Book Reviews
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Load more
Recommended publications
-
Streeten's Major Writings Paul Marlor SWEEZY
.... 642 Paul Marlor SWEEZY Paul Marlor SWEEZY 643 I out agreeing with the late David McCord Wright, who once said, 'When It was under these circumstances that acquired a mission in life, not all at once and self-consciously, but gradually and through a practice that had a logic of its people tell me I am fuzzy, I reply, "life is fuzzy'", the heterodox dis�enters own. That mission was to do what I could to make Marxism an integral and prefer, I think, to be accused of fuzziness. They prefer to be vaguely nght to respected part of the intellectual life of the country, or, put in other terms, to take being precisely wrong. It is a matter of taste. The orthodox may say, part in establishing a serious and authentic North American brand of Marxism. 'Reductionism is not the occupational disease of economists, it is their occu pation.' But if in the process they throw out the baby instead of the bathwater, In pursuing these interests at Harvard, Sweezy received encouragement the reduction surely loses its point. from the great conservative economist Joseph Schumpeter, whose analysis of the origins, development and impending decline of capitalism revealed a Streeten's Major Writings complex and critical appreciation of Marxist analysis. 17 (1949), 'The Theory of Profit', The Manchester School, (3), September. Obtaining his Ph.D. in 1937, Sweezy took a job as an instructor at Harvard (1950a), 'Mangel des Preismechanismus', Vo//beschdftigung, Cologne: Bundverlag. (l 950b), 'The Inappropriateness of Simple "Elasticity" Concepts m the Analysis of Interna until 1939 when he rose to the rank of assistant professor. -
Monthly Review Press Catalog, 2011
PAID PAID Social Structure RIPON, WI and Forms of NON-PROFIT U.S. POSTAGE U.S. POSTAGE Consciousness ORGANIZATION ORGANIZATION PERMIT NO. 100 volume ii The Dialectic of Structure and History István Mészáros Class Dismissed WHY WE CANNOT TEACH OR LEARN OUR WAY OUT OF INEQUALITY John Marsh JOSÉ CARLOS MARIÁTEGUI an anthology MONTHLY REVIEW PRESS Harry E. Vanden and Marc Becker editors and translators the story of the center for constitutional rights How Venezuela and Cuba are Changing the World’s Conception of Health Care the people’s RevolutionaRy lawyer DOCTORS 2011 Albert Ruben Steve Brouwer WHAT EVERY ENVIRONMENTALIST NEEDS TO KNOW ABOUT CAPITALISM JOHN BELLAMY FOSTER FRED MAGDOFF monthly review press review monthly #6W 29th Street, 146 West NY 10001 New York, www.monthlyreview.org 2011 MRP catalog:TMOI.qxd 1/4/2011 3:49 PM Page 1 THE DEVIL’S MILK A Social History of Rubber JOHN TULLY From the early stages of primitivehistory accu- mulation“ to the heights of the industrial revolution and beyond, rubber is one of a handful of commodities that has played a crucial role in shaping the modern world, and yet, as John Tully shows in this remarkable book, laboring people around the globe have every reason to THE DEVIL’S MILK regard it as “the devil’s milk.” All the A S O C I A L H I S T O R Y O F R U B B E R advancements made possible by rubber have occurred against a backdrop of seemingly endless exploitation, con- quest, slavery, and war. -
Marketocracy and the Capture of People and Planet
The Jus Semper Global Alliance In Pursuit of the People and Planet Paradigm Sustainable Human Development July 2021 BRIEFS ON TRUE DEMOCRACY AND CAPITALISM Marketocracy and the Capture of People and Planet The acceleration of Twenty-First Century Monopoly Capital Fascism through the pandemic and the Great Reset Álvaro J. de Regil TJSGA/Assessment/SD (TS010) July 2021/Álvaro J. de Regil 1 Prologue Prologue... 2 ❖ Capitalism’s Journey of Dehumanisation... 6 n innate feature of capitalism has been the endless First Industrial Revolution... 6 A pursuit of an ethos with the least possible intervention Second Industrial Revolution... 10 of the state in its unrelenting quest for the reproduction and Third Industrial Revolution... 16 accumulation of capital, at the expense of all other participants ➡Modern Slave Work Stuctures… 20 in the economic activity prominently including the planet. ➡The Anthropocene… 23 Capitalism always demands to be in the driver's seat of the ❖ The Capture of Democracy… 29 economy. Only when its activities are threatened by ➡Sheer Laissez-Faire Ethos… 33 communities and nations opposing the expropriation of their ➡Capital Equated with Human Beings… 34 natural resources and the imposition of structures that extract ➡Untramelled and Imposed Marketrocratic System... 35 the vast majority of the value of labour—the surplus-value—, ❖ Fourth Industrial Revolution... 39 capitalism demands the intervention of the states; these include ➡Conceptual Structure… 41 their armed forces, to protect the exploits of the owners of the ➡Application… 42 system. This is all the more evident in the global South. Across ➡Impact… 44 centuries of imperialism and colonialism, the practice of ❖ The COVID-19 Pandemic… 59 invasion, conquering, expropriation and exploitation by ➡Management of COVID-19.. -
Excerpted from James Gustav Speth, America, Rising to Its Dream (Forthcoming, Yale U.P., Fall 2012) * How Can We Gauge What
!"#$%&'$()*%+,)-.,$/)01/'.2)3&$'45))!"#$%&'()*%+%,-)./)01+)2$#'")34/$15&/"%,-()6'7#)89:9()4'77);<=;>)) 6) 7+8)#.9)8$):.1:$)84.')4./)4.&&$9$()'+)1/);9)'4$)&./')*$8)($#.($/).9() 84$%$)8$)/'.9()'+(.<=)>9$)8.<)'+).9/8$%)'4;/)?1$/';+9);/)'+)@++A).')4+8)8$) #+,&.%$)8;'4)+'4$%)#+19'%;$/);9)A$<).%$./B)3+)@$'C/)@++A).').):%+1&)+*).(2.9#$() ($,+#%.#;$/DD'4$)#+19'%;$/)+*)'4$)>%:.9;E.';+9)*+%)!#+9+,;#)F++&$%.';+9).9() G$2$@+&,$9'),;91/)'4$)*+%,$%)3+2;$')H@+#)#+19'%;$/5)I$";#+5)J1%A$<5)K+%$.5) L#[email protected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
Marxism and the Solidarity Economy: Toward a New Theory of Revolution
Class, Race and Corporate Power Volume 9 Issue 1 Article 2 2021 Marxism and the Solidarity Economy: Toward a New Theory of Revolution Chris Wright [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/classracecorporatepower Part of the Political Science Commons Recommended Citation Wright, Chris (2021) "Marxism and the Solidarity Economy: Toward a New Theory of Revolution," Class, Race and Corporate Power: Vol. 9 : Iss. 1 , Article 2. DOI: 10.25148/CRCP.9.1.009647 Available at: https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/classracecorporatepower/vol9/iss1/2 This work is brought to you for free and open access by the College of Arts, Sciences & Education at FIU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Class, Race and Corporate Power by an authorized administrator of FIU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Marxism and the Solidarity Economy: Toward a New Theory of Revolution Abstract In the twenty-first century, it is time that Marxists updated the conception of socialist revolution they have inherited from Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Slogans about the “dictatorship of the proletariat” “smashing the capitalist state” and carrying out a social revolution from the commanding heights of a reconstituted state are completely obsolete. In this article I propose a reconceptualization that accomplishes several purposes: first, it explains the logical and empirical problems with Marx’s classical theory of revolution; second, it revises the classical theory to make it, for the first time, logically consistent with the premises of historical materialism; third, it provides a (Marxist) theoretical grounding for activism in the solidarity economy, and thus partially reconciles Marxism with anarchism; fourth, it accounts for the long-term failure of all attempts at socialist revolution so far. -
Globalisation - to What End?*
GLOBALISATION - TO WHAT END?* Harry Magdoff By the end of 1990, foreign direct investment - that is, investment in manufacturing, real estate, raw materials extraction, financial institutions, etc., made by capitalists of all lands outside their national borders - reached over $1.5 trillion. Actually, this official estimate grossly under- states the case because it is based on book values. But even as a minimum estimate, what is significant about this number is not only its size but the unprecedented speed with which it has grown in the last two decades: the amount directly invested in foreign lands nearly tripled in the 1980s alone. Moreover, this investment went far beyond manufacturing and the extrac- tion of raw materials. To an ever larger extent foreign capital spread to such fields as finance, real estate, insurance, advertising, and the media. This upsurge and diversification of globalisation has been introducing new economic and political features in the countries of both the periphery and the core. In the periphery, foreign capital has penetrated more widely and deeply than ever before. In the core, the change of direction has helped produce in the world's key money markets an extraordinary spiralling of credit creation, international flows of money capital, and speculation. This new stage of globalisation has meanwhile given rise to questions about its longer-run significance. A widely accepted theory visualises the erosion of national sovereignty at the centres of capitalism, presumably to be replaced by an 'international' of capital that will make and enforce the rules of international relations. The more thoughtful members of the ruling capitalist class are well aware how chimerical the notion of a rising international of capital is. -
THE POLITICAL THOUGHT of the THIRD WORLD LEFT in POST-WAR AMERICA a Dissertation Submitted
LIBERATION FROM THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY: THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF THE THIRD WORLD LEFT IN POST-WAR AMERICA A Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences of Georgetown University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History By Benjamin Feldman, M.A. Washington, DC August 6, 2020 Copyright 2020 by Benjamin Feldman All Rights Reserved ii LIBERATION FROM THE AFFLUENT SOCIETY: THE POLITICAL THOUGHT OF THE THIRD WORLD LEFT IN POST-WAR AMERICA Benjamin Feldman, M.A. Thesis Advisor: Michael Kazin, Ph.D. ABSTRACT This dissertation traces the full intellectual history of the Third World Turn: when theorists and activists in the United States began to look to liberation movements within the colonized and formerly colonized nations of the ‘Third World’ in search of models for political, social, and cultural transformation. I argue that, understood as a critique of the limits of New Deal liberalism rather than just as an offshoot of New Left radicalism, Third Worldism must be placed at the center of the history of the post-war American Left. Rooting the Third World Turn in the work of theorists active in the 1940s, including the economists Paul Sweezy and Paul Baran, the writer Harold Cruse, and the Detroit organizers James and Grace Lee Boggs, my work moves beyond simple binaries of violence vs. non-violence, revolution vs. reform, and utopianism vs. realism, while throwing the political development of groups like the Black Panthers, the Young Lords, the League of Revolutionary Black Workers, and the Third World Women’s Alliance into sharper relief. -
Capitalism Has Failed — What Next?
The Jus Semper Global Alliance In Pursuit of the People and Planet Paradigm Sustainable Human Development November 2020 ESSAYS ON TRUE DEMOCRACY AND CAPITALISM Capitalism Has Failed — What Next? John Bellamy Foster ess than two decades into the twenty-first century, it is evident that capitalism has L failed as a social system. The world is mired in economic stagnation, financialisation, and the most extreme inequality in human history, accompanied by mass unemployment and underemployment, precariousness, poverty, hunger, wasted output and lives, and what at this point can only be called a planetary ecological “death spiral.”1 The digital revolution, the greatest technological advance of our time, has rapidly mutated from a promise of free communication and liberated production into new means of surveillance, control, and displacement of the working population. The institutions of liberal democracy are at the point of collapse, while fascism, the rear guard of the capitalist system, is again on the march, along with patriarchy, racism, imperialism, and war. To say that capitalism is a failed system is not, of course, to suggest that its breakdown and disintegration is imminent.2 It does, however, mean that it has passed from being a historically necessary and creative system at its inception to being a historically unnecessary and destructive one in the present century. Today, more than ever, the world is faced with the epochal choice between “the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large and the common ruin of the contending classes.”3 1 ↩ George Monbiot, “The Earth Is in a Death Spiral. It will Take Radical Action to Save Us,” Guardian, November 14, 2018; Leonid Bershidsky, “Underemployment is the New Unemployment,” Bloomberg, September 26, 2018. -
MONTHLY REVIEW VOL. 71 NO. 6 an Independent Socialist Magazine Founded in 1949 by Leo Huberman & Paul M
NOVEMBER 2019 MONTHLY REVIEW VOL. 71 NO. 6 An Independent Socialist Magazine Founded in 1949 by Leo Huberman & Paul M. Sweezy John Bellamy Foster, Editor ◊ Brett Clark, Associate Editor ◊ Camila Quarta, Assistant Editor ◊ Martin Paddio, Business Manager ◊ Gordon Beeferman, Circulation ◊ R. Jamil Jonna, Associate Editor for Communications & Production Former Editors: Harry Magdoff (1969–2006) ◊ Ellen Meiksins Wood (1997–2000) ◊ Robert W. McChesney (2000–2004) 134 W. 29th Street, Suite 706 Editorial: [email protected] New York, NY 10001 Circulation: [email protected] tel: 212-691-2555 MR Online: [email protected] REVIEW OF THE MONTH On Fire This Time John Bellamy Foster 1 The Angler and the Octopus: Kim Jong-un’s Ongoing Peace Offensive Tim Beal 18 The Trial of Thomas Hardy: A Forgotten Chapter in the Working-Class Fight for Democratic Rights Ian Angus 41 Endgame Marxism (and Urbanism) Andy Merrifield 47 REPRISE U.S. Weakness and the Struggle for Hegemony Immanuel Wallerstein 54 POETRY This is our legacy Marge Piercy 61 REVIEW Race and Mystery in Cape Cod Nicholas Powers 62 Notes from the Editors Immanuel Wallerstein, the celebrated world-systems theorist and longtime contributor to Monthly Review and Monthly Review Press, died on August 31, 2019. Wallerstein first achieved international fame with the publication in 1974 of his The Modern World-System: Capitalist Agriculture and the Origins of the World-Economy in the Sixteenth Century (the first in a four-volume masterwork on the Modern World- System, which was to continue with volume II, Mercantilism and the Consolidation of the European World-Economy, 1600–1750 [1980]; volume III, The Second Era of Great Expansion of the Capitalist World-Economy, 1730s–1840s [1988]; and volume IV, Centrist Liberalism Triumphant, 1789–1914 [2011]). -
Is Lenin Still In? the 100 Years After the October Revolution
Is Lenin still In? The 100 years after the October Revolution By Eric Mann This month marks the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution of October 1917. As we in the United States try to imagine a revolutionary opposition to the U.S. imperialist system a great appreciation of the achievements of the Russian revolution and the Soviet Union is a critical part of our revolutionary future. The Russian revolution created the Soviet Union—the first “workers state” and the first successful revolution that survived the world imperialist counterrevolution. The Bolshevik Party (the first communist party) was part of a united front of parties that seized power from the reactionary feudal Tsar in the February revolution of 1917. Then in October 1917 the Bolsheviks overthrew the forces of capitalism and seized state power from the social democratic Kerensky government. The Russian revolution came to power as an anti-war movement against the forces in Russia that wanted to continue World War I—one of the greatest imperialist bloodbaths of all time in which more than 18 million “workers of the world” were sent to their deaths by the capitalist governments of Europe with strong support from their “socialist” parties. The Bolshevik Party and Soviet State built its own military and police, defended themselves against external and internal capitalist attack, and survived in a hostile world for 72 years—a true miracle against all odds. From the perspective of the world’s exploited and oppressed people this was a profound achievement in human history and offered them an optimistic vision of their own future. -
Absolute Capitalism
The Jus Semper Global Alliance Living Wages North and South Sustainable Human Development March 2020 BRIEFS ON TRUE DEMOCRACY AND CAPITALISM Absolute Capitalism John Bellamy Foster The French poet Charles Baudelaire wrote in 1864 that “the cleverest ruse of the Devil is to persuade you he does not exist!”1 I will argue here that this is directly applicable to today’s neoliberals, whose devil’s ruse is to pretend they do not exist. Although neoliberalism is widely recognised as the central political-ideological project of twenty-first-century capitalism, it is a term that is seldom uttered by those in power. In 2005, the New York Times went so far as to make neoliberalism’s nonexistence official by running an article entitled “Neoliberalism? It Doesn’t Exist.”2 Behind this particular devil’s ruse lies a deeply disturbing, even hellish, reality. Neoliberalism can be defined as an integrated ruling-class political-ideological project, associated with the The Octopus, drawing by Nicci Yin. Created as part of the presentation “The Octopus: Cognitive Capitalism and the rise of monopoly-finance capital, the principal strategic aim University” with Natalia Cecire and Miriam Neptune at The of which is to embed the state in capitalist market relations. Scholar & Feminist 2015: Action on Education. Hence, the state’s traditional role in safeguarding social reproduction—if largely on capitalist-class terms—is now reduced solely to one of promoting capitalist reproduction. The goal is nothing less than the creation of an absolute capitalism. All of this serves to heighten the extreme human and ecological destructiveness that characterises our time. -
The Power of Capital: an Introduction to Class, Domination, and Conflict
The Power of Capital: An Introduction to Class, Domination, and Conflict By Alejandro Reuss An ECI Teaching Module on Social and Environmental Issues in Economics Global Development Policy Center Boston University 53 Bay State Road Boston, MA 02155 bu.edu/gdp Economics in Context Initiative, Global Development Policy Center, Boston University, 2020. Permission is hereby granted for instructors to copy this module for instructional purposes. Suggested citation: Reuss, Alejandro. (2020) “The Power of Capital: An Introduction to Class, Domination, and Conflict.” An ECI Teaching Module on Social and Economic Issues, Economics in Context Initiative, Global Development Policy Center, Boston University, 2020. Students may also download the module directly from: http://www.bu.edu/eci/education-materials/teaching-modules/ Comments and feedback from course use are welcomed: Economics in Context Initiative Global Development Policy Center Boston University 53 Bay State Road Boston, MA 02215 http://www.bu.edu/eci/ Email: [email protected] NOTE – terms denoted in bold face are defined in the KEY TERMS AND CONCEPTS section at the end of the module. 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. INTRODUCTION.................................................................................................................... 3 1.1 Economics and Power Relations ........................................................................................... 3 1.2 Outline of the Module ..........................................................................................................