https://videos.domainepublic.net/videos/watch/d36b310d-5c33-4e2d-a7cd-ab5f4a0cf85e INTRODUCING THE NEW EDITOR OF MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS Here the new editor of Monthly Review Press, Arun Kundnani, talks about one of the books that inspired him to join MRP: Intan Suwandi's "Value Chains". If you care about hundreds of millions of industrial workers in the Global South, pick up a copy: https://monthlyreview.org/9781583677810/ "Value Chains" examines the exploitation of labor in the Global South. Focusing on the issue of labor within global value chains—vast networks of people, tools, and activities needed to deliver goods and services to the market and controlled by multinationals—Intan Suwandi offers a deft empirical analysis of unit labor costs that is closely related to Marx’s own theory of exploitation. "Value Chains" uncovers the concrete processes through which multinational corporations, located primarily in the Global North, capture value from the Global South. We are brought face to face with various state-of-the-art corporate strategies that enforce “economical” and “flexible” production, including labor management methods, aimed to reassert the imperial dominance of the North, while continuing the dependency of the Global South and polarizing the global economy. Case studies of Indonesian suppliers exemplify the growing burden borne by the workers of the Global South, whose labor creates the surplus value that enriches the capitalists of the North, as well as the secondary capitals of the South. Today, those who control the value chains and siphon off the profits are primarily financial interests with vast economic and political power—the power that must be broken if the global working class is to liberate itself. Suwandi’s book depicts in concrete detail the relations of unequal exchange that structure today’s world economy. This study, up-to-date and richly documented, puts labor and class back at the center of our understanding of the world capitalist system. See Suwandi’s “explainer” video on Value Chains: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9WyOb6Q2Qf0 Also see two other MRP Classics that inspired Kundnani to join MRP: -James Boggs' 'Racism and the Class Struggle": https://youtu.be/FjE6E20apy4?si=CO7HG6yOI48aSIri -Aimé Césaire's 'Discourse on Colonialism': https://youtu.be/tFICq8Gq75I ABOUT MONTHLY REVIEW: Monthly Review is an educational publisher, featuring a small and selected, but influential school of scholarly analysis which fills a demonstrable gap in the arena of socialist scholarship. Monthly Review Magazine and Monthly Review Press have been leading publishers of left scholarship since 1949. The first issue of Monthly Review (May 1949) featured Einstein's classic essay, "Why Socialism?" (now available as a book.) Other seminal works include "Discourse on Colonialism," "Eurocentrism," "Open Veins of Latin America," among many others. Our mission since the start has been to offer readers a responsible platform for neglected and emerging scholarship grounded in critical analyses of capitalism, on a wide range of progressive issues. Monthly Review’s distinctive contribution to the world of ideas has advanced an analysis that helps to explain the tendency of contemporary capitalism toward slow growth and stagnation, the growing environmental catastrophe, the continuing and deepening economic inequality between the rich and poor nations, and between the rich and poor everywhere. Tue, 15 Sep 2026 07:09:40 GMT https://validator.w3.org/feed/docs/rss2.html PeerTube - https://videos.domainepublic.net https://videos.domainepublic.net/client/assets/images/icons/icon-1500x1500.png https://videos.domainepublic.net/videos/watch/d36b310d-5c33-4e2d-a7cd-ab5f4a0cf85e All rights reserved, unless otherwise specified in the terms specified at https://videos.domainepublic.net/about and potential licenses granted by each content's rightholder.