Monthly Review Press

America’s latest war, according to renowned social critic Henry Giroux, is a war on youth. While this may seem counterintuitive in our youth-obsessed culture, Giroux lays bare the grim reality of how our educational, social, and economic institutions continually fail young people. Their systemic failure is the result of what Giroux identifies as “four fundamentalisms”: market deregulation, patriotic and religious fervor, the instrumentalization of education, and the militarization of society. We see the consequences most plainly in the decaying education system: schools are increasingly designed to churn out drone-like future employees, imbued with authoritarian values, inured to violence, and destined to serve the market. And those are the lucky ones. Young people who don’t conform to cultural and economic discipline are left to navigate the neoliberal landscape on their own; if they are black or brown, they are likely to become ensnared by a harsh penal system.

Giroux sets his sights on the war on youth and takes it apart, examining how a lack of access to quality education, unemployment, the repression of dissent, a culture of violence, and the discipline of the market work together to shape the dismal experiences of so many young people. He urges critical educators to unite with students and workers in rebellion to form a new pedagogy, and to build a new, democratic society from the ground up. Here is a book you won’t soon forget, and a call that grows more urgent by the day.

The global economic crisis and recession that began in 2008 had at least one unexpected outcome: a surge in sales of Karl Marx's Capital. Although mainstream economists and commentators once dismissed Marx's work as outmoded and flawed, some are begrudgingly acknowledging an analysis that sees capitalism as inherently unstable. And of course, there are those, like Michael Heinrich, who have seen the value of Marx all along, and are in a unique position to explain the intricacies of Marx's thought.

Heinrich's modern interpretation of Capital is now available to English-speaking readers for the first time. It has gone through nine editions in Germany, is the standard work for Marxist study groups, and is used widely in German universities. The author systematically covers all three volumes of Capital and explains all the basic aspects of Marx's critique of capitalism in a way that is clear and concise. He provides background information on the intellectual and political milieu in which Marx worked, and looks at crucial issues beyond the scope of Capital, such as class struggle, the relationship between capital and the state, accusations of historical determinism, and Marx's understanding of communism. Uniquely, Heinrich emphasizes the monetary character of Marx's work, in addition to the traditional emphasis on the labor theory of value, this highlighting the relevance of Capital to the age of financial explosions and implosions.

How do we understand the world? While some look to the heavens for intelligent design, others argue that it is determined by information encoded in DNA. Science serves as an important activity for uncovering the processes and operations of nature, but it is also immersed in a social context where ideology influences the questions we ask and how we approach the material world. Biology Under the Influence: Dialectical Essays on the Coevolution of Nature and Society breaks from the confirms of determinism, offering a dialectical analysis for comprehending a dynamic social and natural world.

In Biology Under the Influence, Richard Lewontin and Richard Levins provide a devastating critique of genetic determinism and reductionism within science while exploring a broad range of issues including the nature of science, biology, evolution, the environment, pubic health, and dialectics, They dismantle the ideology that attempts to naturalize social inequalities, unveil the alienation of science and nature, and illustrate how a dialectical position serves as a basis for grappling with historical developments and a world characterized by change. Biology Under the Influence brings together the illuminating essays of two prominent scientists who work to demystify and empower the public's understanding of science and nature.

While the Civil Rights Movement is remembered for efforts to end segregation and secure the rights of African Americans, the larger economic vision that animated much of the movement is often overlooked today. That vision sought economic justice for every person in the United States, regardless of race. It favored production for social use instead of profit; social ownership; and democratic control over major economic decisions. The document that best captured this vision was the Freedom Budget for All Americans: Budgeting Our Resources, 1966-1975, To Achieve Freedom from Want published by the A. Philip Randolph Institute and endorsed by a virtual ‘who’s who’ of U.S. left liberalism and radicalism.

Now, two of today’s leading socialist thinkers return to the Freedom Budget and its program for economic justice. Paul Le Blanc and Michael D. Yates explain the origins of the Freedom Budget, how it sought to achieve “freedom from want” for all people, and how it might be reimagined for our current moment. Combining historical perspective with clear-sighted economic proposals, the authors make a concrete case for reviving the spirit of the Civil Rights Movement and building the society of economic security and democratic control envisioned by the movement’s leaders—a struggle that continues to this day.

The Unknown Cultural Revolution challenges the established narrative of China’s Cultural Revolution, which assumes that this period of great social upheaval led to economic disaster, the persecution of intellectuals, and senseless violence. Dongping Han offers a powerful account of the dramatic improvements in the living conditions, infrastructure, and agricultural practices of China’s rural population that emerged in this period. Drawing on extensive local interviews and records in rural Jimo County, in Shandong Province, Han shows that the Cultural Revolution helped overthrow local hierarchies, establish participatory democracy and economic planning in the communes, and expand education and public services, especially for the elderly. Han lucidly illustrates how these changes fostered dramatic economic development in rural China.

The Unknown Revolution documents a neglected side of China’s Cultural Revolution, demonstrating the potential of mass education and empowerment for radical political and economic transformation. It is a bold and provocative work, which demands the attention not only of students of contemporary Chinese history but of all who are concerned with poverty and inequality in the world today.

In this collection of trenchant essays and interviews, István Mészáros, the world’s preeminent Marxist philosopher and winner of the 2008 Libertador Award for Critical Thought (the Bolivar Prize), lays bare the exploitative structure of modern capitalism. He argues with great power that the world’s economies are on a social and ecological precipice, and that unless we take decisive action to radically transform our societies we will find ourselves thrust headfirst into barbarism and environmental catastrophe.
Mészáros, however, is no pessimist. He believes that the multiple crises of world capitalism will encourage the working class to demand center stage in the construction of a new system of production and distribution designed to meet human needs rather than serve the relentless pursuit of profit—a struggle which is already underway in places such as Venezuela. As John Bellamy Foster says in the foreword to this indispensable book, “Today the structural crisis of capital provides the historical setting for a new revolutionary movement for social emancipation in which developments normally taking centuries would flit by like phantoms in decades or even years. But the force for such necessary, vital change, remains with the people themselves, and rests on humanity’s willingness to constitute itself as both subject and object of history, through the collective struggle to create a just and sustainable world. This, Mészáros insists, constitutes the unprecedented challenge and burden of our historical time.”

In this fresh and provocative book, Anthony DiMaggio uses the war in Iraq and the United States confrontations with Iran as his touchstones to probe the sometimes fine line between news and propaganda. Using Antonio Gramsci’s concept of hegemony and drawing upon the seminal works of Noam Chomsky, Edward Herman, and Robert McChesney, DiMaggio combines a rigorousempirical analysis and clear, lucid prose to enlighten readers about issues essential to the struggle for a critical media and a functioning democracy. If, as DiMaggio shows, our newspapers and television news programs play a decisive role in determining what we think, and if, as he demonstrates convincingly, what the media give us is largely propaganda that supports an oppressive and undemocratic status quo, then it is incumbent upon us to make sure that they are responsive to the majority and not just the powerful and privileged few.

Mainstream economists tell us that developing countries will replicate the economic achievements of the rich countries if they implement the correct “free-market”policies. But scholars and activists Toussaint and Millet demonstrate that this is patently false. Drawing on a wealth of detailed evidence, they explain how developed economies have systematically and deliberately exploited the less-developed economies by forcing them into unequal trade and political relationships. Integral to this arrangement are the international economic institutions ostensibly created to safeguard the stability of the global economy—the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank—and the imposition of massive foreign debt on poor countries. The authors explain in simple language, and ample use of graphics, the multiple contours of this exploitative system, its history, and how it continues to function in the present day.
Ultimately, Toussaint and Millet advocate cancellation of all foreign debt for developing countries and provide arguments from a number of perspectives—legal, economic, moral. Presented in an accessible and easily-referenced question and answer format, Debt, the IMF, and the World Bank is an essential tool for the global justice movement.

In recent years John Bellamy Foster has emerged as a leading theorist of the Marxist perspective on ecology. His seminal book Marx's Ecology (Monthly Review Press, 2000) discusses the place of ecological issues within the intellectual history of Marxism and on the philosophical foundations of a Marxist ecology, and has become a major point of reference in ecological debates. This historical and philosophical focus is now supplemented by more directly political engagement in his new book, Ecology against Capitalism. In a broad-ranging treatment of contemporary ecological politics, Foster deals with such issues as pollution, sustainable development, technological responses to environmental crisis, population growth, soil fertility, the preservation of ancient forests, and the "new economy" of the Internet age.
Foster's introduction sets out the unifying themes of these essays enabling the reader to draw from them a consolidated approach to a rapidly-expanding field of debate which is of critical importance in our times.
Within these debates on the politics of ecology, Foster's work develops an important and distinctive perspective. Where many of these debates assume a basic divergence of "red" and "green" issues, and are concerned with the exact terms of a trade-off between them, Foster argues that Marxismproperly understoodalready provides the framework within which ecological questions are best approached. This perspective is advanced here in accessible and concrete form, taking account of the major positions in contemporary ecological debate.

Only once we understand the long history of human efforts to draw sustenance from the land can we grasp the nature of the crisis that faces humankind today, as hundreds of millions of people are faced with famine or flight from the land. From Neolithic times through the earliest civilizations of the ancient Near East, in savannahs, river valleys and the terraces created by the Incas in the Andean mountains, an increasing range of agricultural techniques have developed in response to very different conditions. These developments are recounted in this book, with detailed attention to the ways in which plants, animals, soil, climate, and society have interacted.
Mazoyer and Roudart’s A History of World Agriculture is a path-breaking and panoramic work, beginning with the emergence of agriculture after thousands of years in which human societies had depended on hunting and gathering, showing how agricultural techniques developed in the different regions of the world, and how this extraordinary wealth of knowledge, tradition and natural variety is endangered today by global capitialism, as it forces the unequal agrarian heritages of the world to conform to the norms of profit.
During the twentieth century, mechanization, motorization and specialization have brought to a halt the pattern of cultural and environmental responses that characterized the global history of agriculture until then. Today a small number of corporations have the capacity to impose the farming methods on the planet that they find most profitable. Mazoyer and Roudart propose an alternative global strategy that can safegaurd the economies of the poor countries, reinvigorate the global economy, and create a livable future for mankind.

The first collection of James Boggs' essays, which became seminal texts for the Civil Rights and Black Power Movement activism of the 1960s

James Boggs wrestles with the problems of the specific character of American capitalism and American democracy, the historic mission of the black revolution in the United States, and the need for the 1960s black movement to develop theoretically and organizationally. This collection of essays includes Bogg's remarkable "The City Is the Black Man's Land," an article anticipating the black nationalist programs that were to emerge in the later 1960s. Boggs hails the coming of what was at the time the new slogan of the black revolution with an essay called, "Black Power: A Scientific Concept Whose Time Has Come." In further essays, he hammers at his theme of the "second civil war" and black control of the cities. In his concluding piece, written especially for this book, Boggs evaluates and analyzes the movement of the late 1960s and its various groups.

Unlike other conventional histories, the unifying thread of A History of the Philippines is the struggle of the peoples themselves against various forms of oppression, from Spanish conquest and colonization to U.S. imperialism. Constantino provides a penetrating analysis of the productive relations and class structure in the Philippines, and how these have shaped―and been shaped by―the role of the Filipino people in the making of their own history. Additionally, he challenges the dominant views of Spanish and U.S. historians by exposing the myths and prejudices propagated in their work, and, in doing so, makes a major breakthrough toward intellectual decolonization. This book is an indispensible key to the history of conquest and resistance in the Philippine.

István Meszáros's bold new study analyzes the historical choices facing us at the outset of the new millennium. Drawing on the theoretical arguments of his monumental and widely-acclaimed work, Beyond Capital, Mészáros shows that the economic boom of the 1990s was built not only on the foundation of new, digital technologies but also on a new social and ethical basis. In the global quest for profit, capitalism has abandoned its claims to serve a larger historical cause. Even in the wealthiest capitalist economies, unemployment has become structural and conditions of life have become more onerous for most of the population.
The failure of capitalism's historical mission is most evident in the end of the project of "Third World modernization" so essential to the claims of U.S. global power to represent an advance on old-style imperialism. Mészaros develops an illuminating analysis of the roots and tensions of the politics of U.S. global power from the time of Roosevelt's "Open Door" policy to the present. Against this historical background, he examines the dilemmas which will be faced in the making of U.S. foreign policy towards Chinathe largest and most rapidly-expanding national market in the global economy and the newly-emerging rival to U.S. global dominance. Mészáros shows how this process is rooted in the historical logic of contemporary capitalism, and is neither accidental nor temporary. In the process, he gives new meaning and urgency to the alternatives posed by Rosa Luxemburg at the beginning of the 20th century: socialism or barbarism.
Mészáros also explores the conditions for the emergence of a radical alternative to capitalism, arguing that a critical re-examination of earlier movements and struggles is an essential task for the emergence of such an alternative. As a sequel to his essay, an extended interview deals with more reflectively with the main categories underlying his analysis and relates it to developments within the broader analysis of modern society.

An extraordinary new work by the leading Marxian philosopher of the late twentieth and early twenty-first century, The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time represents a breakthrough in the development of socialist thought. It can be seen both as a companion volume to his earlier pathbreaking Beyond Capital and a major theoretical contribution in its own right. Its focus is on the “decapitation of historical time” in today’s capitalism and the necessity of a new “socialist time accountancy” as a revolutionary response to the debilitating present.
Extending Mészáros’s earlier analysis of capitalism as a social-metabolic system caught in an irreversible structural crisis, it represents a crushing refutation of the view that “there is no alternative” to the current social order. Mészáros’s wide-ranging analysis explores the forces behind the expansion of world inequality, the return of imperial interventionism, the growing structural crisis of the capitalist state, and the widening planetary ecological crisis—along with the new hope offered by the reemergence of concrete socialist alternatives.
At the heart of his book is an examination of the preconditions of Latin America’s historic Bolivarian journey, which is producing new revolutionary transformations in Venezuela, Bolivia and elsewhere. The Challenge and Burden of Historical Time is a work of great political as well as philosophical importance, one that defines the challenges and burdens facing all those who are committed to a more rational, more egalitarian future.

“A good society,“ Michael Lebowitz tells us, “is one that permits the full development of human potential.” In this slim, lucid, and insightful book, he argues persuasively that such a society is possible. That capitalism fails his definition of a good society is evident from even a cursory examination of its main features. What comes first in capitalism is not human development but privately accumulated profits by a tiny minority of the population. When there is a conflict between profits and human development, profits take precedence. Just ask the unemployed, those toiling at dead-end jobs, the sick and infirm, the poor, and the imprisoned.
But if not capitalism, what? Lebowitz is also critical of those societies that have proclaimed their socialism, such as the former Soviet Union and China. While their systems were not capitalist and were capable of achieving some of what is necessary for the “development of human potential,” they were not “good societies.”
A good society as Lebowitz defines it must be marked by three characteristics: social ownership of the means of production, social production controlled by workers, and satisfaction of communal needs and purposes. Lebowitz shows how these characteristics interact with and reinforce one another, and asks how they can be developed to the point where they occur more or less automatically—that is, become both a society’s premises and outcomes. He also offers fascinating insights into matters such as the nature of wealth, the illegitimacy of profits, the inadequacies of worker-controlled enterprises, the division of labor, and much more.

Esteemed American philosopher, Cornel West tackles the ethics of the Marxism agenda

In this fresh, original analysis of Marxist thought, Cornel West makes a significant contribution to today's debates about the relevance of Marxism by putting the issue of ethics squarely on the Marxist agenda. West, professor of religion and director of the Afro-American studies program at Princeton University, shows that not only was ethics an integral part of the development of Marx's own thinking throughout his career, but that this crucial concern has been obscured by such leading and influential interpreters as Engels, Kautsky, Luk?cs, and others who diverted Marx's theory into narrow forms of positivism, economism, and Hegelianism.

Much of Karl Marx's most important work came out of his critique of other thinkers, including many socialists who differed significantly in their conceptions of socialism. The fourth volume in Hal Draper's series looks at these critiques to illuminate what Marx's socialism was, as well as what it was not. Some of these debates are well-known elements in Marx's work, such as his writings on the anarchists Proudhon and Bakunin. Others are less familiar, such as the writings on "Bismarckian socialism" and "Boulangism," but promise to become better known and understood with Draper's exposition. He also discusses the more general ideological tendencies of "utopian" and "sentimental" socialisms, which took various forms and were ingredients in many different socialist movements.

“What the future fortunes of [Gramsci’s] writings will be, we cannot know. However, his permanence is already sufficiently sure, and justifies the historical study of his international reception. The present collection of studies is an indispensable foundation for this.” —Eric Hobsbawm, from the preface
Antonio Gramsci is a giant of Marxian thought and one of the world’s greatest cultural critics. Antonio A. Santucci is perhaps the world’s preeminent Gramsci scholar. Monthly Review Press is proud to publish, for the first time in English, Santucci’s masterful intellectual biography of the great Sardinian scholar and revolutionary.
Gramscian terms such as “civil society” and “hegemony” are much used in everyday political discourse. Santucci warns us, however, that these words have been appropriated by both radicals and conservatives for contemporary and often self-serving ends that often have nothing to do with Gramsci’s purposes in developing them. Rather what we must do, and what Santucci illustrates time and again in his dissection of Gramsci’s writings, is absorb Gramsci’s methods. These can be summed up as the suspicion of “grand explanatory schemes,” the unity of theory and practice, and a focus on the details of everyday life. With respect to the last of these, Joseph Buttigieg says in his Nota: “Gramsci did not set out to explain historical reality armed with some full-fledged concept, such as hegemony; rather, he examined the minutiae of concrete social, economic, cultural, and political relations as they are lived in by individuals in their specific historical circumstances and, gradually, he acquired an increasingly complex understanding of how hegemony operates in many diverse ways and under many aspects within the capillaries of society.”
The rigor of Santucci’s examination of Gramsci’s life and work matches that of the seminal thought of the master himself. Readers will be enlightened and inspired by every page.

Is the teaching of evolution to be banned in U.S. public schools? Is science once more to be burned on the cross? Will creationism win the 2,500 year war with materialism and reason? A critique of religious dogma historically provides the basis for rational inquiry into the physical and social world. Critique of Intelligent Design is a key to understanding the forces of irrationalism challenging the teaching of evolution in U.S. public schools and seeking to undermine the natural and social sciences. It illuminates the 2,500 year evolution of the materialist critique— the explanation of the world in terms of itself— from antiquity to the present through engaging the work of Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Lucretius, Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, David Hume, William Paley, Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Stephen Jay Gould, and numerous others (including contemporary advocates of ‘intelligent design.')

Proponents of intelligent design— creationism in a more subtle guise— have recently reignited the age-old war between materialism and creationism, in which they claim to elevate their doctrine to empirical truth and thus incorporate it into science curricula. They attack modern science, advancing a pseudo-scientific view and a reactionary political culture in line with their theology and what they perceive as a knowable moral order. They single out for criticism the greatest modern representatives of materialist-scientific thought: Darwin, Marx, and Freud.

Critique of Intelligent Design is a direct reply to the criticisms of intelligent design proponents and a compelling account of the long debate between materialism and religion in the West. It provides an overview of the contemporary fight concerning nature, science, history, morality, and knowledge. Separate chapters are devoted to the design debate in antiquity, the Enlightenment and natural theology, Marx, Darwin, and Freud, and to current scientific debates over evolution and design. It offers empowering tools to understand and defend critical and scientific reasoning in both the natural and social sciences and society as a whole.

Days and Nights of Love and War is the personal testimony of one of Latin America's foremost contemporary political writers. In this fascinating journal and eloquent history, Eduardo Galeano movingly records the lives of struggles of the Latin American people, under two decades of unimaginable violence and extreme repression. Alternating between reportage, personal vignettes, interviews, travelogues, and folklore, and richly conveyed with anger, sadness, irony, and occasional humor, Galeano pays loving tribute to the courage and determination of those who continued to believe in, and fight for, a more human existence. The Lannan Foundation awarded the 1999 Cultural Prize for Freedom to Eduardo Galeano, in recognition of those ""whose extraordinary and courageous work celebrates the human right to freedom of imagination, inquiry and expression.""

Exposes the destruction of academic careers—and the complicity of educational institutions—in McCarthy's America

The Prosecution of Professor Chandler Davis tells the true tale of a mathematician who found himself taking an involuntary break from chalking equations to sit opposite a row of self-righteous anti-Communist congressmen at the height of the McCarthy era. Courageously asserting the First Amendment to confront a system rapidly descending into fascism, Davis testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). He became one of a small number of left wingers who served time for contempt of Congress.

In this fascinating and disturbing narrative, author Steve Batterson takes a deep dive into extant archival records generated by the FBI, HUAC, the University of Michigan, and repositories holding the papers of former Supreme Court justices. He examines the plights of six faculty and graduate students—including three future members of the National Academy of Sciences—whose careers were disrupted by the anticommunist actions of a wide range of personnel at the University of Michigan. He focuses on the seemingly conflicting Supreme Court decisions on labor leader John Watkins and Vassar College Psychology instructor Lloyd Barenblatt. And he examines the role played in the trial by Felix Frankfurter, a longtime Associate Justice on the Supreme Court, close advisor of Franklin D. Roosevelt, and co-founder of the ACLU. In the process, Batterson exposes the ways that McCarthy’s righteous emissaries relied on all kinds of institutions in 1950s America—from Hollywood studios to universities—to sabotage the careers of anyone with a trace of “Red.”

The immanent dialectic of the ancient Greek materialist philosopher, Epicurus (341-270 BCE), helped inspire the nineteenth-century ideas of Karl Marx, forming the subject of his doctoral dissertation. Marx’s detailed study of Epicurus led him to develop his own materialist dialectic in distinction to the idealist philosophy of G. W.F. Hegel. Until now, however, there has been no full scholarly treatment of the relation of Epicurus to Marx, paying equal attention to both thinkers and examining the long-term impact of Epicureanism on Marxist thought.
Breaking the Bonds of Fate: Epicurus and Marx fills this gap. Taking into consideration today’s revolution in the understanding of Epicurus—resulting from the recovery of fragments of his major work On Nature in the carbonized papyri that survived the burying in volcanic ash of the Roman town Herculaneum when Mt. Vesuvius erupted in 79 CE—it demonstrates that this new interpretation corresponds closely to Marx’s nineteenth-century treatment of Epicurus. The result is to fundamentally transform our contemporary understanding of both Epicurus and Marx.

The last (though logically the first) book to be written in a trilogy that also includes John Bellamy Foster’s Marx’s Ecology: Materialism and Nature (2000) and his The Return of Nature: Socialism and Ecology (2020), Breaking the Bonds of Fate: Epicurus and Marx provides a detailed historical and textual analysis grounding the argument of all three works. Not only does this clarify Marx’s relation to materialism and ecology, but also his analysis of freedom and necessity. Both Epicurus’ philosophy and that of Marx are given new meaning in our time, highlighting questions of substantive equality, dialectical naturalism, and sustainable community.

As neo-colonialism continues to run rampant, some nations continue to grow rich at the expense of others. For two centuries, David Ricardo’s theory of comparative costs has dominated investigation of this problem, and has still provided no answer to the inequality that arises as a result of free trade within a global capitalist system. Emmanuel’s path-breaking study, now itself a classic, upends the conventional assumptions, subjecting the phenomena of international trade to critical scrutiny, both systematically and with logical rigor. It integrates the theory of international value (and unequal exchange) into the general theory of value as propounded by the classical economists and Marx.


Enmanuel’s theory of unequal exchange generated a widespread world debate on its first appearance, part of which, emanating from French economist Charles Bettelheim, is included in this volume. It has remained the foundation of critical analysis of international exchange relations ever since, and has gained even more importance today in the age of global value chains.

A powerful contribution to the debate on intellectual property

Knowledge as Commons traces the historical path towards the privatization of knowledge, situating science, technology and the emergence of modern nations in a larger historical framework. Author Prabir Purkayastha asks: Do the needs of society drive science and technology? Or do developments in science and technology provide the motor force of history? Has this relationship changed over time? Purkayastha shows us that, with profit as its sole aim, capital claims to own human knowledge and its products, fencing them in with patents and intellectual property rights. Neoliberal institutions and policy diktats from the West have installed a global system in which knowledge, that limitless resource, is made artificially scarce—while limited resources such as water and clean air are treated as though they were infinite.

Arguing that rapid technological change, from pharmaceuticals to electronics, should be an opportunity to deliver quicker cures, affordable access, and global cooperation in the production of knowledge, Purkayastha examines the consequences of this privatization for universities, healthcare, distributive justice, the domestic politics of developing countries, and their prospects vis-à-vis the West.

The story of a political prisoner’s coming of age as a student activist in India

Keeping Up the Good Fight is the story of a young man’s political coming of age and his experience as a student activist and scientist incarcerated by two authoritarian regimes in India, half a century apart.

On September 25, 1975, the students of Jawaharlal Nehru University in New Delhi called for a strike to protest the expulsion of Ashoklata Jain, an elected student union member. Three months earlier, Prime Minister Indira Gandhi had declared a state of Emergency. It was the second day of the strike and the campus was tense. A black car rolled up near a group of students. A few plainclothes cops got out, and abducted one of them: The student spent the next year in jail. Almost fifty years later, on February 9, 2021, the founder of an online news portal saw his home and offices raided for 113 hours straight, ransacked by officers from the Enforcement Directorate. Nearly two years later, on October 3, 2023, the Delhi Police Special Cell reappeared. The founder of the news portal and his colleague were remanded to custody under the dreaded Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA).

That student journalist and scientist, Prabir Purkayastha, tells his own story with wit and humor, as he engages with some of India’s most pressing social, political and economic issues across the decades—and remains committed to “keeping up the good fight.”

The first-ever English translation of one of the legends of the Latin American left

Rafael Barrett was born into the Spanish elite, but in the six intense years that he spent in Paraguay, he shed his past to become one of the most notable voices speaking out against the rampant imperialism gripping Latin America. Arriving in a nation constructed upon a foundation of bones following the Triple Alliance War of 1864-1870, Barrett was thrown by chance into the “Paraguayan sorrow” that haunted that landlocked nation in the heart of Latin America. More than half the population had been wiped out in the merciless conflict. A ferocious pattern of capitalist imperialism had taken hold. The apocalyptic war had ended a period of relative economic independence, and—as competing elites allied with foreign interests squabbled over rulership—Paraguay’s poor workers entered a long descent into utter degradation. All that Barrett witnessed prompted him to discard the vestiges of his past as an upper-class liberal dandy in Madrid, shifting his politics rapidly to the left and becoming a key ally of the growing Paraguayan anarcho-syndicalist movement.

As skirmishes between Paraguay’s national elites pushed the country from one military uprising to the next, Barrett’s prolific articles in the capital city’s press broke the silence on deep social, economic, and political problems playing out in urban and rural areas. Barrett transformed into one of Paraguay’s most vivid commentators, denouncing private property and the state, and one of the most vocal defenders of the heavily marginalized culture, language, and landscapes of the Paraguayan popular classes. He paid the ultimate price for his metamorphosis, ultimately facing banishment from the nation’s intelligentsia, poverty, exile, and a tuberculosis infection that would soon end his life.

Despite Barrett’s position as a legendary figure in Paraguayan, Uruguayan, and Argentinian leftist circles, especially among anarchists, his work has endured long periods of relative obscurity since his death. Among Barrett’s wide-ranging texts, he is often remembered for a brave exposé of the horrors committed against Paraguayan workers by powerful international companies that extracted the leaf of the yerba mate tree from the depths of enormous enclaves of forest they controlled. Barrett’s attack on this state-backed system of debt slavery would position him as a forerunner of anti-neocolonial writing in Latin America. This edition of his striking book Paraguayan Sorrow (1911), which includes his writing on the yerba mate forests, forms part of a wave of renewed interest in a striking body of writing covering an enormous number of disciplines and geographical regions. With its vivid landscapes, precise analysis, and bold denouncements, this first-ever English translation of Paraguayan Sorrow brings us a relevant and inspiring resource for the analysis of imperialism in Paraguay, Latin America, and across the globe.

A look at how much, and how little, has changed about class in America

One century ago, F. Scott Fitzgerald invited us into the lives of the “rotten crowd,” Jazz Age Americans with far more money than morals. In “A Rotten Crowd”: America, Wealth, and One Hundred Years of The Great Gatsby, John Marsh welcomes us back to Fitzgerald’s world to examine the rich and their reckless approach to human relationships, their poor taste in friends, and the harm they cause. Marsh leads us to wonder: What kinds of waste—economic, environmental, emotional—accompany a culture of wealth? What kinds of relationships do the wealthy form with those they rely upon to maintain their power—and how does capitalism and the need for the accumulation of wealth influence the bonds the rest of us form? On a surface level, how do the clothes people wear signal their status—and how do those fashions trickle down to the rest of us? And on a deeper level, how does racism drive a wedge between those who might otherwise stand up to the rich? As we move between 2025 and 1925 to consider how much—or little—has changed in the interim, A Rotten Crowd helps us discover what we can do about the obscene concentration of wealth in America today.

A fresh look on the welfare system—with a view beyond the state

With The Class Struggle and Welfare, David Matthews argues that we must understand the welfare state as a dialectical phenomenon—a product of class struggle. Confronting the hypocritical rhetoric of politicians who castigate welfare beneficiaries as lazy and “workshy,” Matthews points to clear evidence that the welfare state is essential to the prosperity and health of capitalist economies. At the same time, in the Marxist tradition, Matthews moves well beyond an analysis of welfare as simply an instrument wielded by capitalism for its benefit, arguing that proof of the class struggle scars the surface of every welfare system.

With chapters focusing on welfare issues, including social security, health, disability, housing, and education, Matthews examines historical and current developments in Britain as a basis for a wider understanding of the relationship between capitalism and welfare. The Class Struggle and Welfare shows that as welfare states grew exponentially throughout the advanced capitalist world over the course of a century, the intents, purposes and perceptions of the institution of welfare underwent a dialectical transformation. On the one hand, the services offered served to bolster capitalism. On the other hand, welfare systems in and of themselves were born of class struggle. In turn, even as current welfare systems reflect the values and the needs of the capitalist arena, the influence and imprint of the working class is plain to see. The Class Struggle and Welfare ultimately looks to the future, arguing that the working class must consider an alternative type of welfare system—one which looks beyond the state and truly reflects the values of equality, solidarity, and community.

“As a revolutionary theoretician Cabral has few equals anywhere in the world.”—The Tribune (London)

The success of the liberation movement of Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde in the 1960s and ’70s was due in considerable measure to the political genius of Amilcar Cabral. Engineer turned guerilla, he followed no “school” imported from abroad. The speeches, writings, and interviews in this volume show a distinctive strategy based upon meticulous study of conditions in his own country and they summarize the principles of the PAIGC---the African Party for the Independence of Guinea and Cape Verde.

A straightforward discussion of the issues surrounding immigration

U.S. immigration has been the subject of furious debates for decades. On one side, politicians and the media talk about aliens and criminals, with calls to “deport them all.” On the other side, some advocates idealize immigrants and gloss over problems associated with immigration. Dialogue becomes possible when we dig deeper and ask tough questions: Why are people in other countries leaving their homes and coming here? What does it mean to be “illegal”? How do immigration raids, prisons, and border walls impact communities? Who suffers and who profits from our current system—and what would happen if we transformed it?

The Politics of Immigration: Questions and Answers goes beyond soundbites to tackle these concerns in straightforward language and an accessible question-and-answer format. First published in 2007, this updated and expanded edition is an effective tool to confront current stereotypes and disinformation. Those who believe immigrants take jobs from citizens, don't pay taxes, strain public services, and threaten the dominant culture will find their assumptions challenged with compelling arguments and hard data. Ideal for classroom use, The Politics of Immigration provides those who are undecided about immigration with the facts and clear reasoning they need to develop an informed opinion.

"Superb. Combining unassailable analysis with a thorough grasp of economic and political trends, Duncan Green convincingly argues that the region is headed for even greater tragedy unless people move toward more equitable and ecologically sustainable models of economic development."
—Walden Bello, founder of Focus on the Global South
The first edition of Green's Silent Revolution, published in 1995, described the imposition of neoliberal economic models in Latin America, the role of the IMF and World Bank in enforcing them, and their consequences. In this second, revised edition, Green extends his analysis into the present, showing how the current economic meltdown in Latin America was prepared by an economic strategy that could never live up to its own claims.
The new edition was completed in a moment when the Argentinean economy is in ruins, Brazil is on the brink of collapse, riots are taking place in Uruguay, Peru, and in Paraguay, and a U.S. supported coup has just been averted in Venezuela. It will be an essential work for understanding ongoing developments in the region.

A comprehensive history of the National Civil Liberties Bureau's role in the anti-war movement during the First World War

World War I, given all the rousing “Over-There” songs and in-the-trenches films it inspired, was, at its outset, surprisingly unpopular with the American public. As opposition increased, Woodrow Wilson’s presidential administration became intent on stifling antiwar dissent. Wilson effectively silenced the National Civil Liberties Bureau, forerunner of the American Civil Liberties Union. Presidential candidate Eugene Debs was jailed, and Deb’s Socialist Party became a prime target of surveillance operations, both covert and overt. Drastic as these measures were, more draconian measures were to come.

In his absorbing new book, Free Speech and the Suppression of Dissent During World War I, Eric Chester reveals that out of this turmoil came a heated public discussion on the theory of civil liberties – the basic freedoms that are, theoretically, untouchable by any of the three branches of the U.S. government. The famous “clear and present danger” argument of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, and the “balance of conflicting interest” theory of law professor Zechariah Chafee, for example, evolved to provide a rationale for courts to act as a limited restraint on autocratic actions of the government. But Chester goes further, to examine an alternative theory: civil liberties exist as absolute rights, rather than being dependent on the specific circumstances of each case. Over the years, the debate about the right to dissent has intensified and become more necessary. This fascinating book explains why, a century after the First World War – and in the era of Trump – we need to know about this.

The first biography of Helena Sheehan, Irish-American Marxist feminist activist

Why would an American girl-child, born into a good, Irish-Catholic family in the thick of the McCarthy era – a girl who, when she came of age, entered a convent – morph into an atheist, feminist, and Marxist? The answer is in Helena Sheehan’s fascinating account of her journey from her 1940s and 1950s beginnings, into the turbulent 1960s, when the Vietnam War, black power, and women’s liberation rocked her bedrock assumptions and prompted a volley of life-upending questions – questions shared by millions of young people of her generation. But, for Helena Sheehan, the increasingly radicalized answers deepened through the following decades.

Beginning by overturning such certainties as America-is-the-world’s-greatest-country and the-Church-is-infallible, Sheehan went on to embrace existentialism, philosophical pragmatism, the new left, and eventually Marxism. Migrating from the United States to Ireland, she became involved with Irish republicanism and international communism in the 1970s and 1980s. Sheehan’s narrative vividly captures the global sweep and contradictions of second-wave feminism, antiwar activism, national liberation movements, and international communism in Eastern and Western Europe – as well as the quieter intellectual ferment of individuals living through these times. Navigating the Zeitgeist is an eloquently articulated voyage from faith to enlightenment to historical materialism that informs as well as entertains. This is the story of a well-lived political and philosophical life, told by a woman who continues to interrogate her times.

A deconstruction of the neoliberal placations about global capitalism, exposing the inequalities of global poverty

“We’re making headway on global poverty,” trills Bill Gates. “Decline of Global Extreme Poverty Continues,” reports the World Bank. “How did the global poverty rate halve in 20 years?” inquires The Economist.

Seth Donnelly answers: “It didn’t!” In fact, according to Donnelly, virtually nothing about these glad tidings proclaiming plummeting global poverty rates is true. It’s just that trend-setting neoliberal experts and institutions need us to believe that global capitalism, now unfettered in the wake of the Cold War and bolstered by Information Technology, has ushered in a new phase of international human prosperity.

This short book deconstructs the assumption that global poverty has fallen dramatically, and lays bare the spurious methods of poverty measurement and data on which the dominant prosperity narrative depends. Here is carefully researched documentation that global poverty—and the inequalities and misery that flourish within it—remains massive, afflicting the majority of the world’s population. Donnelly goes further to analyze just how global poverty, rather than being reduced, is actually reproduced by the imperatives of capital accumulation on a global scale. Just as the global, environmental catastrophe cannot be resolved within capitalism, rooted as it is in contemporary mechanisms of exploitation and plunder, neither can human poverty be effectively eliminated by neoliberal “advances.”

One hundred years ago, “October 1917” galvanized leftists and oppressed peoples around the globe, and became the lodestar for 20th century politics. Today, the left needs to reckon with this legacy—and transcend it. Social change, as it was understood in the 20th century, appears now to be as impossible as revolution, leaving the left to rethink the relationship between capitalist crises, as well as the conceptual tension between revolution and reform.

Populated by an array of passionate thinkers and thoughtful activists, Rethinking Revolution reappraises the historical effects of the Russian revolution—positive and negative—on political, intellectual, and cultural life, and looks at consequent revolutions after 1917. Change needs to be understood in relation to the distinct trajectories of radical politics in different regions. But the main purpose of this Socialist Register edition—one century after “Red October”—is to look forward, to what might happen next.

Acclaimed authors interrogate and explore compelling issues, including:

• Greg Albo: New socialist strategies—or detours?

• Jodi Dean: Are the multitudes communing? Revolutionary agency and political forms today.

• Adolph Reed: Are racial minorities revolutionary agents?

• Zillah Eisenstein: Revolutionary feminisms today.

• Nina Power: Accelerated technology, decelerated revolution.

• David Schwartzman: Beyond global warming: Is solar communism possible?

• Andrea Malm: Revolution and counter-revolution in an era of climate change.

Since the 2016 upsurge in enthusiasm for electoral organizing and party-building, the terrain has shifted. It was not so long ago that a new wave of democratic socialist organizing exploded onto the scene. Quickly, the defeat of candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn had a deflating effect. This followed on the crumbling of the “new parties” in Europe: In Greece, Syriza buckled in the face of the iron straitjacket imposed by EU institutions; in Spain, Podemos fractured under the weight of its ideological and institutional weaknesses; and Bloco fared no better in Portugal. Meanwhile, the Chavez-inspired Bolivarian revolutions in Latin America hit an impasse, barely stumbling along. We find socialist strategy again at a crossroads, pressed by the urgent need to find new directions forward amidst mounting crises.

Some on the left searching for new paths forward saw little alternative but to support authoritarian neoliberal states in their coercive response to a rising tide of hard-right forces, as if the repressive and bloody campaigns launched by powerful states could constitute junior components of anti-fascist ‘popular fronts’. Others in the left turned to the workplace, taking new approaches to union organizing, seeking to build a working-class base for radical politics—whose absence seemed directly responsible for another round of defeats. At this new conjuncture, what was left of the strategy, tactics, and organizations that had seemed so promising? Was the ‘new socialist’ left starting over, or moving on? This year’s Socialist Register 2025 engages with the openings and closures of at the crossroads of Socialist strategy, with case studies from Britain, US, Pakistan, Argentina, Germany, Bolivia, Barcelona, and Turkey, engaging with topics such as social struggles over climate change, Palestine solidarity, public banks, re-municipalization of utilities, and unions.

A comprehensive blueprint for a new post-capitalist order—which values our collective future over immediate economic gains

The fate of all economic systems is written in the energy flows they obtain from the natural world. Our collective humanity very much depends on nature—for joy, for comfort, and for sheer survival. In his prescient new book, The Physics of Capitalism, Erald Kolasi explores the deep ecological physics of human existence by developing a new theoretical framework for understanding the relationship between economic systems and the wider natural world.

Nature is full of complex and dynamic systems that are constantly interacting with our societies. The collective physical interactions of the natural world guide and forge many fundamental features of human societies and civilizations. Humanity does not exist on a magical pedestal above the rest of reality; we are just one slice in a grand continuum of physical systems that interact, combine, and transform over time. We too belong to the natural world. And it’s this critical fact that controls the long-term fate of our economies and civilizations. Among all the living organisms that have called this blue marble home, humans are a very recent species. In that short period of time, we have managed to become one of the most dominant life forms in the history of the planet, creating powerful civilizations with elaborate cultures, large populations, and extensive trade networks. We have been nomads and farmers, scientists and lawyers, nurses and doctors, welders and blacksmiths. Our achievements are both astonishing and unprecedented, but they also carry great risks.

Throughout history, economic growth has depended heavily on people converting more energy from their natural environments and concentrating the resulting energy flows towards the application of specific tasks. The economic and demographic growth of human civilization over the last ten thousand years has profoundly impacted natural ecosystems throughout the planet, triggering major instabilities across the biosphere that threaten to reverberate on civilization and to destabilize its long-term trajectory. Swamped with multiple ecological challenges of historic proportions, global civilization now stands at a critical tipping point that deserves closer scrutiny. If we are to have any hope of addressing the difficult challenges we face, then we must begin by understanding them and appreciating their complexity. And then, we must act. This book offers a comprehensive blueprint for our collective future, pointing the way to a new post-capitalist order that can provide long-term viability and stability for human civilization on a global scale.

“The societies of the dominated periphery no longer can wait,” said the great Egyptian economist Samir Amin, over half a century ago in the lively and readable book, Imperialism and Unequal Development. “With every passing year, the material conditions of their vast masses becomes more intolerable, which the palliatives of capitalist integration becomes increasingly worthless,” he continued, while noting that, in response to this acute and prolonged suffering, the renaissance of Marxism also characterized the very same years in which he wrote. This Marxist renaissance originated in those parts of the world, he showed, have been and continue to be the scene of decisive revolutionary struggles—that is, in the exploited and oppressed periphery of the world capitalist system, primarily, Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

With the freshness and originality that readers came to expect from Amin Imperialism and Unequal Development dealt with an extraordinarily wide range of topics, from “Historical Materialism: Capitalism and Socialism” and “Imperialism and Underdevelopment,” to “Problems of Transition and the Construction of Socialism.” Pointing to the relationship between regions at the frontlines of capitalist and neocolonial degradation, and the renaissance in Marxist thought, Amin argued that Marxism has always been “neither an economic theory, a sociological theory, nor a philosophy, but the social science of revolutionary socialist praxis.”

Scrutinizes possibilities for an equalised global order, in light of recent conflicts between the world’s major powers

The “post-Cold War era is definitively over,” asserted US President Joe Biden as he launched the new National Security Strategy, warning in late 2022 that “a competition is underway between the major powers to shape what comes next.” American leadership, the document declared, would be more necessary than ever to define "the future of the international order,” insisting that the US must marshal its unparalleled economic, military, and diplomatic resources to confront its geopolitical rivals. Socialist Register 2024: A New Global Geometry? takes stock of momentous changes on the horizon: Even if these geopolitical shifts do not spell the end of globalization, how might they alter its historical trajectory? While it is it premature to speak of the end of the liberal economic order, let alone the development of a multipolar international system, can we begin to assess the dimensions of a new global geometry? And, how might we assess the potential vulnerabilities of socialist movements worldwide, alongside the potential resistance our movements might manage to present, grounded in our historical demands for a democratic and equalizing world order?

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.

Millions of words have been written about the Cuban Revolution, which, to both its supporters and detractors, is almost universally understood as being won by a small band of guerillas. In this unique and stimulating book, Stephen Cushion turns the conventional wisdom on its head, and argues that the Cuban working class played a much more decisive role in the Revolution’s outcome than previously understood. Although the working class was well-organized in the 1950s, it is believed to have been too influenced by corrupt trade union leaders, the Partido Socialist Popular, and a tradition of making primarily economic demands to have offered much support to the guerillas. Cushion contends that the opposite is true, and that significant portions of the Cuban working class launched an underground movement in tandem with the guerillas operating in the mountains.
Developed during five research trips to Cuba under the auspices of the Institute of Cuban History in Havana, this book analyzes a wealth of leaflets, pamphlets, clandestine newspapers, and other agitational material from the 1950s that has never before been systematically examined, along with many interviews with participants themselves. Cushion uncovers widespread militant activity, from illegal strikes to sabotage to armed conflict with the state, all of which culminated in two revolutionary workers’ congresses and the largest general strike in Cuban history. He argues that these efforts helped clinch the victory of the revolution, and thus presents a fresh and provocative take on the place of the working class in Cuban history.

Reveals that the institution of slavery was anchored in the same exploitative capitalist system which remains in place today

Slavery in the British Empire and its Legacy in the Modern World, by Stephen Cushion, situates the crime of enslavement within the business practices that place profit before people. The institution of slavery entailed a unique combination of exploitation and expropriation anchored in patterns of conspicuous con­sumption by the wealthy, and intertwined with the textile, food, agriculture, construction, transportation, infrastructure and insurance industries. It was floated by the same banking and commod­ity trading systems that still remain today.
The exploitation of enslaved labor stimulated capitalist expansion during and after the bloody reign of the British Empire—at the cost of war, inter-imperialist rivalry, Indigenous genocide, and the murderous suppression of the rights of the enslaved. And as Cushion argues, many of the direst problems still facing the world—from horrific economic inequality to rampant environmental decline—have their origins in the institution of slavery.Correcting these wrongs will cost money. Perversely, there is no shortage of funds in the coffers of the institutions which perpetrated them. Neither Anglo governments, nor businesses, have properly addressed their role. Ultimately, Slavery in the British Empire and its Legacy in the Modern World goes beyond cataloguing past wrongs, to engaging with the legacies of slavery, spotlighting, above all, the defiant response of those it wronged—as they call for reparations and more.

A remarkable personal journey through the life and writings of the great Sardinian Marxist, Antonio Gramsci

In June 2023, author Andy Merrifield and his partner and their daughter moved from the UK to Rome, she to take a new job, he to get his creative juices flowing again, and both to begin a new life. A short time later, he visited Gramsci’s grave at the Non-Catholic Cemetery, home as well to the great Romantics, Percy Bysshe Shelley and John Keats. Soon he took a volunteer position helping to maintain the cemetery and as it turned out, to keep a watchful eye on Gramsci’s tombstone, admiring the roses and notes that visitors left, talking to some of them and communing with the sentinel cat that kept watch near the gravesite. Thus began Merrifield’s deep dive into Gramsci’s life.

The result is a stunning portrait that offers fresh insights into nearly every aspect of Gramsci’s often tortured existence: a childhood scarred by severe health problems; his growing understanding of political economy; his generosity and kindness; his grasp of the culture of workers and peasants; his friendship with the economist Piero Sraffa; and his frustration trying to communicate with and be father to the son he never saw. Above all, Merrifield illuminates how Gramsci kept his humanity, suffering horribly in prison while writing a revolutionary classic, The Prison Notebooks.

Personal, compassionate, moving—and illustrated with the author’s photographs —Merrifield revives both the legacy and meaning of Gramsci’s work and the dying art of belles lettres. Roses for Gramsci is an evocative and indelible book.

Toppling the First Ministry, by T. M. Thomas Isaac and Richard W. Franke, tells the story of the CIA’s covert operations against India’s first Communist ministry. When Kerala, the south-west Indian coastal province, established its first Communist ministry in 1957, it immediately drew up a development schema rooted in plans to redistribute land and provide public education and healthcare to all. But as quickly as it began executing its vision, Kerala’s efforts were disrupted by anti-communist agitation that succeeded in toppling the ministry with the help of the CIA. To this day, the CIA has not claimed any direct role in toppling Kerala’s government


Kerala is not alone. From Guatemala to Iran to the Congo to Brazil, to Indonesia and beyond, the CIA put up the financing to generate street mobs, groomed thuggish political bosses to do the CIA’s bidding, organized private armies that answered to the CIA, bought and controlled media and individuals, assassinated popular leaders, and toppled elected ministries in an effort to maintain or establish U.S. control of the political and economic systems. One could see the story of Kerala as just one more tragic example of the CIA’s successful efforts to manipulate the course of history and disrupt everyday life in countless emerging post-colonial nations following WWII. And yet, Kerala stands apart as an exceptional case, remarkable for what it managed to achieve: a redistributive strategy of development and consequent high quality of life for its ordinary citizens, initially at a relatively low level of economic growth. Since then, bolstered by subsequent intermittent left-led governments, Kerala`s democratic development alternative has continued to flourish.


Drawing upon the recent revelation of thousands of pages of documents via the Freedom of Information Act, Isaac and Franke offer a detailed examination of the internal workings of the CIA and its local Kerala allies in subverting and ultimately overthrowing the newly elected ministry. They also show how, against all odds, Kerala continues to be a stronghold of the left in India and even across the globe.

Shadows of the Enlightenment sheds light on the deeply political agenda underlying Western science from the so-called “Age of Reason” to the present. George McCarthy uncovers the economic, social, and historical origins of modern science, and illuminates the a priori and innate features which furnish the justifications for the technical domination and control of nature and humanity.

The natural sciences were born of a market economy, commercial trade, and industrial production, and were furthermore reflective of the values and institutions of modern capitalism and its class system in the seventeenth century. As such, one of the central roles of Western science has been to legitimate its theoretical imperative to dominate nature and to reorganize human labor for profit, property, and power. Breaking with the medieval scholastic tradition, modern science viewed nature as a reified mechanism which could be mathematically measured, empirically predicted, causally explained, and managed. Nature itself was recast as a dead machine stripped of any inherent meaning or purpose.

Ultimately, when applied to the production process, the field of natural science led to scientific management and economic exploitation; and when applied in the academy, particularly to the social sciences, the field of natural science led to the eclipse of reason and the twilight of social theory. Building upon the radical analysis of Marx and Engels, Shadows of the Enlightenment articulates a new liberatory postmodern science and technology grounded in Marx’s theory of social justice, integrating ancient and modern traditions from classical Greece to the French Revolution, from the Paris Commune to the Iroquois Confederacy. In the process, McCarthy invites us to move beyond the falsely mechanistic sense of reality, and to break free from the sense of alienation that binds us all—all in order to make space for dreaming up a substantively democratic society.