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What Every Child Should Know about Marx's Theory of Value
Michael Lebowitz expounds on the simple truths found in Marx's theory of value—truths that, nonetheless, have been obscured by decades of incomplete theorizing that has failed to make key distinctions in the relationship between labor, value, and money.
Journal Article
What Is Socialism for the Twenty-First Century?
Often the best way to begin to understand something is to consider what it is not. Socialism for the twenty-first century is not a society in which people sell their ability to work and are directed from above by others whose goal is profits rather than the satisfaction of human needs. It is not a society where the owners of the means of production benefit by dividing workers and communities in order to drive down wages and intensify work…. Nor is it a statist society where decisions are top-down and where all initiative is the property of state office-holders or cadres of self-reproducing vanguards.… Also, socialism for the twenty-first century is not populism.… Further, socialism for the twenty-first century is not totalitarianism.… [S]ocialism for the twenty-first century does not dictate personal belief…. Nor does socialism for the twenty-first century worship technology and productive forces…. Finally, contrary to its self-proclaimed inventor (Heinz Dieterich), socialism for the twenty-first century is not \"essentially a problem of informatic complexity\" that requires cybernetic calculation of quantities of concrete labor as the basis for an exchange of equivalents. So, let us explain what socialism for the twenty-first century is. Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.
Journal Article
Protagonism and Productivity
President Chávez, in line with Marx, identified revolutionary praxis as the key link between human development and practice: \"We have to practice socialism…and this practice will create us, ourselves, it will change us; if not we won't make it.\" From this standpoint, the material product of activity is always accompanied by a second product—the human product. Since the human product has historically been neglected in socialist theories of transition, it is worth considering its significance.Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.
Journal Article
If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Rich?
Marx was before all else a revolutionary. His real mission in life, noted Frederick Engels at Marx's graveside, was to contribute in one way or another to the overthrow of capitalist society and of the forms of government which it had brought into being, to contribute to the liberation of the present-day proletariat. In contrast, Marxist economists look at capitalism as a system based upon the exploitation of workers -- a system that tends to destroy the original sources of wealth human beings and nature and that has an inherent tendency to generate crises. Marxian economics asks the important questions. Its concern is not the determination of prices and the behavior of rational individuals in response to hypothetical changes in variables. Rather, Marxian economics is a version of systems theory. There is a better explanation for the relative irrelevance of what is called Marxian economics in the midst of this grave crisis not of capital but of human beings and nature, those original sources of wealth, which capital is destroying. Adapted from the source document.
Journal Article
Proposing a Path to Socialism: Two Papers for Hugo Chávez
It is now one year since the unfortunate death of Hugo Chavez on Mar 5, 2013. Shortly after, the editors of Monthly Review quoted a letter from Istvan Meszdros to John Bellamy Foster which described Chavez as 'one of the greatest historical figures of people's time' and 'a deeply insightful revolutionary intellect'. Whether Chavez will be remembered over time this way, however, depends significantly on whether people build upon the foundations he began. Following Marta Harnecker's long interview with Chavez, he asked her to come to Venezuela in 2003 to serve as his advisor, and explained that he wanted someone around him who would not hesitate to criticize him. And that's how people ended up in Venezuela. Since it was clear that, Chavez would be re-elected in December and would be thinking seriously about directions for the new mandate, those of people involved in GM decided to prepare a series of papers proposing initiatives which people felt could advance the process of building socialism in Venezuela. Adapted from the source document.
Journal Article
Following Marx: Method, Critique and Crisis
Combining Marx's focus upon the totality (and its appearance as capitals in competition) with specific applications in political economy, Following Marx demonstrates how the failure to understand Marx's method has led astray many who consider themselves Marxists.
eBook
What Makes the Working Class a Revolutionary Subject?
The concept of \"revolutionary practice,\" as demonstrated through struggles, allows the working class to make itself a revolutionary concept. The concept pertains to the working class' simultaneous shifting of circumstances and to self-change in relation to capital. Insights into the heterogeneous nature of the working class in terms of their struggle are also presented.
Journal Article
The Socialist Alternative
\"A good society,\" Michael Lebowitz tells us, \"is one that permits the full development of human potential.\" In this slim, lucid, and insightful book, he argues persuasively that such a society is possible. That capitalism fails his definition of a good society is evident from even a cursory examination of its main features. What comes first in capitalism is not human development but privately accumulated profits by a tiny minority of the population. When there is a conflict between profits and human development, profits take precedence. Just ask the unemployed, those toiling at dead-end jobs, the sick and infirm, the poor, and the imprisoned. But if not capitalism, what? Lebowitz is also critical of those societies that have proclaimed their socialism, such as the former Soviet Union and China. While their systems were not capitalist and were capable of achieving some of what is necessary for the \"development of human potential,\" they were not \"good societies.\" A good society as Lebowitz defines it must be marked by three characteristics: social ownership of the means of production, social production controlled by workers, and satisfaction of communal needs and purposes. Lebowitz shows how these characteristics interact with and reinforce one another, and asks how they can be developed to the point where they occur more or less automatically-that is, become both a society's premises and outcomes. He also offers fascinating insights into matters such as the nature of wealth, the illegitimacy of profits, the inadequacies of worker-controlled enterprises, the division of labor, and much more.
eBook