In The Nation, “The Ghosts of Antonio Gramsci”, reviewed by Aditya Bahl:

“….Is ‘subaltern’ a code for the working classes? Is ‘hegemony’ an economic force or a cultural power? Are ‘organic intellectuals’ inherently more progressive? The answers to such questions depend upon your choice of scholar—whether, say, you’re reading a Foucauldian literary critic or a Marxist sociologist, a subaltern historian or a posthuman anthropologist. Over the years, Gramsci’s writing has been polished by critics of such diverse persuasions that it has now become a mirror: One opens his books only to confirm one’s own beliefs….when the English writer Andy Merrifield arrived in Rome, feeling ‘washed out intellectually,’ Gramsci came to the rescue….

In Counterfire:

“Merrifield is a beautiful writer: closer in spirit to John Berger than to Gramsci himself. He reaches politics through the particular: a red rose on a marble casket, the semi-feral cats prowling the cemetery, the Sardinian stones that gave a young Antonio his patience and his sense of deep time. His account of Gramsci’s prison letters – translating Brothers Grimm fairy tales for nephews who would never know their uncle, writing to his son in Moscow who was becoming Russian and slipping beyond reach – is genuinely moving….” Read more…

In Marx & Philosophy Review of Books, reviewed by Christian Garland:

“Marx Dead and Alive offers much succour and cause for hope. Merrifield’s own ‘school’ of Marxism he has defined as ‘Magical Marxism’, but this should not be misunderstood. It can be taken to mean a non-doctrinaire Marxism drawing on the heart and soul as much as the head, a bold and exhilarating philosophy dialectically synthesising the two, never however, underplaying its materialism. All of Marx’s work – from the 1844 Manuscripts and the Theses on Feuerbach to Capital – is an unfinished project, and it is for his historical heirs to ‘update his work, explore the layer upon layer of Marx’s paint, and do our own touching up along the way’ (15). As readers of this publication will be aware, the materialist method is one of analysis and critique of the conditions of which it finds itself a part. To understand and explain the urgent present in order to change it and create the future is our task: one that is both necessary and possible, albeit vertiginous in its scope: ‘Marx’s plane of immanence incorporates the whole wide capitalist world’…” Read more…

In Domestic Left, reviewed by Jonathan Kissam:

“…we learn how, as a child, Gramsci fashioned crude dumbbells for himself out of round stones to do exercises to compensate for the malformation of his spine. We see him writing letters from prison to his landlady, his mother, and his sons. We learn about his wide-ranging intellectual interests (among other things, he translated two dozen of the Brothers Grimm’s fairy tales into Italian), and the fact that he wrote an animal story for children (“The Mouse and the Mountain”) which is, according to Merrifield, often read to children in Italy’s elementary schools today….” Read more…

WATCH

Marxist Education Project: Like “the two Ivans” – with Andy Merrifield (January 2022)

Pragmatism versus theory. Vertical party formations versus the on-the-ground realities of the rank-and-file. Fights between leftists that blinded everyone to the rise of the Right. But were the original rifts within the French left in Henri Lefebvre’s and Louis Althusser’s time, so genuine and lasting that these two figures could not themselves have overcome them?

In January, Andy Merrifield offered a stimulating and vibrant lecture to the Marxist Education Project on the lives, works, and relationships of Lefebvre and Althusser, and the many misunderstandings surrounding French Continental theory and beyond. The themes Merrifield represented in this talk are important for conceiving next steps for an internationalist left, now more than half a century past the class battles of 1968-1969 in France and Italy.

*A note of credit from Andy Merrifield:  “The letters of exchange between Henri Lefebvre and Louis Althusser, mentioned in the presentation, were discovered in the archives of L’Institut Mémoires de l’édition contemporaine (IMEC) by Dr. Roberto Mozzachiodi of Goldsmiths, University of London. Roberto is in fact Scottish, not Italian.”

During the Q&A, Peter Bratsis of the Institute for the Radical Imagination raised questions regarding Humanism and anti-Humanism which led to a discussion of John Bellamy Foster’s effort to trace ontologies around the dialectics of nature and the metabolic rift. You can watch above or head to the Marxist Education Project*

Marxist Education Project: Joyce, Marx, Lefebvre – with Andy Merrifield (June 2022)

Said Andy Merrifield, author of Marx, Dead and Alive, during a program on James Joyce, Marx, and Henri Lefebvre with the Marxist Education Project: “Capital circulated through Marx the same way the Liffey circulated through Joyce-‘a commodius vicus of recirculation.’ Each book is a ‘hyper-text,’ a big, intricately entangled, introverted yet expansive text, historical yet somehow universal, exuberant and imaginative and at times colossally difficult to understand. Joyce said his principal character H. C. Earwicker was a ‘fargazer,’ whose ‘patternmind’ dreamed the vastest dream, whose sigla HCE meant ‘Here Comes Everybody.’ Capital was Marx’s dreaming fargazing, his Here Comes Everybody, a condition, he thought, where all countries were headed, his image of everybody’s future.”

A very sad note: Michael Lardner, a longtime key member of The Marxist Education Project (MEP) produced this event with Andy Merrifield. We are sorry to inform you that Michael Lardner died very recently, of a short illness.

EXCERPT:

(As selected by Knock Knock, in Tamil Nadu, India)

‘THE MAN IN THE WHITE VEST AND I SHAKE HANDS AND bid each other arrivederci. Wandering back to my duties at the cemetery’s Visitor’s Center, leaving him with Gramsci and that red rose, I realized I’d forgotten to ask if it was he who had laid the flower there. I never got the chance to talk with him, either, about the significance of roses for Gramsci and how growing them became almost as much a passion as filling his thirty-three scholastic notebooks.

After Gramsci was transferred in July 1928 to the Turi prison for the infirm and disabled in Bari, Calabria, he began, in a little plot of soil along a sidewall of its courtyard, to grow different plants and flowers. His letters to Tatiana and Giulia thereafter fill up with news of their progress. On April 22, 1929, he wrote Tatiana: “On one fourth of a square meter I want to plant four or five seeds of each kind and see how they turn out.” He asks his sister-in-law if she can get hold of sweet pea, spinach, carrot, chicory, and celery seeds.

Gramsci says he’s become more patient, “but only by virtue of a great effort to control myself.” He seems to take inspiration from his flowers and plants, from their slow and persistent growth, from the rose he’s trying to cultivate, patiently and persistently—against all odds. “The rose has fallen victim of a dreadful sunstroke,” he says, “all the leaves in the more tender parts are burnt and carbonized; it has a desolate, sad aspect, but it is putting out new buds.” Seemingly referring to himself, he adds: “It isn’t dead, at least not yet.” In Gramsci’s letters, the plight of his dear rose strikes as an allegory of his own dear plight.

“The seeds have been very slow in pushing up small sprouts,” he tells Tatiana, again maybe referring to himself and to the life of a Marxist radical; “an entire series obstinately insists on living an underground life.” Each day, Gramsci says, he’s seized by the temptation to pull at them a little, making them grow a little faster.

“I remain undecided,” he admits, “between two concepts of the world and of education: whether to follow Rousseau and leave things to nature, which is never wrong and is basically good, or to be a voluntarist and force nature, introducing into the evolution the expert hand of humanity and the principle of authority. Until now the uncertainty persists and the two ideologies joust in my head.”

Still, Gramsci’s voluntarist environmentalism—the intervention of human authority and action—doesn’t impose itself brutally on nature. He lovingly cares for his rose, admires its beauty and tenderness, the delicate texturing of its petals, its poetic quality, the radiance of its blossoming, often sounding the way Saint-Exupéry’s Petit Prince would sound a decade on, nurturing his own rose; at the same time, Gramsci marvels at how robust his rose is, how hardy, struggling to survive, persisting on living, sometimes on the point of death, yet pulling through with new buds despite the impending “solar catastrophe.”

Elsewhere, Gramsci says to Tatiana: “The rose is beginning to bud after it had seemed reduced to desolate twigs. But will it manage to survive the approaching summer heat? It looks puny and run-down to be up to the task. It is true of course that, at bottom, the rose is nothing but a wild thorn bush, and therefore very vital.” Again, maybe with himself in mind, we might recall one revealing letter he’d written Tatiana, earlier in his incarceration (February 19, 1927), taking the boat with other prisoners to Ustica. One of the banished was an “anarchist type,” Gramsci says, called “Unico,” a sort of superintendent, who upon hearing Gramsci introduce himself to other inmates, “stared at me for a long time, then he asked: ‘Gramsci, Antonio?’ ‘Yes, Antonio!’ I answered. ‘That can’t be,’ he retorted, ‘because Antonio Gramsci must be a giant and not a little squirt like you.’”

On February 10, 1930, Gramsci writes Tatiana: “So, then, become more energetic; cure your will too, do not let the southern winds fill you with languor. The bulbs have sprouted already, indeed some time back; one of the hyacinths already shows the colors of its future flower. Provided the frost doesn’t destroy everything. The rose has also borne new buds; it is wilder than ever, it seems a thorn bush instead of a rose, but the vegetal vigor of the thorn bush is also interesting. I embrace you affectionately, Antonio.”

TODAY, OCTOBER 17, 2023, GRAMSCI’S GRAVE IS COVERED with brilliant flowers, blooming everywhere, a sight to behold. Who could have placed them all here? Today as well I began to think about what it was I wanted to stress in this book. If earlier I spoke of stones and a sense of obligation—obligation to Gramsci, to Marxist politics, to the left, a sentiment somehow reinforced by the grapefruit-size rocks a deformed Gramsci lifted as a child—now, I think it’s the rose I want to emphasize, a rose for Gramsci, and the notion of resilience. Not just of our intervening to nurture nature, to sustain ourselves ecologically, but of an individual capacity for resilience, a stoicism to resist, to learn and educate oneself, to promulgate a politics of emancipation even in incarceration, even in an inferno resembling Dante’s.

“It seems to me that under such conditions prolonged for years,” Gramsci told his younger brother Carlo (December 19, 1929), “and with such psychological experience, a person should have reached the loftiest stage of stoic serenity and should have acquired such a profound conviction that humans bear within themselves the source of their own moral strength, that every- thing depends on them, on their energy, on their will, on the iron coherence of the aims they set for themselves and the means they adopt to realize them, that they will never again despair and lapse into those vulgar, banal states of mind that are called pessimism and optimism. My state of mind synthesizes these two emotions and overcomes them: I’m a pessimist because of intelligence, but an optimist because of will.”…..’

Read more! Get your copy

OTHER MERRIFIELD WORKS:

Beyond Plague Urbanism

Our cities have been plagued by economic injustices and inequalities long before COVID-19 upended urban life everywhere. Beyond Plague Urbanism delves into this zone of urban pathology and asks what successive lockdowns and exoduses, remote work and small-business collapse, redundant office space and unaffordable living space portend for our society in cities? Andy Merrifield journeys intercontinentally as he reflects on these questions, in a narrative that moves imaginatively between plague and populist politics, the U.S. Main Street and the British High Street, overcrowding and undercrowding, the right to the city today and eco-cities of tomorrow. Blending jazz with French Surrealism, Thomas Pynchon’s rocket science with the odyssey of James Joyce, Henri Lefebvre’s Marxism with the street ballets of Jane Jacobs, this challenging book appears at a timely moment in our fraught political history and opens up an urgent humanist conversation about the future of city life.

Marx, Dead and Alive

A contemporary interrogation of Marx’s masterwork

Karl Marx saw the ruling class as a sorcerer, no longer able to control the ominous powers it has summoned from the netherworld. Today, in an age spawning the likes of Donald Trump and Boris Johnson, our society has never before been governed by so many conjuring tricks, with collusions and conspiracies, fake news and endless sleights of the economic and political hand. And yet, contends Andy Merrifield, as our modern lives become ever more mist-enveloped, the works of Marx can help us penetrate the fog.

In Marx, Dead and Alive—a book that begins and ends beside Marx’s recently violated London graveside—Merrifield makes a spirited case for a critical thinker who can still offer people a route toward personal and social authenticity. Bolstering his argument with fascinating examples of literature and history, from Shakespeare and Beckett, to the Luddites and the Black Panthers, Merrifield demonstrates how Marx can reveal our individual lives to us within a collective perspective—and within a historical continuum. Who we are now hinges on who we once were—and who we might become. This, at a time when our value-system is undergoing core “post-truth” meltdown.

Dialectical Urbanism

Life in the city can be both liberating and oppressive. The contemporary city is an arena in which new and unexpected personal identities and collective agencies are forged and at the same time the major focus of market forces intent on making all life a commodity. This book explores both sides of the urban experience, developing a perspective from which the contradictory nature of the politics of the city comes more clearly into view.

Dialectical Urbanism discusses a range of urban issues, conflicts and struggles through detailed case studies set in Liverpool, Baltimore, New York, and Los Angeles. Issues which affect the quality of everyday life in the citygentrification and development, affordable rents, the accountability of local government, the domination of the urban landscape by new corporate giants, policingare located in the context of larger political and economic forces. At the same time, the narrative constantly returns to those moments in which city dwellers discover and develop their capacity to challenge larger forces and decide their own conditions of life, becoming active citizens rather than the passive consumers.

Merrifield draws on a wide range of sourcesfrom interviews with activists and tenants fighting eviction to government and corporate reportsand uncovers surprising connections, for example, between the rise of junk bonds in the 1980s and urban improvement schemes in a working-class neighborhood in Baltimore. This lively and many-sided narrative is constantly informed by broader analyses and reflections on the city and engages with these analyses in turn. It fuses scholarship and political engagement into a powerful defense of the possibilities of life in the metropolis today.

Andy Merrifield is a writer and independent scholar, author of numerous books, including The Wisdom of Donkeys, Magical Marxism, The Amateur, Marx, Dead and Alive, and Beyond Plague Urbanism.

The post In the public eye: Andy Merrifield’s “Roses for Gramsci” appeared first on Monthly Review.

The Architect’s Newspaper: “C. G. Beck’s The Labor of Architecture is a clarion call to office unionization, and a defense of architecture’s social potential”, by Michael Allen

There is a specter haunting the field of architecture, and that specter is called “Fuck the bosses”—or class consciousness. This year began with a few powerful instances highlighting the complicity of architectural firms in schemes of exploitation and oppression. This wave may finally be delivering the necessary permission structure for architectural workers to rise up together and reclaim the power of creativity in delivering social change. At least there seems to be a systemic recognition that architects not only can be, but actually are, workers, despite whatever illusions of prestige and authorship their project managers tell them now and their studio professors proposed back in their education…. Read more…

Financial Times’ best books of 2025? A new release from MRP about architects as workers

The Financial Times just listed the newly released book The Labor of Architecture as one of its chosen titles among the Best Books of 2025 in the category of Art, Architecture and Design! How odd. Many congratulations to author C.G. Beck for getting the word out to new audiences about the efforts of architects to be recognized as workers. We don’t know what it means for the word “Marxist” to be mentioned in such a publication in a positive sense, but we would like to acknowledge it can be quite a feat. See below:

Live with Rick Wolff at The People’s Forum:

This fall  C. G. Beck hosted Democracy at Work’s Professor Richard D. Wolff for a conversation about labor and democracy at The People’s Forum. Building off the success of the Zohran Mamdani campaign for mayor of NYC, they discussed the role of unions in shaping workplaces and strengthening democracy in a moment of profound historical change. Stay tuned for a recording of the dynamic talk, which you will find here.

(Or, if you would rather listen to a Billy Bragg song while pondering the words of Marx directly, watch this short clip above or head to the MR YouTube page).

The post In the public eye: C.G. Beck’s “The Labor of Architecture” appeared first on Monthly Review.

“The MEP’s Ecosocialist Study Group, hosted by Fred Murphy, welcomes new participants as we read and discuss 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. We are currently meeting on a monthly basis, reading and discussing one book each month. At our next session we will cover Metabolic Rifts: Capitalism’s Assault on the Earth System, by Ian Angus.”

IN THE PUBLIC EYE

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.

REVIEWS

The Resolute Reader:

“In Metabolic Rifts Ian Angus reminds us that there is a deep tradition of revolutionary politics closely engaged with scientific research, that offers an understanding of the chaos around us. It also offers us a strategy to change it. I urge readers to read it….” Read more…

Socialist Worker-UK, an interview by Martin Empson:

“At the heart of your analysis is Karl Marx’s ‘metabolic rift’ theory. Can you explain its relevance for activists today?“

Metabolic rift theory ­provides an essential ­framework for ­understanding environmental crises. It shows how and why ­capitalism is engaged in an unceasing war against nature. Life and the ­environmental ­conditions that sustain life depend on metabolic cycles, in which essential ­materials are constantly recycled. For example, through ­natural processes, including the breath of plants and ­animals, our planet emits and absorbs over 350 billion tons of carbon dioxide every year. For millions of years, emission and absorption have been roughly balanced. The carbon cycle makes life on earth possible by constantly circulating and reusing the matter and energy that life requires. Capitalism, in contrast, is linear—any part of ­production that doesn’t contribute to profit is discarded, not ­recycled. As the Marxist philosopher Istvan Meszaros wrote, the ­measure of capitalism’s advance is “the efficacy with which waste can be generated and ­dissipated on a monumental scale”. Most notably, capital’s ­dependence on fossil fuels ­produces carbon dioxide as waste, far more than ­natural ­processes can absorb.”‘ Read more…

The post June 24: Workshop on Ian Angus’ “Metabolic Rifts” appeared first on Monthly Review.

This fall, Socialist Register will be presenting at London’s Historical Materialism Conference. If you will be there, here are three workshops you can look forward to:

Steve Maher, Scott Aquanno, Michael Roberts:

The 2026 Socialist Register interrogates the usefulness of the notion of “late-stage capitalism” for understanding contemporary political and economic trends, crises, and challenges. Is capitalism now entering a “late” stage in which productive investment is being displaced by “neofeudal” rentier extraction as the primary means through which the ruling class accumulates wealth? Is capital running up against inherent limits, and facing the exhaustion of its potential as a revolutionary force? Or are the overlapping social, ecological, and political crises we now face better understood as the contradictory outcomes of successful accumulation and capital’s unchallenged dominance? This panel launching the new 2026 volume brings together contributors to explore these questions – and to assess paths forward for the left and the working class as accumulation rattles on amidst the ruins.

Sebnem Oguz, Adam Hanieh, Alfredo Saad-Filho:

The 2026 Socialist Register interrogates the usefulness of the notion of “late-stage capitalism” for understanding contemporary political and economic trends, crises, and challenges. Among the most urgent of these is the rise of neo-fascist and authoritarian forces around the world, as well as the shift to more nakedly coercive and authoritarian forms of rule supported by nationalist, racist, and misogynist ideologies. What forms are these forces are now taking? What opportunities and limits do they face in making further inroads with states and classes? How have they navigated the challenge of maintaining nationalist bases while accommodating the imperatives of capitalism? How far have they succeeded in transforming states, and what are the prospects for resistance to these forces and regimes? This panel launching the 2026 Socialist Register features contributors addressing authoritarian politics from Turkey and the Middle East to the United States.

Feyzi Ismail, Rodrigo Nunes, Catarina Principe, “Socialist Register 2027 – From Protest to Power: Social Movements and the Left”:

The political sequence that stretches from the neoliberal decline of the labor movement and marginalisation of socialist politics to the supposed rebirth of the left in the form of a ‘movement of movements’ seeking amorphously to ‘change the world without taking power’ has been extensively analyzed and its deficiencies criticized. The subsequent shift ‘from protest to politics’ brought a new set of tactics and strategies oriented around the state. Yet as this shift has itself come to face barriers, social movements have again come to be seen as filling a void left by what some have seen as a narrow electoralism. Nevertheless, if the setbacks faced by these forces highlights the importance of base-building and mass mobilization, another round of social movements have left little in the way of an organizational or programmatic legacy, and none have halted the slide into hard-right authoritarianism. This panel will bring together contributors to the 2027 Socialist Register to explore the nature of the strategic and organizational constellations capable of advancing a genuine alternative to a grim future of working class immiseration and ecological breakdown. 

The post June 27th: Online workshop on Socialist Register 2026 appeared first on Monthly Review.

Controversy, controversy…it’s no surprise that this book is selling very well. See more on this from Bisharat Abbasi, in his post: “In Defence Of Gabriel Rockhill’s Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism: Anti-Imperialist Marxism Versus The Imperial Theory Industry.“

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)

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….

‘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.

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

–What kind of world order is now emerging?

-Is capitalism entering a terminal crisis, or being violently reconstituted?

-How is American empire being reshaped from Palestine to New York?

-And what possibilities remain for socialist politics in an age of ecological breakdown, geopolitical fracture, and resurgent authoritarianism?

Building upon more than a half century of sustained analysis of the evolving political economy of contemporary capitalism—and in particular the challenges it poses to the left—Socialist Register 2026, Late-Stage Capitalism? Accumulation in the Ruins puzzles through the rubble left behind after decades of rampant neoliberalism.

The post WATCH: Socialist Register 2026 appeared first on Monthly Review.

Capitalism, slavery and a legacy of resistance

“Capitalism, slavery and a legacy of resistance,” by Pat Meusel:

“What is the main argument of your book?

To point out that the wealth piled up by enslaving, looting, land grabbing and murdering in Africa, Asia and the Americas flowed back to Britain and was turned into capital here.

The general idea is to say that the people who made money out of slavery were basically the same people who were oppressing the working class in this country at the same time.

One of the most notorious profiteers from slavery was the Duchess of Sutherland, who Karl Marx wrote about in his book Capital. She had something like 800,000 acres of common land cleared. And she drove 15,000 people off it.

The money to fund all of this was wrapped up in the business of slavery. She’d inherited £5,000 (over £5 million in today’s money) from one of her grandfathers, who owned plantations in Jamaica. She also hypocritically condemned slavery in the US…..”

STEVE CUSHION = WORDS + ACTION

Well, Steve Cushion really impressed us, here at Monthly Review Press. First off, he trekked all the way to London and showed up to help us table at the Anarchist Book Fair this fall. Then he joined our friend Tony Zurbrugg at the Historical Materialism Conference. Since then he’s been extremely active making the rounds, getting the spirit and meaning of his deeply researched book out to those who need it – which really is all of us.

One of the most impressive things about Cushion is his extremely active approach to engaging the public around the topic of reparations, and using this book in particular, and his writings in general, as a means of pushing for meaningful change on the ground. For that reason, on his book page we’re featuring his prolific writings on reparations up top.

Morning Star: “Britain’s Grubby Empire was Built on the Business of Slavery”. Read here

UCL Institute of the Americas blog: “My original motivation for writing this book was to bypass the apparently interminable discussion about whether “Britain” had, or had not, profited from slavery and the trafficking in enslaved Africans. Basing the discussion on macroeconomic statistics seemed to me to miss the point that Britain is divided into social classes and interest groups…” Read more

Newsletter of the Socialist History Society: Cushion is a major force in this publication. Check it out: https://www.socialisthistorysociety.co.uk/?p=1870

Monthly Review Magazine: “Neocolonialism through Debt: How French and U.S. Banks Underdeveloped Haiti”. Find it here: https://monthlyreview.org/articles/neocolonialism-through-debt-how-french-and-u-s-banks-underdeveloped-haiti/?cst

Caribbean Labour Solidarity: “Why Reparations for African Enslavement is a Social Justice Issue for Everyone”, by Ayodele Martin, Kwabena Dennot Nyack, Luke Daniels and Steve Cushion. “The call for reparations is part of a broader global movement seeking justice for historical crimes, recognising that addressing past injustices is essential for a more equitable future. Reparations are not just about money, though financial redress must play a part. Reparations must also involve a national apology, official acknowledgement of wrongdoing, the inclusion of accurate history in school curricula, structural reform to dismantle institutional racism and a commitment to repair the damage by means of development aid, educational partnerships, and cultural restoration…” Read more…

Key Points: Report of “Dialogue on Reparatory Justice” with Caricom Reparations Commission (November 2025)

Below are the bullet-points from the “Dialogue on Reparatory Justice” with the Caricom Reparations Commission, hosted by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies in November 2025. Cushion wrote: “On Tuesday 18 November, I attended a discussion on “partnering with the Caricom Reparations Commission for continued advocacy and engagement in the UK in 2026 and beyond, towards increasing public awareness and support for CARICOM’s reparations claim” aiming to “bring the CRC delegation together with academics, civil society representatives, experts and other stakeholders”. it was hosted by the Institute of Commonwealth Studies. I was invited as a member of the executive committee of Caribbean Labour Solidarity, but I indicated that I was also a member of UCU. This is the first occasion that the Commission travels to the UK as a body to engage with key stakeholders on the reparations agenda.

• CARICOM is preparing an updated version of the 10 point plan, which will take the form of a manifesto. They are also preparing a “Regional Negotiations Strategy” to bring some uniformity to negotiations with non-state institutions, such as Churches, Families, Universities, that are prepared to discuss Reparations. These are in draft form and will be published as soon as the CARICOM heads of government approve them. The negotiations will take a “Developmental Approach”.
• There are developments in the partnership of CARICOM with the African Union. A joint conference was held in Addis Ababa which issued a joint declaration. [Press Release here: https://au.int/sites/default/files/pressreleases/45329-pr-PR-_THE_2ND_AFRICA-CARICOM_SUMMIT.pdf] There is to be more co-ordination with international advocacy bodies eg UN Permanent Forum on People of African Descent. The African Union will set up an African Committee of Experts on Reparations. CARICOM will have a representative on this body, currently Barbados’ Ambassador to the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), David Comissiong.
• One of the priorities of the Reparations Commission will be the decolonisation of the remaining colonies in the Caribbean.
• It was argued that the positive response from institutions such as the University of Glasgow give a positive example to national governments.
• The apology issued by the King of the Netherlands has been withdrawn by the recently elected right-wing government.
• The Climate Crisis, brought to international attention by the hurricane damage in Jamaica and flooding in Barbados, makes the fight for Climate Justice even more imperative.
• The government of Jamaica is preparing a petition to the King, this will require support on the ground.
• Many in the room were “disappointed” in David Lammy, who is now in a position to implement many of the things he has advocated in his rise to power, but which he now seems to have forgotten. Particularly the demands of the TUC London East and South East Reparations Steering Group: Support the campaign to overturn the convictions of all those who were convicted for their role in the historic 1823 Demerara rebellion by enslaved workers. This should be extended to all enslaved persons executed or punished for acts of resistance. Which he advocated in the House of Commons in 2022.
• I gave David Comissiong a copy of my book Slavery in the British Empire and its Legacy in the Modern World and he informed me that the Barbados Reparations Commission is in the process of reprinting my The Drax Family Dynasty and the Business of Slavery as an educational tool in Barbados.”

University College of London blog: “Profit and loss take place at the level of individual enterprises. A single businessman making an exceptional profit can be significant in promoting economic development, but his role is obscured if we only look at average figures and global statistics. The fact that many of the early developers of industrialisation, as well as their financiers, made their initial capital through slavery and trafficking is therefore more important than the generalisations.

The Drax dynasty provide the core of the narrative, as generation after generation they were at the centre of the business of slavery, as well as the ideological creation of white supremacy, the early stages of human resource management, the effects of soil depletion, the transfer of capital back to the metropolis, the use and abuse of parliamentary politics and the relationship between landowning in the Caribbean and in Britain….”

PRESENTATIONS:

In addition to attending the Caricom Reparations Commission, here’s some of what Steve Cushion was up to in the time around the release of his book: He engaged in a Reparations and Restitution Conference at the University of Brighton, and gave a paper based on Slavery in the British Empire and its Legacy in the Modern World. Luke Daniels, the President of Caribbean Labour Solidarity, also publicised the book when he spoke on reparations at a meeting of Quakers in Bristol. He spoke at the 22nd annual Historical Materialism conference at SOAS. And Cushion spoke at an in-person launch in the Institute of Historical Research of the University of London, all while getting ready for an online launch hosted by UCL Institute of the Americas (Scroll down to watch, or click here for YouTube: https://youtu.be/TnU_FrlJvTg).

-Cushion presented his Monthly Review Magazine article to Caribbean Labour Solidarity: https://youtu.be/oMPnwpt97pA

-Slavery and Big Business: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9dWnyphwO0&t=4s

-The Church and Reparations: https://youtu.be/jvvGMWvkCQg

-The Drax Family Dynasty & the Business of Slavery: https://youtu.be/7iMppCfho2s

Also see Steve Cushion’s YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@stevecushion/videos. Many of the below presentations appear along with the video recordings of the Institute of the Americas Caribbean Seminar, Caribbean Labour Solidarity and the Socialist History Society.

The post In the public eye: Steve Cushion’s “Slavery in the British Empire and its Legacy in the Modern World” 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

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 In the public eye: John Bellamy Foster’s “Breaking the Bonds of Fate” 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.

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.[viii]

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.”

See: ISBN 9781685901691

The post Forthcoming: The Rainbow Challenge (Excerpt) appeared first on Monthly Review.

The Progressive: “La Follette’s Struggle to Oppose World War I” by John Nichols

“Chester weaves a nuanced story of heroic activism and governmental abuses that extended all the way to the office of the President. He recognizes the complexities of the circumstance and does not look away from the compromises by La Follette and others as they faced overwhelming pressure to get in line with the war effort. The editor of The Forward would eventually announce that the paper was “absolutely loyal” after the United States entered the war. As 1917 gave way to 1918, the Senator from Wisconsin took a lower profile, stopped giving fiery speeches and, finally, softened some of his criticism of Wilson….” Read more…

Democratic Left: “Fighting Bob! La Follette and His Enemies in High Places,” by Paul Buhle

“The memory of the courageous, charismatic Robert F. La Follette deserves more attention as rising authoritarianism and an unpopular war once again coincide. Tens of thousands of Americans suffered government repression during and after World War I. For many, this meant exile or prison sentences. Bob La Follette has the distinction of being the anti-war senator hounded and pursued by the administration of a liberal Democrat, Woodrow Wilson. He came back from persecution to run for president. Following Eugene Debs’ presidential campaign from a prison cell in 1920, La Follette’s 1924 campaign put up the strongest result for a left-wing third-party campaign in U.S. history. La Follette carried Wisconsin, although the stress of the campaign probably killed him. Quite a memory.  Silencing “Fighting Bob” is not a biography but a study of repression, seen at close range, with large lessons for today.

EXCERPT

From: Chapter 3

“…As governor of Wisconsin, La Follette sought to defend the interests of the small farmer by pushing for greater regulation of the railroads. He successfully pushed through legislation that significantly increased taxes on railroad lines operating in Wisconsin. His effort to regulate railroad tariffs was less successful, since the state legislature created a commission with only limited power to set rates. Nevertheless, these were significant reforms benefiting farmers, who were convinced that the railroad companies charged extortionate rates on freight shipments. In the face of venomous attacks from mainstream newspapers, La Follette held to his plan to curb corporate power. As a result, he gained enormous popularity, along with the nickname “Fighting Bob.”

In spite of the intense hatred he evoked from the corporate establishment, La Follette was far from a radical. Wisconsin was also the home of the Milwaukee Socialist Party, a mainstay of its dominant social democratic wing. Led by Victor Berger, the Milwaukee socialists advanced a program of structural changes that moved well beyond the limited measures advocated by progressives. La Follette believed in the virtues of capitalism, a system based on privately owned corporations that produced goods and services that sought to maximize profits. La Follette sought to modify the system by breaking up monopoly trusts and regulating corporations to ensure that they did not engage in collusive agreements limiting competition. These were fundamental principles held by most progressive reformers.

In contrast to this perspective, Berger and the Milwaukee social democrats hoped to bring about a socialist society through a series of incremental reforms, such as bringing key industries into public ownership. Progressives and social democrats held two distinct and conflicting perspectives…..

From: The Conclusion

Within months after the United States entered the war, progressives and social democrats became the primary targets of repression. Unfortunately, far too often, they relied on the good faith of the authorities. Progressives scrambled to formulate a policy that was critical of the war effort but remained within the parameters set by the federal government in its interpretation of the broadly phrased wording of the Espionage Act. This choice proved to be risky since the guidelines kept shifting as the scope for permitted dissent became increasingly narrower. The progressive challenge to the administration’s war policies crumbled in the face of government repression.

There was an alternative to the hesitant stance taken by progressives. Eugene Victor Debs, the presidential candidate of the Socialist Party, demonstrated that through his actions. Debs and Senator Robert La Follette were highly respected and acted as the primary spokespersons for their respective political perspectives. In June 1918, Debs denounced the war in a speech delivered at a rally in Canton, Ohio, even though he knew he would likely be prosecuted. Debs was convicted of violating the Espionage Act and served two and a half years in a federal penitentiary. As a U.S. senator, La Follette was initially allowed a certain leeway. Nevertheless, he soon became the target of a coordinated attack involving much of the intelligence community. Under the impact of this assault, La Follette retreated into silence.

In no other period in U.S. history have fundamental constitutional rights been so drastically curtailed as they were during the First World War. Yet Woodrow Wilson was hardly a fervent ideologue. A pragmatic politician, his record before April 1917 was that of a mildly liberal Democratic Party centrist.
Nevertheless, once the United States entered the war, Wilson was prepared to authorize the ruthless suppression of the antiwar opposition, regardless of the flagrant violations of civil liberties that this entailed. Ideology is a less important explanation of dictatorial behavior than the threat posed by an organized opposition with a mass base of support.

…As the conflict unfolded, power became concentrated in the White House. Woodrow Wilson was certain that he and he alone should make every important decision concerning the course of the war. Anyone who challenged this would become a target of government repression.

….The experience of the United States during the First World War provides an object lesson of what is likely to occur when power is concentrated in the hands of one person. With this power, the president, through his control of the federal government’s agencies, can harass and suppress those who oppose his policies. He can do so openly and secretively. Even a century later, it is very difficult to determine exactly what Woodrow Wilson authorized, as well as the full extent of the covert operations undertaken by those within the intelligence community….”

Read more! Get your copy here.

The post In the public eye: “Silencing Fighting Bob: The Attack on Antiwar Progressives During the First World War” appeared first on Monthly Review.