Few contributions to the understanding of modern capitalism and its mode of operation and evolution have been more important than those made by Paul Sweezy. The essays in this volume continue and deepen his work of interpretation found in The Theory of Capitalist Development, Monopoly Capital, and The Present as History. | more…
Bukharin completed this work in 1914; it represented an attempt to grapple with the Austrian School of political economy, as represented chiefly by Eugen von Böhm-Bawerk. Bukharin interprets the school as reflecting the social position of the rentier stratum of the capitalist class, which tends to view the economy from the point of view of consumption rather than production. His discussion, while it does not deal with the many changes and refinements of neoclassical economics, does contrast, in polemical form, Marxism with the fundamental premises of modern academic economics. | more…
In this book, Mandel discusses the development of Marx’s economic ideas from their beginnings to the completion of the Grundrisse. He combines a historical retrospective and a review of current discussions on each of the subjects and problems central to Marxist economic theory. He traces the development of the concept of “alienation” in Marx, and its fate in the hands of succeeding generations, down to the present discussion in East and West Europe, summarizes the fascinating debates over the “Asiatic mode of production,” and discusses labor theory of value, the problem of periodic crises, the theory of wages and the polarization of wealth and poverty, and the problem of progressive “disalienation” through the building of socialist society. | more…
These essays by the author of The Political Economy of Growth and co-author of Monopoly Capital cover the working range of a strong and original mind. They are as diverse as his well-known discussion of Marxism and psychoanalysis, and his expert handling of the politics and economics of development. | more…
In his second book, Andre Gunder Frank expands on the theme presented in his influential study Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America. It is the colonial structure of world capitalism, in his view, which produced and maintains the underdevelopment characteristic of Latin America and the rest of the Third World. This colonial structure penetrates everywhere in Latin America, forming and transforming all its features in obedience to its own imperatives and thereby imposing upon the region those characteristic features of poverty and backwardness which are not primarily the remnants of an ancient “feudal” past but the direct products of capitalism. This development of underdevelopment will persist, therefore, until the people of Latin America free themselves from world capitalism by means of revolution. The Cuban Revolution is thus viewed as the first effort in a continent-wide revolutionary process direct against both imperialism and the national bourgeoisie. | more…
The four essays in this book offer a sweeping reinterpretation of Latin American history as an aspect of the world-wide spread of capitalism in its commercial and industrial phases. Dr. Frank lays to rest the myth of Latin American feudalism, demonstrating in the process the impossibility of a bourgeois revolution in a part of the world which is already part and parcel of the capitalist system. | more…
This landmark text by Paul Baran and Paul Sweezy is a classic of twentieth-century radical thought, a hugely influential book that continues to shape our understanding of modern capitalism. “This book… deals with a vital area of economics, has a unique approach, is stimulating and well written. It represents the first serious attempt to extend Marx’s model of competitive capitalism to the new conditions of monopoly capitalism.” — Howard J. Sherman, American Economic Review | more…
One of the most influential studies ever written in the field of development economics, this book has, since first publication in 1957, bred a whole school of followers who are producing further works along the lines indicated by Baran. Concerned with the generation and use of economic surplus, it analyzes from this point of view both the advanced and the underdeveloped countries. A work in political economy rather than solely in economics, this book treats the economic transformation of society as one facet of a total social and political evolution. | more…
This pioneering survey of the development of the “labor theory of value,” advances Marxian economic categories for contemporary conditions. | more…
Since its first publication in 1942, this book has become the classic analytical study of Marxist economics. Written by an economist who is a master of modern academic theory as well as Marxist literature, it has been recognized as the ideal textbook in its subject. Comprehensive, lucid, authoritative, it has not been challenged or even approached by any later study. | more…
“The most successful attempt to date to humanize the Dismal Science and link the history of man to the history of economic theory.” —The New Yorker | more…
“The Drama of America” is truly to be found between the covers of this classic book—an exhilarating and often tragic account of a nation and the struggles of those caught up in the processes of its becoming, written by Monthly Review founding co-editor Leo Huberman. A precursor to Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, and, like that book, immensely popular upon its release, We, the People recasts U.S. history from the perspectives of those far removed from official power: the anonymous toilers so often ignored by conventional histories. These are the men, women, and children who cleared the land and worked its fields, built and inhabited the factories, moved goods along the railways and canals and highways, and raised the next generation of workers whose exploited labor would propel the nation’s development. | more…