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| Editor | John Bellamy Foster |
|---|---|
| Categories | Communism,Marxism,socialism,political economy,economics,social science,philosophy |
| Frequency | Monthly (double issue July–August) |
| Publisher | Monthly Review Foundation |
| Founded | 1949 |
| Country | United States |
| Based in | New York City |
| Language | English |
| Website | monthlyreview |
| ISSN | 0027-0520 |
| OCLC | 241373379 |
TheMonthly Review is an independentsocialistmagazine published monthly inNew York City. Established in 1949, the publication is the longest continuously published socialist magazine in the United States.
Following the failure of the independent1948 presidential campaign ofHenry A. Wallace, two former supporters of the Wallace effort met at the farm inNew Hampshire where one of them was living. The two men were literary scholar andChristian socialistF.O. "Matty" Matthiessen andMarxisteconomistPaul Sweezy, who were former colleagues atHarvard University. Matthiessen came into an inheritance after his father died in an automobile accident inCalifornia and had no pressing need for the money. Matthiessen made the offer to Sweezy to underwrite "that magazine [Sweezy] and Leo Huberman were always talking about," committing the sum of $5,000 per year for three years. Matthiessen's funds made the launch ofMonthly Review possible, although the amount of the seed money was reduced to $4,000 per year in the second and third years by the executors of Matthiessen's estate following his suicide in 1950.[1]
Although Matthiessen was the financial angel of the new publication, from the outset the editorial task was handled by Sweezy and his co-thinker, the left wing popular writerLeo Huberman. The author of an array of books and pamphlets during the 1930s and early 1940s, theNew York University-educated Huberman worked full-time onMonthly Review from its establishment until his death of aheart attack in 1968.[2]
Sweezy and Huberman were complementary figures guiding the publication, with Sweezy's theoretical bent and writing ability put to use for a majority of the editorial content, while Huberman took charge of the business and administrative aspects of the enterprise. Sweezy remained at home in New Hampshire, traveling down to New York City once a month to readmanuscripts, where Huberman conducted the day-to-day operations of the magazine along with his wife, Gerty Huberman, and family friend Sybil Huntington May.[3]
Briefly joining Sweezy and Huberman as a third founding editor ofMonthly Review — although not listed as such on the publication'smasthead — was German émigréOtto Nathan (1893–1987). Although his time of editorial association with the magazine was short, Nathan was instrumental in obtaining what would become a seminal essay for the magazine, a lead piece for the debut May 1949 issue byphysicistAlbert Einstein entitled "Why Socialism?"[4][5]
Another key contributor during the first 15 years ofMonthly Review was economistPaul Baran, frequently considered as the third member of an editorial troika including Sweezy and Huberman. Atenured professor atStanford University, Baran was one of a very few self-identified Marxists to teach economics at American universities during theCold War period. Baran worked closely with Sweezy on a book regarded as a landmark in Marxist theory entitledMonopoly Capital, although he died of a heart attack prior to the work's first publication in 1966.[6]
Monthly Review launched in 1949 with a circulation of just 450 copies, most of whom were personal acquaintances of either Huberman or Sweezy.[7] The magazine's ideology and readership closely paralleled that of the independent socialist weekly newspaperThe National Guardian, established in 1948. Despite a conservative political climate in the United States, the magazine quickly reached a critical mass of subscribers, with its paid circulation rising to 2,500 in 1950 and to 6,000 in 1954.[8]
During the era ofMcCarthyism in the early 1950s, editors Paul Sweezy and Leo Huberman were targeted for "subversive activities". Sweezy's case, tried byNew Hampshire Attorney General, reached theSupreme Court and became a seminal case onfreedom of speech when the Court ruled in his favor.[9]
In 1953, theMonthly Review added veteran radicalScott Nearing to the magazine's ranks. From that date and for nearly 20 years Nearing authored a column descriptively entitled "World Events". During the Truman and Eisenhower years, many left-wing intellectuals found a space for their work in the magazine, including a number that would gain in stature in the ensuing liberalized decade, such as pacifist activistStaughton Lynd (1952), historianWilliam Appleman Williams (1952), and sociologistC. Wright Mills (1958).[10]
From the middle years of the 1960s, radical political theory saw a resurgence in association with the emergence of aNew Left in Europe and North America.Monthly Review grew in stature in tandem with this resurgence.[11] While remaining an intellectual journal not oriented towards acquiring a mass readership, circulation of the publication nonetheless grew throughout this era, approaching 9,100 in 1970 before peaking at 11,500 in 1977.[12]
WhileMonthly Review remained essentially a publication with roots in the so-called "Old Left", it was not unsympathetic to the young radical movement which grew in conjunction with theCivil Rights Movement and the opposition toconscription and theVietnam War. Among those associated with the 1960s New Left published by theMonthly Review wereC. Wright Mills,Herbert Marcuse,Todd Gitlin,Carl Oglesby,David Horowitz, andNoam Chomsky.[12]
TheMonthly Review editorial staff was joined in May 1969 by radical economistHarry Magdoff, replacing Leo Huberman, who had died in 1968. Magdoff, a reader of the publication from its first issue in 1949, bolstered the already well-developed "Third-Worldist" orientation of the publication, based upon revolutionary events inCuba, China, andVietnam. CertainMaoist influence made itself felt in the content of the publication in this period.[13]
Monthly Review became steadily more critical of theSoviet Union in the 1960s and 1970s, with editor Paul Sweezy objecting to theSoviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968 and the suppression of thePolish trade union "Solidarity" throughmartial law in 1981.[14] In the latter case, Sweezy declared the incident had proved beyond doubt that "the Communist regimes of the Soviet bloc have become the expression and the guardians of a new rigidified hierarchical structure which has nothing in common with the kind of socialist society Marxists have always regarded as the goal of modern working class movements."[15]
Despite an apparent decline of the American Left in the 1980s,Monthly Review's circulation hovered in the 8,000 range throughout the decade.[16]
Between 1997 and 2000,Monthly Review was co-edited byEllen Meiksins Wood, Magdoff and Sweezy.
Since 2006,John Bellamy Foster has been the publication's editor.Brett Clark is the associate editor, and the magazine also has one assistant editor and an editorial committee.[17]
Monthly Review continues to be published as a print magazine with 11 issues per year (one per month with July and August combined into a single, thematic issue). The print magazine primarily publishes original content, including full articles, book reviews, and poetry, with exceptions such as reprises or adaptations of previously published work identified as such. Everything published in the print journal since the launch of the magazine's web site is available for free access, while archives going back to the journal's inauguration in 1949 are available to subscribers. In addition to these articles, the website also hostsMonthly Review Press andMR Online.
From its first issue,Monthly Review attacked the premise thatcapitalism was capable of infinite growth throughKeynesianmacroeconomic fine-tuning. Instead, the magazine's editors and leading writers have remained true to the traditional Marxist perspective that capitalist economies contain internal contradictions which will ultimately lead to their collapse and reconstitution on a new socialist basis. Topics of editorial concern have includedpoverty, unequal distribution of incomes and wealth.
Although not averse to discussion of esoteric matters of socialist theory,Monthly Review was generally characterized by an aversion to doctrinaire citations of Marxist canon in favor of the analysis of real-world economic and historical trends. Readability was emphasized and the use of academic jargon discouraged.[16]
Editors Huberman and Sweezy argued as early as 1952 that massive and expanding military spending was an integral part of the process of capitalist stabilization, driving corporate profits, bolstering levels of employment, and absorbing surplus production. They argued the illusion of an external military threat was required to sustain this system of priorities in government spending; consequently, effort was made by the editors to challenge the dominant Cold War paradigm of "Democracy versus Communism" in the material published in the magazine.[18]
In its editorial lineMonthly Review offered critical support of theSoviet Union during its early years although over time the magazine became increasingly critical of Soviet dedication toSocialism in one country andpeaceful coexistence, seeing that country as playing a more or less conservative role in a world marked by national revolutionary movements. After theSino-Soviet split of the 1960s, Sweezy and Huberman soon came to see the People's Republic of China as the actual center of the world revolutionary movement.[19]
Monthly Review never aligned with any specificrevolutionary movement or political organization. Many of its articles have been written by academics, journalists, and freelance public intellectuals, includingAlbert Einstein,Tariq Ali,Isabel Allende,Samir Amin,Julian Bond,Marilyn Buck,G. D. H. Cole,Bernardine Dohrn,W. E. B. Du Bois,Barbara Ehrenreich,Andre Gunder Frank,Eduardo Galeano,Che Guevara,Lorraine Hansberry,Edward S. Herman,Eric Hobsbawm,Michael Klare,Saul Landau,Michael Parenti,Robert W. McChesney,Ralph Miliband,Marge Piercy,Frances Fox Piven,Adrienne Rich,Jean-Paul Sartre,Daniel Singer,E. P. Thompson,Immanuel Wallerstein, andRaymond Williams.[5]
In 2004,Monthly Review editorJohn Bellamy Foster toldThe New York Times: "TheMonthly Review... was and is Marxist, but did not hew to the party line or get into sectarian struggles."[9]
From 2005 to 2016,Monthly Review published an associated website,MRzine. At its closure,Monthly Review announced that it would maintain an online archive of the site.[20]
In 2017, MRzine was replaced by MR Online, which is described as "a forum for collaboration and communication between radical activists, writers, and scholars around the world." The site frequently republishes online articles from other sites identified at the start of the post, and followed by a disclaimer by the editors indicating that "Monthly Review does not necessarily adhere to all of the views conveyed in articles republished at MR Online. Our goal is to share a variety of left perspectives that we think our readers will find interesting or useful."[21]
In 2020, MR Online republished the outline of a report by theQiao Collective, a "diaspora Chinese media collective challenging U.S. aggression on China," that disputed allegations of genocide and slavery inChina's treatment of Uyghur Muslim minorities in Xinjiang and suggested that "the politicization of China’s anti-terrorism policies in Xinjiang is another front of the U.S.-led hybrid war on China".[22][23] In response, a leftist organization namedCritical China Scholars wrote anopen letter toMonthly Review lamenting republication of the report on theMonthly Review web site. While the authors of the letter acknowledged that the "applicability of terms such as 'genocide' and 'slavery' can be debated," they nonetheless contended that criticizing Western media for "double standards" by pointing out the contrast between harsh condemnation of Chinese human-rights violations in comparative silence or apologies for European and US violations, as well as suggesting that Chinese abuses were less severe than those by Western governments, amount to " agnosticism, let alone denialism, towards what is clearly a shocking infringement on the rights of Xinjiang’s native peoples." After elaborating on these claims, the authors concluded their letter by expressing hopes that it too would be republished on MR Online, and directing readers to the Critical China Scholars web site.[24] The lead author of the letter wasDavid Brophy, a historian of China at theUniversity of Sydney.Darren Byler, one of the signatories, said he hoped the letter would make it "difficult for leftist 'scholar-activists' to continue to promote Xinjiang-related disinformation."[25][26]
Monthly ReviewMagazine has had six editors listed on its masthead:[5]
Harry Braverman became director ofMonthly Review Press in 1967, and the present director of the Press isMichael D. Yates.
In addition to the U.S.-based magazine, there are seven sister editions ofMonthly Review. They are published in Greece; Turkey; Spain; South Korea; as well as separate English, Hindi, and Bengali editions in India.[27]
Monthly Review Press, an allied endeavor, was launched in 1951 in response to the inability of the maverick left-wing journalistI. F. Stone to otherwise find a publisher for his bookThe Hidden History of the Korean War. Stone's work, which argued that the still ongoingKorean War was not a case of simple Communist military aggression but was rather the product of political isolation, South Korean military buildup, and border provocations, became the first title offered by the affiliated publisher in 1952.[28]
Harry Braverman (author ofLabor and Monopoly Capital)[29] became director of Monthly Review Press in 1967. The present director of the Press isMichael D. Yates (author ofNaming the System).[30] Monthly Review Press is also the U.S. publisher ofThe Socialist Register,[31] an annual British publication since 1964, which contains topical essays written by radical academics and activists as was coedited in part by the lateLeo Panitch.
Titles published by the press in its formative years includeWe, the People: The Drama of America byLeo Huberman (1932),The Empire of Oil byHarvey O'Connor (1955),The Political Economy of Growth[32] by Paul Baran (1957),Consciencism: Philosophy and Ideology forDecolonization and Development with Particular Reference to the African RevolutionbyKwame Nkrumah (1959),Caste, Class and Race byOliver Cromwell Cox (1948/1959),Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America: Historical Studies of Chile and BrazilbyAndre Gunder Frank (1962),The United States, Cuba, and Castro byWilliam Appleman Williams (1963),AnarchismbyDaniel Guerin (1965),Fanshen: A Documentary of Revolution in a Chinese Village[33] byWilliam Hinton (1966),Monopoly Capital[34] byPaul A. Baran andPaul M. Sweezy (1966),Revolution and Evolution in the Twentieth Century byJames Boggs andGrace Lee Boggs (1969), The National Question: Selected Writings byRosa Luxemburg (1971), The Poverty of Theory and Other EssaysbyE. P. Thompson (1973), the English translation ofOpen Veins of Latin America[35] byEduardo Galeano (1973),Puerto Rican Obituary byPedro Pietri (1973), Unity and Struggle: Speeches and Writings ofAmilcar Cabral (1974),Spiks, byPedro Juan Soto (1974), Unequal Development[36] bySamir Amin (1976),The Arabs in Israel bySabri Jiryis (1976),On Education: Articles on Educational Theory and Pedagogy, and Writings for Children from "The Age of Gold" byJose Martí and edited byEric Foner (1979),The 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' from Marx to LeninbyHal Draper (1982),The Poor and the Powerless: Economic Policy and Change in the Caribbean byClive Y. Thomas,Columbus: His Enterprise: Exploding the MythbyHans Koning (1987) andEurocentrism[37] (1989) bySamir Amin.[28]
In later years, Monthly Review Press has published such titles asDiscourse on Colonialism[38] byAimé Césaire (1995),Reminiscences of the Cuban Revolutionary War byChe Guevara (1994), Haiti: State Against Nation byMichel-Rolph Trouillot (1996),The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communication Politics in the Twenty-First Century byRobert W. McChesney (2000),Toward an Open Tomb: The Crisis of Israeli Society byMichel Warschawski (2000),Biology under the Influence[39] byRichard Lewontin andRichard Levins (2007),Walter A. Rodney: A Promise of Revolutionby Clairmont Chung (2008),The Great Financial Crisis[40] by Fred Magdoff andJohn Bellamy Foster (2009),America's Education Deficit and the War on YouthbyHenry A. Giroux (2013),Big Farms Make Big Flu: Dispatches on Infectious Disease, Agribusiness, and the Nature of SciencebyRob Wallace (2016),Fighting Two Colonialisms: Women in Guinea-Bissauby Stephanie J. Urdang (1975/2017),The Dawning of the Apocalypse: The Roots of Slavery, White Supremacy, Settler Colonialism, and Capitalism in the Long Sixteenth CenturybyGerald Horne (2020), as well asMarx's Ecology,[41]The Return of Nature and other titles by Monthly Review Magazine editorJohn Bellamy Foster.
According to theJournal Citation Reports, the print journal has a 2014impact factor of 0.460, ranking it 107th out of 161 journals in the category "Political Science".[42]
