July 1, 2013
This is an abridged version of an article by the same title published in Review1, launched in 1965 as Monthly Review's literary supplement. Eleanor Hakim was the managing editor of Studies on the Left in its first few years. At the time she wrote this article she was teaching at the New School for Social Research in New York City. Her essay dealt with Brecht's theory of the subversive role of the artist in confronting what he conceived as the "cultural apparatus"and how this affected his theory of epic theater. Hakim was particularly concerned with demonstrating that Brecht's critical outlook was confirmed by the way that, after his death, the U.S. cultural apparatus ("the theatrical stock exchange" of her title) was manipulating and de-radicalizing his drama. In this context, she drew out the significance of Brecht's revolutionary humanism.… —Eds.
April 1, 2013
A historical perspective on the economic stagnation afflicting the United States and the other advanced capitalist economies requires that we go back to the severe downturn of 1974–1975, which marked the end of the post-Second World War prosperity. The dominant interpretation of the mid–1970s recession was that the full employment of the earlier Keynesian era had laid the basis for the crisis by strengthening labor in relation to capital. As a number of prominent left economists, whose outlook did not differ from the mainstream in this respect, put it, the problem was a capitalist class that was "too weak" and a working class that was "too strong." Empirically, the slump was commonly attributed to a rise in the wage share of income, squeezing profits. This has come to be known as the "profit-squeeze" theory of crisis.
April 1, 2013
When confronted with any big decision in life, I hear my mom's voice telling me to listen to my gut. This has worked for personal adventures ranging from backpacking to parenting, even though at times it can be hard to quiet the social noise that prevents us from "hearing" what our instincts have to say. In Greed to Green, Charles Derber explores a new twist on the familiar "listen to your gut" adage by framing climate change inaction as the collective problem of not having a gut feeling about this planetary threat. Rather, he explains that we as a society have cordoned off knowledge of climate change as an intellectual concept, and have not allowed it to migrate to the realm of the gut truth.
February 1, 2013
The world at present is fast approaching a climate cliff. Science tells us that an increase in global average temperature of 2°C (3.6° F) constitutes the planetary tipping point with respect to climate change, leading to irreversible changes beyond human control. A 2°C rise is sufficient to melt a significant portion of the world's ice due to feedbacks that will hasten the melting. It will thus set the course to an ice-free world. Sea level will rise. Numerous islands will be threatened along with coastal regions throughout the globe. Extreme weather events (droughts, storms, floods) will be far more common. The paleoclimatic record shows that an increase in global average temperature of several degrees means that 50 percent or more of all species—plants and animals—will be driven to extinction. Global food crops will be negatively affected.
November 1, 2011
[In my] examination of struggle…from the side of workers.… I constantly came back to the Marxist concept of revolutionary practice, that simultaneous changing of circumstance and human activity or self-change—how people transform themselves through their struggles. But not only through struggles; they produce themselves through their daily activity. People are formed by what they do. So, for example, a person who is a wage laborer under capitalism is produced and produces himself in a certain way, as a person who is alienated, as a person who simply wants to consume because of the emptiness of capitalist production. We always have to ask the question, "what kinds of people are produced under particular relations of production?" What kinds of people are produced in an exchange relationship, which is "I will do this for you, if you do that for me" as opposed to functioning in a communal society in which people act in solidarity? You produce certain kinds of people under those conditions.
February 1, 2010
Three years ago, in December 2006, I wrote an article for Monthly Review entitled "Monopoly-Finance Capital." The occasion was the anniversary of Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy's Monopoly Capital, published four decades earlier in 1966.…The article…[discussed] "the dual reality" of stagnant growth (or stagnation) and financialization, characterizing the advanced economies in this phase of capitalism. I concluded that this pointed to two possibilities: (1) a major financial and economic crisis in the form of "global debt meltdown and debt-deflation," and (2) a prolongation of the symbiotic stagnation-financialization relationship of monopoly-finance capital. In fact, what we have experienced in the last two years, I would argue, is each of these sequentially: the worst financial-economic crisis since the 1930s, and then the system endeavoring to right itself by returning to financialization as its normal means of countering stagnation. It is thus doubly clear today that we are in a new phase of capitalism. In what follows, I shall attempt to outline the logic of this argument, as it evolved out of the work of Baran, Sweezy, and Harry Magdoff in particular, and how it relates to our present economic and social predicament.
October 1, 2009
At the time of this writing (late August), the business news in the United States is full of discussions of "recovery" from the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression. Yet, while the economy appears to have bottomed out and a recovery of sorts may be in the works, this is in many ways misleading. Although a technical or formal recovery seems quite likely by the end of the year — with a small increase in economic growth mainly due to inventory restocking — it is unlikely to feel like a recovery to most individuals in the society. This is because official unemployment is projected to rise to the low double-digits by the end of this year or the beginning of next year — with the numbers of those dropping out of the labor market due to discouragement, or seeking part-time work because they are unable to obtain a full-time job, also growing. All of this points to a "jobless" and "wageless" recovery. As New York University economist Nouriel Roubini wrote in an August 13 column for Forbes.com, "It is very difficult to argue that the U.S. economy is not still in a recession while the labor market is still weak." Indeed, what is really at issue is not simply recession and recovery but the longer-term structural crisis of capitalism. This is the subject of the Review of the Month, which seeks to place the current crisis in the context of the long-term development of capital accumulation and crisis.
June 1, 2009
The grim state of the U.S. economy in early 2009 was brought into sharp relief by economic data released at the end of April. Industrial production in the first quarter of this year dropped by an annual rate of 20 percent, while manufacturing capacity utilization (the operating rate of manufacturing plant and equipment) sank to 65.8 percent in March, the lowest level since the Federal Reserve Board series was introduced in 1948 (industrial capacity utilization as a whole is currently at 69.3 percent, its lowest point since that measurement began in 1967).
May 1, 2009
This issue of Monthly Review marks the sixtieth anniversary of the magazine. We are reprinting here Albert Einstein’s classic article “Why Socialism?,” written for volume 1, no. 1, of Monthly Review (May 1949). On Thursday, September 17, we will meet together at the Ethical Culture Society in Manhattan to celebrate and to promote a global socialism for the twenty-first century. We invite all our subscribers and friends.
May 1, 2009
Is it advisable for one who is not an expert on economic and social issues to express views on the subject of socialism? I believe for a number of reasons that it is.… Clarity about the aims and problems of socialism is of greatest significance in our age of transition. Since, under present circumstances, free and unhindered discussion of these problems has come under a powerful taboo, I consider the foundation of this magazine to be an important public service.
