#59 - July 2012

Vol. 26, No. 2
Promise and Challenge of the Occupy Movement
Ron Hayduk, George Katsiaficas and Victor
Wallis

The nationwide Occupy movement that took off in the US in late 2011 – inspired in part by popular movements around the world – has changed the landscape of our work. It signals a vastly increased receptivity to socialist ideas, and has...

Joel
Kovel

I am honored to be here this evening.
Because you are the light of the world.
I’m not saying this to flatter,
But because we have to understand it deeply.
Your genius has been to seize upon the emerging hopes of...

Jesse
Goldstein

Following on the heels of the Arab Spring, the disappointments of the Obama Administration, and economic turbulence on scale with the great depression, Occupy Wall Street (OWS) burst onto the scene last September, announcing itself with...

George
Katsiaficas

Here in the church they call Wall Street, money is worshipped as bankers drink the earth’s blood and feast on her flesh. War machines of epic proportions are financed – and sent out to kill, maim, and destroy millions of people from...

Victor
Wallis

Howard Zinn would have loved to see you all here today, and to have been part of this historical moment. He believed that we should each do the right thing regardless of whether or not it has a visible impact. When a positive impact...

Benjamin
Shepard

Every year I teach classes on US social policy and community health. We usually watch the film Unnatural Causes, a documentary about the ways inequalities in wealth are reflected in our health. The film explores indicators of...

Richard A.
Jones

The wintering over of the Occupy Wall Street movement (OWS) portends an American Spring like what has come to be called the Arab Spring. An enlarged and ennobled struggle between pernicious elements of vulture, predatory, and global...

Fabian
Balardini

After three years of economic crisis that has caused increasing economic hardship for most of the world population, the year 2011 started with a blast of hope in the form of a revolutionary wave of demonstrations and protests in the...

Jacob
Kramer

It has been a common criticism of President Obama that he raised hopes for fundamental change only to compromise too readily with conservative forces. Since he took office amid the financial crisis that began in 2008, banks and...

Ron
Hayduk

This is what democracy looks like! – Protest chant in Seattle (1999) We are the 99%! - OWS

Many observers have rightly drawn parallels between Occupy Wall Street (OWS) and previous social movements. The Anti-Globalization or...

Angie
Beeman

Many racism theorists believe that color-blind ideology, which became prominent during the late 1960s-early 1970s, is the dominant racist ideology of the 21st century, becoming. Unlike earlier racist ideologies, color-blind...

Deborah
Gambs

The Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement is embedded within and traverses the technologies of the 21st century. Much of what OWS protests stems from a social and economic environment facilitated by new technologies. Wall Street...

Rose M.
Kim

If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, has the tree fallen? This is an age-old philosophical question. A similar question might have been asked of the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement: if a collective of demonstrators...

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Thomas
Powell

Across America for the past quarter century or more, municipalities, counties, states, public institutions, and universities have embraced the concept of “1% for Art” and have taken it upon themselves in the spirit of humanism and civic...

Darko
Suvin

Things could be otherwise.
-- Raymond Ruyer, defining utopia

1.1. In the Ice Age (A Counter-project to Xiung Xi-ling)

All that we feel is the freezing storm But who is there to...

Joel
Kovel

Istvan Mészáros, Social Structure and Forms of Consciousness. Volume I: The Social Determination of Method; Volume II: The Dialectic of Structure and History (New York: Monthly Review Press,...

Book Reviews

Reviewed by Sven-Eric
Holmstrom

Grover Furr, Khrushchev Lied (Kettering, Ohio: Erythros Press & Media LLC, 2011)

On February 25, 1956, a speech was given in Moscow which has been called the most important speech of the 20th...

Reviewed by Andrew
Sernatinger

Steve Early, The Civil Wars in U.S. Labor: Birth of a New Workers’ Movement or Death Throes of the Old?

Steve Early addresses here the fate of the US labor movement in the context of the “civil wars”...

Reviewed by Dana
Edell

Benjamin Shepard and Greg Smithsimon, The Beach Beneath the Streets: Contesting New York City’s Public Spaces

What would it take to claw into the chewing-gum-splattered, rubber tire-scarred, asphalt...

Reviewed by Ravi
Malhotra

Doris Zames Fleischer and Frieda Zames, The Disability Rights Movement: From Charity to Confrontation

Ten years ago, I favourably reviewed the original edition of Fleischer and Zames’ landmark text on...

Reviewed by Christina
Perez

Steve Brouwer, Revolutionary Doctors: How Venezuela and Cuba Are Changing the World’s Conception of Health Care

In 1967 Ernesto “Che” Guevara was murdered in a remote area of Bolivia after he was...

Reviewed by George
Fish

D.H. Melhem, Art and Politics/Politics and Art

The back cover this eighth book of D.H. Melhem’s poetry posts this trenchant observation by fellow poet Philip Appleman:

Belying all of prior...

Reviewed by Amy
Buzby

Eric Hobsbawm, How to Change the World: Reflections on Marx and Marxist Theory

Eric Hobsbawm’s How to Change the World is a powerful text that arrives at a needful moment in history. In the wake...

Reviewed by Jacqueline
Carrigan

Michael Perelman, The Invisible Handcuffs of Capitalism: How Market Tyranny Stifles the Economy by Stunting Workers

At times of high unemployment like the present, workers who complain about their...

Reviewed by Sarah
Hernandez

Samir Amin, Global History: A View from the South

Samir Amin offers a comprehensive view of his work, bringing together his earlier publications into an analysis that moves from the introduction of his...

Reviewed by Geoffrey
Wildanger

Malcolm Bull, Anti-Nietzsche

French Theory, and by extension postmodernism, as the cliché goes, is nietzschean. Malcolm Bull's Anti-Nietzsche attacks not Postmodern Theory, but its favorite...

Reviewed by Peter
Peter

Daniel Geary, Radical Ambition: C. Wright Mills, the Left, and American Social Thought

Although C. Wright Mills died in 1962, his sociological legacy remains a contested subject in the discipline. Mills...

Reviewed by Abdullah M.
Al-Dagamseh

Jaafar Aksikas, Arab Modernities: Islamism, Nationalism, and Liberalism in the Post-Colonial Arab World

Jaafar Aksikas’s book represents an important contribution to cultural studies. It offers a full-...

Reviewed by R. Jamil
Jonna

John Marsh, Class Dismissed: Why We Cannot Teach or Learn Our Way Out of Inequality

The financial crisis of late 2007 and its aftermath highlighted the scourge of unemployment and underemployment. While...

Reviewed by John
Maerhofer

S.S. Prawer, Karl Marx and World Literature

Perhaps the most crucial lesson that arises out of the dialectical materialist method designed by Marx and Engels is the contradiction between capitalist...

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Fabian Balardini is Assistant Professor of Economics at the Borough of Manhattan Community College (BMCC), of the City University of New York (CUNY). He is the author of Oil Price Cycles: 1973-2010: A Theoretical...