Volume 49, Issue 02 (June)
It is encouraging to find that in the face of constantly changing trends within academia, there was such a strong turnout for the 1997 Socialist Scholars Conference—on a rainy Easter weekend (March 28-30) over 1,700 people came out in full force. There was a feeling of excitement in the halls and class rooms of the Borough of Manhattan Community College that may just signify both a return to Marxist politics and a revitalization of the U.S. labor movement. The opening plenary speeches were full of hope and enthusiasm: from Daniel Singer who pointed out that “the ideological swing to the right has probably come to an end…cracks are beginning to appear in the ruling ideology and popular resistance is growing” to Bob Wages, president of the Oil, Chemical, and Atomic Workers Union, who emphasized the importance of class politics that challenges, rather than accepts the Democratic party. | more…
Let me start with a provocative claim, which is contrary to all the conventional wisdom. The claim I want to make is that this historical moment, the one we’re living in now, is the best not the worst, the most not the least appropriate moment to bring back Marx. I’ll even claim that this is the moment when Marx should and can come fully into his own for the first time—not excluding the historical moment when he actually lived. | more…
There is a great deal of difference however between the strong version of the globalization thesis which requires a new view of the international economy as one that “subsumes and subordinates national-level processes,” and a more nuanced view which gives a major role to national-level policies and actors, and the central position not to inexorable economic forces but to politics. In the second perspective, current changes are considered in a longer historical perspective and are seen as distinct but not unprecedented, and as not necessarily involving either the emergence of, or movement toward, a type of economic system which is basically different from what we have known.…It is important to see that the first version of the globalization thesis is based on a myth, has profound political implications which are defeatist, and is not based on a sound analysis of what is a more complex and contestable set of processes. | more…