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Explores the full sweep of Marxist thinking on social change in the light of the 1968 French explosion.

This volume covers the imposition of U.S. domination over Cuba through the Platt Amendment, which marks the beginning of U.S. neocolonialism.

Argues that the Cuban nation was a central protagonist in the conflict -- rather than a passive victim of a conflict between great powers.

The Marxian Imagination is a fresh and innovative recasting of Marxist literary theory and a powerful account of the ways class is represented in literary texts. Where earlier theorists have treated class as a fixed identity site, Markels sees class in more dynamic terms, as a process of accumulation involving many, often conflicting, sites of identity. Rather than examining the situations and characters explicitly identified in class terms, this makes it possible to see how racial and gender identities are caught up in the processes of accumulation that define class. Markels shows how a Marxian imagination is at work in a range of literary works, often written by non-Marxists. In a field notorious for its difficulty, The Marxian Imagination is a remarkably accessible text. Its central arguments are constantly developed and tested against readings of important novels, ranging from Dickens's Hard Times to Barbara Kingsolver's Poisonwood Bible. It concludes with a telling critique of the work of the major Marxist literary theorists Raymond Williams and Fredric Jameson.

The road trip is a staple of modern American literature. But nowhere in American literature, until now, has a left-wing economist hit the road, observing and interpreting the extraordinary range and spectacle of U.S. life, bringing out its conflicts and contradictions with humor and insight.Disillusioned with academic life after thirty-two years teaching economics, Michael D. Yates took early retirement in 2001, with a pension account that had doubled during the dot.com frenzy of the late 1990s. He and his wife Karen sold their house, got rid of their belongings, and have moved around the country since then, often spending months at a time on the road. Michael and Karen spent the summer of 2001 in Yellowstone National Park, where Michael worked as a hotel front-desk clerk. They moved to Manhattan for a year, where he worked for Monthly Review. From there they went to Portland, Oregon, to explore the Pacific Northwest. After five months of travel in Summer and Fall 2004, they settled in Miami Beach. Ahead of the 2005 hurricane season, they went back on the road, settling this time in Colorado.Cheap Motels and a Hotplate is both an account of their adventures and a penetrating examination of work and inequality, race and class, alienation and environmental degradation in the small towns and big cities of the contemporary United States.

Peasants, religious heretics, witches, pirates, runaway slaves, prostitutes and pornographers, frequenters of taverns and fraternal society lodge rooms, revolutionaries, blues and jazz musicians, beats, and contemporary youth gangs--those who defied authority, choosing to live outside the defining cultural dominions of early insurgent and, later, dominant capitalism are what Bryan D. Palmer calls people of the night. These lives of opposition, or otherness, were seen by the powerful as deviant, rejecting authority, and consequently threatening to the established order. Constructing a rich historical tapestry of example and experience spanning eight centuries, Palmer details lives of exclusion and challenge, as the "night travels" of the transgressors clash repeatedly with the powerful conventions of their times. Nights of liberation and exhilarating desire--sexual and social--are at the heart of this study. But so too are the dangers of darkness, as marginality is coerced into corners of pressured confinement, or the night is used as a cover for brutalizing terror, as was the case in Nazi Germany or the lynching of African Americans. Making extensive use of the interdisciplinary literature of marginality found in scholarly work in history, sociology, cultural studies, literature, anthropology, and politics, Palmer takes an unflinching look at the rise and transformation of capitalism as it was lived by the dispossessed and those stamped with the mark of otherness.

Silén restores to his people their history, stolen from them along with their land and independence.

Through a Glass Darkly was William Hinton's last book. It draws on a lifetime of immersion in Chinese politics and society, beginning with the seven years he spent in China, working mainly in agriculture and land reform, until 1953. On his return to the United States in that year, Hinton first encountered the distortions and misrepresentations of the Chinese Revolution that he examines in this book.Hinton defends the achievements of the Chinese Revolution during the three decades from 1948 to 1979 from its detractors both in the United States and, since 1979, in China itself. His starting point is the work of John K. Fairbank, for many years a professor at Harvard and the "dean of China Studies" in the United States. But it is not limited to critique. Instead, Hinton's critique of Fairbank leads into a wide-ranging examination of the nature of the transformation attempted in China, its social and political bases, and the causes and consequences of its policies in land reform, agriculture, combating famine, popular culture, industrialization, morality, and much else besides.Moving from large questions to concrete details, often drawn from his own experiences, Hinton brings everyday life in revolutionary China graphically to life. In a time when the distorted views first developed by U.S. critics of the Chinese Revolution are often propagated by the new Chinese elite themselves, Through a Glass Darkly has more than just historical relevance. For anyone wishing to understand present-day rivalries between the United States and China, Hinton shows how these began. This is a fitting completion of the work of a great scholar and revolutionary.

The classic survey of Latin America's social and cultural history, with a new introduction by Isabel Allende Since its U.S. debut a quarter-century ago, this brilliant text has set a new standard for historical scholarship of Latin America. It is also an outstanding political economy, a social and cultural narrative of the highest quality, and perhaps the finest description of primitive capital accumulation since Marx. Rather than chronology, geography, or political successions, Eduardo Galeano has organized the various facets of Latin American history according to the patterns of five centuries of exploitation. Thus he is concerned with gold and silver, cacao and cotton, rubber and coffee, fruit, hides and wool, petroleum, iron, nickel, manganese, copper, aluminum ore, nitrates, and tin. These are the veins which he traces through the body of the entire continent, up to the Rio Grande and throughout the Caribbean, and all the way to their open ends where they empty into the coffers of wealth in the United States and Europe. Weaving fact and imagery into a rich tapestry, Galeano fuses scientific analysis with the passions of a plundered and suffering people. An immense gathering of materials is framed with a vigorous style that never falters in its command of themes. All readers interested in great historical, economic, political, and social writing will find a singular analytical achievement, and an overwhelming narrative that makes history speak, unforgettably.This classic is now further honored by Isabel Allende's inspiring introduction. Universally recognized as one of the most important writers of our time, Allende once again contributes her talents to literature, to political principles, and to enlightenment.

Are the new technologies of the information age reshaping the labor force, transforming communications, changing the potential of democracy, and altering the course of history itself? Capitalism and the Information Age presents a rigorous examination of some of the most crucial problems and possibilities of these novel technologies. Not a day goes by that we don't see a news clip, hear a radio report, or read an article heralding the miraculous new technologies of the information age. The communication revolution associated with these technologies is often heralded as the key to a new age of "globalization." How is all of this reshaping the labor force, transforming communications, changing the potential of democracy, and altering the course of history itself? Capitalism and the Information Age presents a rigorous examination of some of the most crucial problems and possibilities of these novel technologies.

This book looks for the roots of the public's waning faith in science. Providing a clear and accessible introduction to key areas of modern scientific thought, the authors challenge our new fear and loathing of science.

"Korean unification is one of the most important issues on the international agenda today. Hart-Landsberg's broad-ranging inquiry develops a perspective that is rarely heard, and that merits careful attention. It is a valuable contribution to a debate that should not be delayed."--Noam Chomsky

This is the fifth in the important series of essays by the former editors of Monthly Review analyzing the ongoing crisis of global capitalism. Following the multiple interconnected stock market crashes of October 1987, the economies of the capitalist world entered a new and dangerous phase of the crisis that began in the 1970s with the end of the post-WWII boom. Sweezy and Magdoff argue that far from being a temporary setback, the events of late 1987 are rooted in the nature of the capital accumulation process itself and therefore unlikely to be reversed. Their argument is especially prescient when viewed in light of the financial meltdown of 2008.

Without parallel in sophistication of coverage for readers curious about labor, Rising from the Ashes? provides sharp analysis of the hottest issues being debated by labor scholars and activists. Topics covered include the changing composition of the international working class, patterns of work under contemporary capitalism, the relationship of race and gender to class, the promise and limitations of recent eruptions of labor militancy, and the strategic options available to the labor movement today.

Mexico's Hope tells the dramatic story of the making of modern Mexico, treating all the major developments of the past century of Mexican history. Unusually attentive to the contributions of women, Indians, workers, and peasants, Mexico's Hope is informed by the conviction that the country's most promising prospects today lie in the quest of its poorest people for social justice and democracy-from the recent Zapatista uprisings in Chiapas to ongoing electoral efforts on the left.

With the passage of NAFTA, Canada has suddenly caught the attention of its U.S. neighbors. There has been too little knowledge of this society, which seems so "American," yet stubbornly insists on maintaining its separate and sometimes hostile identity. In this book, Joseph K. Roberts describes for U.S. readers the centuries of transformation that have taken Canada from British colonial status to the high ranks of industrial power. Through the decades, Canada has seen its national development shaped by the dictates of U.S. government and corporate centers. With a clear account of present-day political and economic issues, this text is as timely as it is instructive for students of political science and Canadian and American studies.

"Magisterial in its historical sweep, fiercely democratic in its vision, Whose Millennium? is the thinking person's 'bridge to the 21st century.' There is an alternative to rampant inequality and the corruptions of power, and-ever so modestly and persuasively-Daniel Singer points the way."i>--Barbara Ehrenreich This visionary book challenges the chorus of resignation-the notion that there is no alternative, that profit is the best relationship between people, and that the market guarantees democracy. Daniel Singer insists that a more free and egalitarian society can be won, and he predicts that the new millennium will be an age of confrontation, not consensus, with Western Europe as a probable first battlefield. In social criticism of rare scope and insight, Singer probes the outcome of the Russian Revolution and Russia's post-1989 turmoil, the transformation of the Polish trade union movement Solidarity into a reactionary and clerical force, the failure of social democracy in Western Europe, the emergence of an unbalanced world after the collapse of one superpower, and the massive 1995 strikes and demonstrations in France-which, Singer argues, were the first revolt against the prevailing idea that there is no alternative to market stringency. As an alternative, Singer calls for "realistic utopia" a politics engaged with present-day possibilities but daring to pursue a world beyond capitalism, one that would put into consistent practice the ideals of democracy and equality.

Since the early 1970s women across South America have been uniting to confont the brutality and repression of military rule. In Out of the Shadows, author Jo Fisher interviews women in Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Paraguay to show how they have moved into the vacuum left by the military's destruction of the male-dominated left. Chapters describe how women have organised - in communal kitchens in Chile's shantytowns, as trade unionists in Uruguay, peace activists in Paraguay, mothers of the disappeared and self-help groups in Argentina, as grassroots feminists in Chile - ending the isolation of home life. While built around the traditional female concerns such as providing food and care for their families, the new women's movements have developed a grassroots feminism that is strikingly different from the middle class feminism of the city centres and have had a seismic impact on gender consciousness throughout the region.

A brief, clear, and faithful exposition of Marx's major premises, with particular attention to historical context.

In this successor volume to the widely read Dynamics of Global Crisis, the authors engage in a provocative discussion of the history and contemporary dilemmas facing the movements that are variously described as antisystemic, social, or popular. The authors believe that these movements, which have for the past 150 years protested and organized against the multiple injustices of the existing system, are the key locus of social transformation.

Socialist feminist theorizing is flourishing today. This collection is intended to show its strengths and resources and convey a sense of it as an ongoing project with a vital role to play in struggles for emancipation from all forms of oppression and exploitation today. Not every contribution to that project bears the same theoretical label, but the writings collected here share a broad aim of understanding women's subordination in a way which integrates class and sex--as well as aspects of women's identity such as race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation--with the aim of liberating women. Socialist Feminism brings together the most important recent socialist feminist writings on a wide range of topics: sex and reproduction, the family, wage labor, social welfare and public policy, the place of sex and gender in politics, and the philosophical foundations of socialist feminism. Although focusing on recent writings, the collection shows how these build on a struggle for women's liberation with earlier beginnings. These writings demonstrate the range, depth, and vitality of contemporary social feminist debates. They also testify to the distinctive capacity of this project to address issues in a way that embraces collective experience and action while at the same time enabling each person to speak in their own personal voice.

"With São Paulo, Tokyo, New Delhi, Mexico City, and Teheran rapidly approaching densities that are environmentally and emotionally unfit for human habitation, the need for urban planning has never been more pressing. Dispersed City of the Plains inventively pumps fresh air into the debate about what constitutes city building at the end of the twentieth century. It is a book that not only questions authority but supplies an alternative vision."--James Stewart Polshek, FAIA, Polshek and Partners Stone argues that the formation of towns has been based largely on the play of economic forces, without sentiment or prior attachment to place. In envisioning humane and rational improvements, he suggests that older notions of settlement be left behind in order to come to terms with the unfolding realities of the dispersed city.