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The Best of Times, the Worst of Times: US Feminism Today

“Here is one picture of feminism and women’s experience in the contemporary United States: women advancing up the ladder in professions, public administration and management; making steady inroads into political office; changing attitudes and cultural images; winning legislation against discriminatory practices in education and employment; feminist scholarship transforming . . .” read more

The Dead West; Ecocide in Marlboro Country

“Was the Cold War the Earth’s worst eco-disaster in the last ten thousand years? The time has come to weigh the environmental costs of the great ‘twilight struggle’ and its attendant nuclear arms race. Until recently, most ecologists have tended to underestimate the impacts of warfare and arms . . .” read more

Who Killed Los Angeles? Part Two: The Verdict is Given

“The angels of Los Angeles are weary from too much smiling.” read more

Who Killed Los Angeles? A Political Autopsy

“It was the most extraordinary conjuring feat in modern American political history. The spring presidential primary season had barely opened when a volcano of Black rage and Latino alienation erupted in the streets of Los Angeles. Elite Marine and Army units fresh from the Gulf War had to . . .” read more

The Racial Crisis of American Liberalism

“Andrew Hacker’s Two Nations: Black and White, Separate, Hostile, Unequal indicts race relations in the contemporary us as a system of what its publicity packet calls ‘de facto apartheid’. But its most chilling contribution to showing just how bad things are is an unwitting one. Unlike earlier . . .” read more

White Identities

“Blackness has been an object of study for white people for a long time, an essential part of the project of constructing others, of naming, defining, marginalizing. The study of whiteness, however, has less of a history. There is a long tradition of blacks recognizing that race is . . .” read more

Waiting for the Rainbow Sign

“By midnight, no one phoning long-distance bothers with hello. Instead, they just ask, ‘Is it as crazy as it looks?’ I want to say, ‘It started long before all this . . .’ Long before this afternoon’s bewildering decision left me less astonished than strangely numb. Long before . . .” read more

Domestic Incentives for the Gulf War

“Why did the United States fight the Gulf War? What factors entered into George Bush’s decision to avoid a negotiated solution? The timing of that decision goes some way to answering these questions, and two conflicting theories have been offered: first, that Bush wanted war from the beginning, . . .” read more

Why is the United States at War with Iraq?

“Why is the United States at war with Iraq? It is a lot easier to say what are not the reasons for us intervention in the Gulf than to provide a fully satisfactory account of its presence there. According to the Bush administration, the usa is . . .” read more

A Reply to Staughton Lynd

“When Staughton Lynd told me that he was writing a review of both my book, An Injury to All, and David Montgomery’s, The Fall of the House of Labor, I quipped that he had put me in some fast company. After all, David Montgomery is not only an . . .” read more

Trade Unionism in the USA

“These are difficult days for the labour movement in the United States, and the situation is even worse for the radical labour movement. Trade-union membership in the non-farm labour force has declined from over 30 per cent in the early 1950s to about 17 per cent today. The . . .” read more

Blacks and the US Constitution

“On 4 July 1854, the abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison addressed a large Independence Day gathering at Framingham, Massachusetts. One month earlier, a federal tribunal in Boston had ordered Anthony Burns, a fugitive from slavery, to be returned to his Virginia owner. Garrison had a long established reputation for . . .” read more

Slavery, Race and Ideology in the United States of America

“Two years ago, a sports announcer in the United States lost his job because he enlarged indiscreetly—that is, before a television audience—upon his views about ‘racial’ differences. Asked why there are so few black coaches in basketball, Jimmy ‘the Greek’ Snyder remarked that black athletes already hold an . . .” read more

America: Post-Modernity?

“Fredric Jameson understands the presence of [the] sedimented historical tradition when he argues that all works of popular culture have utopian dimensions that enable them to critique contemporary power relations. But even Jameson relegates the historical work of popular culture to a ‘political unconscious’, an uncomprehending desire to . . .” read more

America in the 1960s

“Last year’s anniversary of 1968, the high-water mark of the 1960s student radicalization, can only partly explain the outpouring of books by participants in the events. I suspect that most of these had been thinking about writing a book on the 1960s for some time, and that the . . .” read more

Between Bad Times and Better

“A familiar question in the Age of Reagan—when would the us Left revive once more?—had become by the last years of his regime the source of deep defeatism or, at least, nagging doubt. So much time had passed since the rise of the Women’s Liberation Movement, itself . . .” read more

The Jackson Moment

“Jesse Jackson woke up on November ninth to find himself the leader of the largest and most powerful political party in the Western capitalist world, and the front-runner for its Presidential nomination in 1992. It is an unwonted and unexpected role. The black Baptist preacher and Chicago community . . .” read more

Los Angeles: Civil Liberties between the Hammer and the Rock

“‘Tonight we pick ’em up for anything and everything.’” read more

'Chinatown', Part Two? The 'Internationalization' of Downtown Los Angeles

“jake gittes: How much are you worth? noah cross: I have no idea. How much do you want? gittes: I want to know what you’re worth—over ten million? cross: Oh, my, yes. gittes: Then why are you . . .” read more

Marxism and Utopianism in the USA

“For more than a century and a quarter Marxism has occupied an important position in American social criticism, but never a dominant one. For most socialists between the 1870s and World War One, Marx had set forth primarily an analysis of the laws of capitalist exploitation and accumulation, . . .” read more

From the U-2 to the P-3: The US-Pakistan Relationship

“Not long after the U—2 surveillance aircraft was shot down over Soviet territory in 1960, Nikita Khrushchev approached Pakistan’s ambassador at a diplomatic reception and told him that he had looked carefully at the map, taken out a pen and drawn a big red circle round Peshawar. In . . .” read more

The Dollar Weapon: From Nixon to Reagan

“us international economic policy since the beginning of the seventies can only be explained as a reaction to the relative decline of the American economy vis-à-vis Western Europe and Japan. There is already an ample literature on the decline in us economic power, which is . . .” read more

Resurgent Democracy: Threat and Promise

“In ‘ “Resurgent Democracy”: Rhetoric and Reality’, nlr 154, Edward Herman and James Petras condemn us support for new democracies in South and Central America as hypocritical and opportunist. They also point out the wilful confusion involved in deliberately associating genuine democratization in South America with a . . .” read more

The Lesser Evil? The Left and the Democratic Party

“In the summer before the 1984 presidential elections, Michael Harrington and Irving Howe, in a widely noted interview in the New York Times Magazine, boasted that ‘by now practically everyone on the left agrees that the Democratic Party, with all its faults, must be our main political arena’. . . .” read more

'Resurgent Democracy': Rhetoric and Reality

“During the past year Reagan administration officials and the us press have pointed with frequency and enthusiasm to a resurgence of democracy in Latin America. Secretary of State George Schultz, for example, has spoken of ‘more people voting in more elections in more countries than ever before . . .” read more

Jackson and the Rise of the Rainbow Coalition

“The 1984 presidential campaign of Jesse Jackson represented a new stage of development in Afro-Americans’ struggle for equality in the context of us bourgeois democracy. Even white American political analysts unsympathetic with the Jackson campaign recognized this, and groped for words to define Jackson’s achievement. After Jackson . . .” read more

Reaganomics' Magical Mystery Tour

“The re-election of Ronald Reagan will unleash new debate on the causes of the continuing conservative ascendancy in North America and Western Europe. Following in the well-worn grooves of discussions in 1980–1, some will stress the renewed importance of a reactionary-populist social discourse centred on ‘right to life’, . . .” read more

Surrealism and Patriotism: The Education of an American Novelist

“Would you tell us something about the influences which have formed you as a writer?” read more

The Political Economy of Late-Imperial America

“Conventional definitions of American post-war ‘hegemony’ have focused on the sheer preponderance of economic and military power concerted through an atomic-military monopoly, monetary sovereignty, overseas investment, and historic differentials of productivity and mass consumption. Accordingly, from a baseline in the late 1940s when the conjunction of all these . . .” read more

The American Connection: The Masculine Style in Popular Fiction

“In recent years the growth of oral history projects in many countries testifies to the importance now given to popular experience, memory and activity recoverable through personal interviews. Many of these projects have concentrated on experiences of working life, family life, women’s work and political activity, the struggle . . .” read more

The Freeze Movement Versus Reagan

“Although of very recent origin, the ‘freeze’ movement in the United States has already stimulated the first successful rebellion against a major weapons programme in American history. Prior to December 1982, when Congress turned down Reagan’s request for the immediate manufacture of the mx missile, no modern . . .” read more

The AFL-CIO’s Second Century

“The American Federation of Labor celebrated its centenary last year. It is one of the world’s great conservative institutions, with a stability of internal rule and ideology that might make even the Bank of England gasp. Although the United States has had nineteen presidents since the founding of . . .” read more

'The Dollar and Its Rivals'

“The 1980s will be a decade of escalating conflict between Western Europe, the United States and Japan over trade, financial and monetary policies. This heightened economic competition has already revived one of the most long-standing debates in Marxism—the polemic between Lenin and Kautsky on ‘ultra-imperialism’. It will be . . .” read more

The American Road to Capitalism

“This essay is an attempt to examine the theoretical and historiographic debates on the development of capitalism in the United States between 1790 and 1877. The realization of the necessary conditions for capitalist production in the United States took place through the articulation, expanded reproduction and transformation of . . .” read more

Sociology, Liberalism and the Radical Right

“Ronald Reagan is the first American president of the twentieth century whose political origins do not lie in the broad consensual centre of American politics. Only time will tell whether Reagan will remain true to his oft-expressed conservative beliefs or whether, for the sake of political peace, his . . .” read more

The New Right’s Road to Power

“The worst nightmares of the American left appear to have come true. Like the beast of the apocalypse, Reaganism has slouched out of the Sunbelt, devouring liberal senators and Great Society programmes in its path. With the fortieth President’s popularity-rating soaring above eighty percent (partially thanks to an . . .” read more

The Barren Marriage of American Labour and the Democratic Party

“On the eve of the New Deal’s inauguration in the winter of 1933 the auto industry in Detroit was stunned by an energetic and well-planned walkout at the Briggs Auto plant. Following three and a half years of nearly catastrophic unemployment and paralyzed inaction by the American Federation . . .” read more

Why the US Working Class Is Different

“In 1828—as Karl Marx once reminded his readers—a group of Philadelphia artisans organized the first ‘Labour Party’ in world history. Now, one hundred and fifty years later, a television news camera depicts a group of modern Philadelphia workers arguing in their local tavern over the candidates in the . . .” read more

Is US Imperialism Resurgent?

“The Petras and Rhodes article in nlr 97, ‘The Reconsolidation of us Hegemony’ argues that, contrary to the view of many, the United States is not on the decline as a world power. It states: 1. that although the usa suffered some relatively minor setbacks . . .” read more

Reply to Critics

“Albert Szymanski’s attempted refutation of our thesis on the reconsolidation of us imperialism presents a ‘summary’ which does not in fact correspond to what we actually argued; offers statistical data that is largely irrelevant to the issues at stake; ignores important aspects of our position; and is . . .” read more

US Imperialism--a Reply to Petras and Rhodes

“The article by James Petras and Robert Rhodes (‘The Reconsolidation of us Hegemony’, nlr 97) makes an important point in criticizing some interpretations of the decline of United States hegemony. However, their attempt to provide an alternative analysis ignores a number of important recent developments in . . .” read more

The Reconsolidation of American Hegemony

“During the early part of this decade, a number of writers asserted that we were entering a new historical period marking the end of us world supremacy. Mustering an impressive set of dramatic events, the argument against the American century was quite convincing. In the so-called third . . .” read more

The Politics of Subjectivity

“The intensive and extensive interest in psychology is too vast to characterize; it includes those who seek relief from a malaise with society as well as disenchanted radicals who seek an alternative to the impoverishment of past political praxis; and this only begins the list. The very size . . .” read more

Eskimo Politics: the Threat from the South

“Over the past 25 years the marginal lands of extractive industry have extended to the world’s remotest regions, with the accelerated spread of large-scale international corporations, the extension of us economic imperialism and the growing tendency of corporations to collaborate on specific resource development projects. Against a . . .” read more

Japan and America: Antagonistic Alliance

“The ‘Nixon Shocks’ of 1971, which announced the opening of relations between the us and China and initiated a series of measures to protect the us economy, had an immense combined impact in Japan. As America’s main economic rival, Japan was the most threatened of all . . .” read more

Washington v.Tokyo: Wall Street v. Marunouchi

“In November last year the us House of Representatives passed a protectionist trade bill, by 215 to 165 votes, which was condemned inside and outside the usa as the worst of its kind since the Smoot-Hawley Bill of 1930. The bill was blocked in the Senate . . .” read more

The Specificity of US Imperialism

“Since the Russian Revolution, the rulers of America have been increasingly concerned to justify their imperial system against revolutionary attack. They have employed two constant methods to maintain their domination. The first has been physical—the proliferation of us bases, the mobility of the American fleet, the alertness . . .” read more

The Laws of Uneven Development

“Before answering Martin Nicolaus’s critique of ‘Where is America going?’, the origins and intended function of that article should be explained. It is the transcript of a speech given to a seminar of Finnish students at Helsinki, in the framework of a symposium on ‘American imperialism today’. It . . .” read more

The Universal Contradiction

“Messengers of revolution are always welcome. Ernest Mandel’s thesis in ‘Where Is America Going?’ (NLR 54) that a socialist revolution within the United States is on the agenda of the next decade or two is an important corrective to the more gloomy theses being advanced from other quarters. . . .” read more

Strike Against Imperialism

“On March 3rd, after 8 weeks of bitter struggle, the Oil Chemical and Atomic Workers (ocaw) voted to go back to work at the Standard Oil refinery at Richmond. They didn’t get everything they wanted—certainly not everything that is coming to them—but almost to a man they . . .” read more