Monthly Review is an independent
socialistSocialism refers to various theories of economic organization advocating public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with a method of compensation based on...
journal published in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
. It appears 11 times per year.
The publication was founded by
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units...
economicsEconomics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
instructor
Paul SweezyPaul Marlor Sweezy was a Marxist economist and a founding editor of the magazine Monthly Review.-Academic beginnings:...
, who became the first editor. The
New York Times described Sweezy as "the nation's leading Marxist intellectual and publisher during the cold war and the McCarthy era." The first issue of
Monthly Review appeared in May 1949.
Monthly Review is an independent
socialistSocialism refers to various theories of economic organization advocating public or direct worker ownership and administration of the means of production and allocation of resources, and a society characterized by equal access to resources for all individuals with a method of compensation based on...
journal published in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States, and the center of the New York metropolitan area, which is among the most populous urban areas in the world. A leading global city, New York exerts a powerful influence over worldwide commerce, finance, culture, fashion and entertainment...
. It appears 11 times per year.
History
The publication was founded by
Harvard UniversityHarvard University is a private university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts and a member of the Ivy League. Founded in 1636 by the colonial Massachusetts legislature, Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and currently comprises ten separate academic units...
economicsEconomics is the social science that studies the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
instructor
Paul SweezyPaul Marlor Sweezy was a Marxist economist and a founding editor of the magazine Monthly Review.-Academic beginnings:...
, who became the first editor. The
New York Times described Sweezy as "the nation's leading Marxist intellectual and publisher during the cold war and the McCarthy era." The first issue of
Monthly Review appeared in May 1949. Its lead article was
"Why Socialism?" by
physicistA physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
Albert EinsteinAlbert Einstein was a theoretical physicist. His many contributions to physics include the special and general theories of relativity, the founding of relativistic cosmology, the first post-Newtonian expansion, explaining the perihelion advance of Mercury, prediction of the deflection of...
.
During the
McCarthy eraMcCarthyism is the politically motivated practice of making accusations of disloyalty, subversion, or treason without proper regard for evidence...
of the early 1950s, its original editors
Paul SweezyPaul Marlor Sweezy was a Marxist economist and a founding editor of the magazine Monthly Review.-Academic beginnings:...
and
Leo HubermanLeo Huberman was an American socialist writer. In 1949 he founded and co-edited Monthly Review with Paul Sweezy.-Works:* Cuba: A revolution revisited* Vietnam: The Endless War* Socialism in Cuba...
were targeted for "subversive activities." Sweezy's case, tried by
New Hampshire Attorney GeneralThe New Hampshire Attorney General is a constitutional officer of the U.S. state of New Hampshire who serves as head of the Department of Justice...
, went all the way to the
Supreme CourtThe Supreme Court of the United States is the highest judicial body in the United States, and leads the federal judiciary. It consists of the Chief Justice of the United States and eight Associate Justices, who are nominated by the President and confirmed with the "advice and consent" of the Senate...
and became a seminal case on free speech when the Court ruled in his favor.
Viewpoint
In 2004,
Monthly Review editor
John Bellamy FosterJohn Bellamy Foster is editor of the independent socialist magazine Monthly Review and professor of sociology at the University of Oregon in Eugene. His writings have focused on political economy, environmental sociology, and Marxist theory...
told the
New York Times, "The
Monthly Review was attractive to people who were leaving the Communist Party and other sectarian groups. It was and is Marxist, but did not hew to the party line or get into sectarian struggles."
Monthly Review has been a consistent voice for socialism and against American
imperialismImperialism, as defined by the dictionary of human geography, is “the creation and maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural and territorial relationship, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination.” Imperialism, in many ways, is described...
. The editors of
Monthly Review have been prominent
MarxistMarxism is the political philosophy and economic worldview based upon a materialist interpretation of history, a Marxist analysis of capitalism, a theory of social change, and an atheist view of human liberation derived from the work of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels; three primary aspects of...
academics, economists and authors. They have been independent and not aligned with a particular existing
revolutionA revolution is a fundamental change in power or organizational structures that takes place in a relatively short period of time.Aristotle described two types of political revolution:...
ary movement or political organization. Many of its articles have been written by academics, journalists and authors, including W. E. B. Du Bois,
Jean-Paul SartreJean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was a French existentialist philosopher, playwright, novelist, screenwriter, political activist, biographer, and literary critic. He was one of the leading figures in 20th century French philosophy and Existentialism, and his work continues to influence further...
,
Che GuevaraErnesto "Che" Guevara commonly known as Che Guevara, El Che, or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, military theorist, and major figure of the Cuban Revolution...
,
Joan RobinsonJoan Violet Robinson FBA was a post-Keynesian economist who was well known for her knowledge of monetary economics and wide-ranging contributions to economic theory...
,
Tariq AliTariq Ali is a British-Pakistani historian, novelist, filmmaker, political campaigner, and commentator. He is a member of the editorial committee of the New Left Review and Sin Permiso, and regularly contributes to The Guardian, CounterPunch, and the London Review of Books.He is the author of...
,
Grace Lee BoggsGrace Lee Boggs is a Chinese-American author, anti-racist activist and feminist. She is known for her years of political collaboration with C. L. R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya in the 1940s and 1950s...
,
Noam ChomskyAvram Noam Chomsky is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, political activist, author, and lecturer. He is an Institute Professor and professor emeritus of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Chomsky is well known in the academic and scientific community as...
,
Bernardine DohrnBernardine Rae Dohrn is an American former leader of the Anti-Vietnam War radical organization Weather Underground...
,
Mumia Abu-JamalMumia Abu-Jamal is an African-American who was convicted and sentenced to death for the December 9, 1981 murder of Philadelphia police officer Daniel Faulkner...
,
Marilyn BuckMarilyn Jean Buck is an American self-described life-long anti-racist and anti-imperialist activist, and a convicted felon, convicted of conspiracy in a number of violent crimes...
,
Doug HenwoodDoug Henwood is an American journalist who writes frequently about economic affairs. He publishes a newsletter, Left Business Observer, that analyzes economics and politics from a left-wing perspective, and is a contributing editor at The Nation. He also hosts Behind the News, a weekly program on...
,
Michael KlareMichael T. Klare is a Five Colleges professor of Peace and World Security Studies, whose department is located at Hampshire College, defense correspondent of The Nation magazine, and author of Resource Wars and Blood and Oil: The Dangers and Consequences of America's Growing Petroleum Dependency...
,
James PetrasJames Petras is a retired Bartle Professor of Sociology at Binghamton University, SUNY, New York, U.S., and adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada who has published prolifically on Latin American and Middle Eastern political issues.-Life and Work:Petras received...
,
Frances Fox PivenFrances Fox Piven, born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada in 1932, is Distinguished Professor of Political Science and Sociology at The Graduate Center, City University of New York, and a prominent member of the Democratic Socialists of America....
, and
Adrienne RichAdrienne Cecile Rich is an American poet, essayist and feminist. She has been called "one of the most widely read and influential poets of the second half of the [20th] century."-Early life:...
.
Aijaz AhmadAijaz Ahmad is a well-known Marxist literary theorist and political commentator based in India.Born in the state of Uttar Pradesh, India just before it gained independence from British rule, Aijaz Ahmad along with his parents migrated to Pakistan following partition. After his education he worked...
has said about
Monthly Review: "It seems to me that in the postwar United States
Monthly Review has been the only institution of the Left which provides a full-fledged narrative of the world."
Monthly Review Press, an allied endeavor, has published many political books, such as
Fanshen by
William HintonWilliam Howard Hinton was an American Marxist best known for his book Fanshen, published in 1966, a "documentary of revolution" which chronicled the land reform conducted by the Chinese Communist Party in Long Bow, a northern Chinese village in the 1940s. Sequels followed the experience of the...
,
Labour and Monopoly Capital by
Harry BravermanHarry Braverman was an American Socialist and political writer. He sometimes used the pseudonym Harry Frankel.Braverman was born on the 9th December 1920 in New York City...
,
The Development of Underdevelopment by
Andre Gunder FrankAndre Gunder Frank was a German-American economic historian and sociologist who was one of the founders of the Dependency theory and the World Systems Theory in the 1960s...
,
Unequal Development by
Samir AminSamir Amin is an Egyptian economist. He currently lives in Dakar, Senegal.- Biography :Samir Amin was born in Cairo, the son of an Egyptian father and a French mother . He spent his childhood and youth in Port Said; there he attended a French High School, leaving in 1947 with a Baccalauréat...
,
The Arabs in Israel by
Sabri JiryisSabri Jiryis is an Arab Israeli writer and lawyer, a graduate of the Hebrew University law faculty, and prominent Palestinian activist...
and the
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that developed in England during the Anglo-Saxon era. As a result of the military, economic, scientific, political, and cultural influence of the British Empire during the 18th, 19th, and early 20th centuries, and of the United States since the mid 20th century,...
translationTranslation is the interpreting of the meaning of a text and the subsequent production of an equivalent text, likewise called a "translation," that communicates the same message in another language...
of
The Open Veins of Latin America, by
Eduardo GaleanoEduardo Hughes Galeano is a Uruguayan journalist, writer and novelist. His most well known works are Memoria del fuego and Las venas abiertas de América Latina which have since been translated into twenty languages and transcend orthodox genres: combining fiction, journalism, political analysis,...
.
Editors
Monthly Review has had six editors:
- Paul Sweezy
Paul Marlor Sweezy was a Marxist economist and a founding editor of the magazine Monthly Review.-Academic beginnings:...
, from 1949 to his death in 2004
- Leo Huberman
Leo Huberman was an American socialist writer. In 1949 he founded and co-edited Monthly Review with Paul Sweezy.-Works:* Cuba: A revolution revisited* Vietnam: The Endless War* Socialism in Cuba...
from 1949 to his death in 1968
- Harry Magdoff
Henry Samuel Magdoff , was a prominent American socialist commentator. He held several administrative positions in government during the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt and later became co-editor of the Marxist publication, Monthly Review.-Early years:A child of poor Russian-Jewish immigrants,...
from 1969 to his death in 2006
- Ellen Meiksins Wood
-Biography:Wood was born Ellen Meiksins one year after her parents, Latvian Jews active in the Bund, arrived in New York from Europe as political refugees from fascism. She was raised in the United States and Europe.Wood received a B.A...
, 1997–2000
- Robert W. McChesney
Robert W. McChesney is an American professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is the Gutgsell Endowed Professor in the Department of Communication. His work concentrates on the history and political economy of communication, emphasizing the role media play in democratic and...
, 2000–2004
- John Bellamy Foster
John Bellamy Foster is editor of the independent socialist magazine Monthly Review and professor of sociology at the University of Oregon in Eugene. His writings have focused on political economy, environmental sociology, and Marxist theory...
, May 2000–present
The Monthly in Italy
The
Monthly Review was also published (1968–87) in Italy (Bari, Edizioni Dedalo). Main contributors: Enzo Modugno, Luciano Canfora, Nico Perrone.
Also many Monthly Review Press books have been re-published in Italy by the publisher Dedalo Libri, in a series under the same American name.
External links