’s depravity and build the mass movements we need for system change. Featuring: Sabrina Fernandes; Ian Angus; Ayesha Ahmad; Remah Naji; and more.

Marxist Education Project:

“The MEP’s Ecosocialist Study Group, hosted by Fred Murphy, welcomed new participants as they read and discussed a range of important new works on the science and politics of the climate emergency, the nature of economic and ecological crises, and related topics….” More here

Ecosocialism Forum:

Ian Angus introduced his new book Metabolic Rifts: Capitalism’s Assault on the Earth’s System, in an event cosponsored with, and hosted by, Jess Spear of the Global Ecosocialist Network. They were joined by Helena Sheehan, Inea Lehner, and David McNally.

Listen! Macro N Cheese

On a podcast that critically examines the working-class struggle through the lens of MMT or Modern Monetary Theory, host Steve Grumbine spoke with Ian in an interview which explored the deep, sometimes invisible ways that capitalism disrupts the planet’s fundamental life cycles –– from soil depletion and artificial fertilizers to the carbon cycle driving global warming. Listen on Angus’ website, Climate and Capitalism if you prefer not to use spotify, or below…

Green Left

The post Ian Angus’ “Metabolic Rifts” (Stay tuned for September’s Ecosocialism 2026 gathering!) appeared first on Monthly Review.