In 1966, Johns Hopkins hosted a seemingly innocuous international conference titled "The Languages of Criticism and the Sciences of Man," featuring leading figures of what would later be known as "French Theory." However, John Bellamy Foster writes, far from a simple meeting of intellectuals, this represented a "politically motivated attempt to create a beachhead for French structuralism in the United States that would counter the radicalization then taking place."

Paul Buhle reviews Insectopolis: A Natural History, a new graphic novel by Peter Kuper. In the book, Kuper, a prolific producer and publisher of left-wing comics, spins a tale of two siblings who find themselves in a world of insects. Through encounters with butterflies, beetles, ants, and more, Kuper reveals the deep entanglements between human society—at its best and worst—and the creatures of its living environment.

Mateo Crossa delineates the history of U.S. imperialism in Mexico through the lens of its domination of the fossil fuel industry, particularly by way of the Shale Revolution and the advent of fracking. By engineering new regional dependencies and reshaping energy alliances to suit is strategic ambitions, Crossa writes, the United States weaponized its command over natural gas to deepen its grip on the global fossil energy system and reinforce its imperial reach.

In this transcript of a talk from 2015, Robert W. McChesney discusses the great definitional communication revolutions that have shaped humanity's trajectory. Even a decade ago, McChesney was able to see the fraught relationship between new technology and democracy, the re-emergence of fascism, and the political dangers of the Digital Age.

In Aeschylus’s play Prometheus Bound, the Prometheus is a revolutionary figure. Defying divine interdiction to bring fire to humanity, the Titan has since been adopted by thinkers from the Enlightenment to today to represent revolutionary forces in human existence. So, John Bellamy Foster asks in November’s Review of the Month, what is “Prometheanism,” and how has the term been used (and misused) in discussions of Marx, the ecological crisis, and sustainable human development?

Michael Meeropol, Howard J. Sherman, and Paul D. Sherman give an account of how mainstream economists came to adopt the idea of secular stagnation, even without recognizing its origins in the work of Marxist economist and MR founder Paul M. Sweezy. The turn, they write, came in the wake of the Great Recession, when the tendency toward stagnation in the U.S. economy became undeniable.

Joel Wendland-Liu reviews Armed Struggle?, Gerald Horne's exploration of the state violence and repression that were successfully employed to demolish the Black Panther Party and its influence throughout the 1960s and '70s. Though Horne's recounting, Wendland-Liu writes, we can take powerful lessons about the roles of race and class in the militant drive toward liberation.

Sit Tsui and Lau Kin Chi elucidate the history of China's People's Communes as told through the lens of three present-day rural villages. In these villages, they observe the effects of the project's dismantling and diminishing collective ownership and land management, with the conclusion that a return to collectivism is vital for carrying forward the socialist project.

buy this issueThis month's "Notes from the Editors" discusses the accelerating progress of China toward sustainability. China's decline in carbon emissions and rapidly decarbonizing energy sector demonstrates the importance of societal realignment and extensive planning to shift toward the ecological modernization that has continued to elude monopoly-capitalist regimes.

buy this issueIn May's Review of the Month, MR editors dissect the true meaning behind the right-wing obsession with "Cultural Marxism" and its use to justify the right-wing takeover of the administrative state and the spread of the New McCarthyism threatening all those who oppose the administration. However, the editors point out, what the right does not fear is not a culturally based, postmodern approach to Marxism, but Marxism as it is historically and materially grounded and its true potential for building a proletarian movement against fascism.