Historical materialists are not prophets; they do not predict the future course of history. They are concerned rather with the present as history. This fundamental principle of Marxist thought is called to mind by our reencounter recently with a common misinterpretation of Lenin’s Imperialism. In his new book, The New Imperialism, David Harvey writes (p. 127): “I therefore think Arendt is…correct to interpret the imperialism that emerged at the end of the nineteenth century as the ‘first stage in political rule of the bourgeoisie rather than the last stage of capitalism’ as Lenin depicted it.” (See also Harvey’s piece “The ‘New’ Imperialism” in the Socialist Register, 2004, p. 69.) | more…
Samir Amin’s “World Poverty, Pauperization, and Capital Accumulation,” the Review of the Month in this issue of MR, addresses the growing phenomena of landlessness and pauperization among rural populations in the periphery. He reminds us that half of the people in the world are peasants, a group largely unseen by liberals and radicals. The dispossession of the peasantry throughout the third world represents one of the central problems of our time—for reasons of straightforward humanity. Amin points out that the worsening position of the peasantry, their forced migration to cities, and the growth of hunger among the poor cannot be adequately dealt with by treating these problems as mere aberrations of the system. Mounting occasional “anti-poverty” programs or “humanitarian” assistance or even projects to enhance farm productivity offer no real long-term solutions. In fact, the inherent contradictions in the third world are such that even increases in the productivity of peasants so that more food is producedin the absence of employment opportunities for rural labor that is no longer needed in agriculture—can seriously worsen the problem of displacement and hunger! The enormous humanitarian problem that Amin describes is rather a result of the way capitalism works on a world scale. The clear lesson to be drawn from his article is that the anti-globalization struggle needs to be aimed at the real problem—the capitalist system | more…
This month marks the centennial of the birth of Leo Huberman, who, with Paul M. Sweezy, was founding coeditor of Monthly Review. Arguably without Huberman’s editorial and publishing skills, his radical imagination, and his indefatigable commitment to the idea of an independent, clear-sighted socialist clarion, MR might well have been stillborn. Instead, the magazine—and Monthly Review Press—became a leading voice of independent Marxian socialism both in the United States and worldwide. Much of this was due to the unique collaboration and friendship between Leo and Paul and to the larger MR “family” that included, initially, Gertrude Huberman (Leo’s wife, who died in 1965) and Sybil H. May, MR’s office manager until her death in October 1978. MR’s first office was in Leo and Gert’s Barrow Street apartment. It was there that the two editors would meet to plot the course of the magazine, shaping its worldview, enlisting its contributors, and deciding each issue’s contents. And it was there that Leo, especially, molded MR as an enterprise, a particularly risky task in those early years of the Cold War and witch-hunts | more…
Contributions by John Bellamy Foster, Vincent Navarro, William K. Tabb, Michael Perelman, Richard D. Vogel, David Roediger, Kristen Lavelle and Joe Feagin, Sabiyha Prince, Martha Gimenez, Stephanie Luce and Mark Brenner, Peter McLaren and Ramin Farahmandpur, Michael D. Yates, Angela Jancius, and Michael Zweig. Edited by Michael D. Yates. | more…
The movement against the war in Iraq was the largest antiwar movement that has ever taken place. Even in the United States, where opposition to the war was not as large as in many other parts of the world, demonstrations against the war grew with astonishing rapidity. Before the war began demonstrations had reached sizes that, during the war in Vietnam, took years of organizing to mobilize. The antiwar movement, in the United States as elsewhere, was also in many respects quite broad. It included not only people on the left, antiglobalization activists and peace organizations, but also churches, other religious organizations, trade unions, and many other organizations not associated with the left. And it included very large numbers of people who came to demonstrations as individuals, rather than as members of organizations, and who had never before participated in a political protest | more…
Some would say socialist feminism is an artifact of the 1970s. It flowered with the women’s liberation movement, as a theoretical response to what many in the movement saw as the inadequacies of Marxism, liberalism, and radical feminism, but since then it has been defunct, both theoretically and politically. I think this view is mistaken | more…
Daniel Singer’s first book was Prelude to Revolution: France in May 1968, published in 1970. There he posed the question: “Could it be that a socialist revolution is beginning, that Marxism is returning to its home ground, the advanced countries for which it was designed?” And he answered his own question, Yes. The main message of the May crisis was that a “revolutionary situation can occur in an advanced capitalist country” | more…
Raya Dunayevskaya, The Power of Negativity: Selected Writings on the Dialectic in Hegel and Marx, edited by Peter Hudis and Kevin B. Anderson (Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books, 2002), 386 pages, $100.00 cloth; $24.95 paper.
August H. Nimtz, Jr., Marx and Engels: Their Contribution to the Democratic Breakthrough (Albany, New York: State University of New York Press, 2000), 377 pages, $71.50 cloth; $24.95 paper.
John Rees, The Algebra of Revolution: The Dialectic and the Classical Marxist Tradition (London and New York: Routledge, 1998), 314 pages, $85.00 cloth; $26.95 paper.
In these terrible times, to believe in the possibility of helping to make the world a better place, and to commit ones life to that, makes one a revolutionary. Over the years, some of us have been inclined to embrace Karl Marx because he was on our side—the side of labor, of the oppressed, of the working-class majority—and provided invaluable intellectual tools for understanding and changing reality. Others, in this dangerous time of intensifying capitalist “globalization,” are also reaching out to what Marx has to offer. With his comrade Frederick Engels he produced enough material to fill the numerous volumes of their Collected Works of which the final volume is due in 2003. A number of helpful books are now appearing that contribute to the collective process of understanding and utilizing this legacy for changing the world. Those who can offer some of the most fruitful insights will be those who, following the example of Marx and Engels, have committed themselves politically in their own lives. Which brings us to the works under review | more…
For more than three decades, visitors to Monthly Review’s Manhattan offices would be greeted with the slightly raspy, always cheerful “Hi ya” that Beadie Magdoff offered to cabinet ministers, students, revolutionaries, workers, political exiles, and internationally renowned scholars. They came to work with the editors, to join the lunchtime discussions, and, of course, to leave with the latest Monthly Review Press books that Beadie made sure they bought. Beadie was an instrumental part of the daily life of MR, indefatigable not only in the small tasks she took on, but in her insistence on an unyielding passion for social justice as well as a clear focus on the case for socialism | more…
There is no longer an organized feminist movement in the United States that influences the lives and actions of millions of women and engages their political support. There are many organizations, ranging from the National Organization for Women to women’s caucuses in labor unions and professional groups, which fight for women’s rights, and there are many more organizations, many of them including men as well as women, whose priorities include women’s issues. But the mass women’s movement of the late sixties, seventies, and early eighties no longer exists. Few, among the many women who regard themselves as feminists, have anything to do with feminist organizations other than reading about them in the newspapers. Young women who are drawn to political activism do not, for the most part, join women’s groups. They are much more likely to join anticorporate, antiglobalization, or social justice groups. These young women are likely to regard themselves as feminists, and in the groups that they join a feminist perspective is likely to affect the way in which issues are defined and addressed. But this is not the same thing as a mass movement of women for gender equality. A similar dynamic has taken place in other circles as well. There are now very large numbers of women who identify with feminism, or, if they are reluctant to adopt that label, nevertheless expect to be treated as the equals of men. And there are large numbers of men who support this view | more…
The story of how Helen Keller (1880-1967), struck blind and deaf while a toddler, overcame her disabilities with the help of her teacher Anne Sullivan, is a familiar one. William Gibson’s drama, The Miracle Worker, made into a movie, popularized that part of her story. She is remembered for accomplishments such as graduating cum laude from Radcliffe College; as an internationally famous advocate for the deaf and blind; and as a celebrity, writing books, appearing in films and on the vaudeville stage. Her friend Mark Twain described her, along with Napoleon, as one of the “two most interesting characters of the nineteenth century.” What is usually forgotten, however, is that she was also a prominent, articulate, and passionate voice for socialism. From a condition of profound isolation she grew into an inspired communicator, fully engaged with the world around her. She joined the Socialist Party in 1909 (later she’d join the Industrial Workers of the World, too) and championed her socialist vision while lecturing and writing on the issues of her day-in support of worker’s struggles, the Russian Revolution, and women’s suffrage, and against the First World War. There was no separation in her mind between her struggle on behalf of the disabled and her struggle for socialism. She attributed the greater portion of the ills experienced by the disabled, and the cause of these disabilities in many cases, to capitalism and industrialism. After 1921, she focused her energies on raising funds for the American Foundation for the Blind but she remained a supporter of radical causes for the rest of her life. This essay appeared in the New York Call, a daily newspaper of the Socialist Party, on November 3, 1912.
Through a Glass Darkly is William Hinton’s final book. It draws on a lifetime of immersion in contemporary Chinese politics and society, beginning with the seven years he spent in China, working mainly in agriculture and land reform, until 1953. On his return to the United States in that year, Hinton first encountered the distortions and misrepresentations of the Chinese Revolution that he examines in this book. | more…
