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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
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
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 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
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
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
The People v.Standard Oil
“A strike, when it is not a token tactical ploy in ‘labour-management relations’, is in many ways like a miniature revolution. Struggle, instead of collaboration, is the order of the day. The old individualistic ways of solving, blunting, or avoiding contradictions and confrontations give way to collective ways . . .” read more
Where Is America Going?
“Today, profound forces are working to undermine the social and economic equilibrium which has reigned in the United States for more than 25 years, since the big depressions of 1929–32 and of 1937–38. Some of these are forces of an international character, linked with the national liberation struggles . . .” read more
S.F. State: History takes a leap
“No previous American university struggle has been as long, violent and bitter as the strike now being fought at San Francisco State College. None has sent shock waves through so much of the society, or created as deep a polarization. Only in American colonies and dependencies abroad, or . . .” read more
Kennan’s Memoirs
“George Kennan prefaces his remarkable memoirs with an exemplary self-critical account of his background and early environment, with its attendant psychological effects. Historically and socially, George Kennan was an ‘outsider’, ill at ease in the 20th century, and ill at ease with its ideas, particularly marxism (‘something to . . .” read more
Some Encounters with the Culturally Free
“In 1963, Encounter issued a commemorative anthology entitled Encounters to mark its tenth year of publication. I reviewed this in the New Statesman. My review may be found in my book, Writers and Politics. In the review I questioned certain rash assertions made by Sir Denis Brogan in . . .” read more
The Big Fist
“Arms and Influence presents an American view of present international relationships. It is a world of a permanent contest of nerves, in which nations have to use all methods at their disposal to persuade other nations to behave in desirable ways; a world potentially without rules, but from . . .” read more
Reporters and Liberals
“This linked-up anthology of New York Times news reports and magazine articles was published in the United States in 1964. It has, of course, already ‘dated’; but while the present edition makes no effort to offset this, Anthony Lewis supplies a new foreword, the point of which seems . . .” read more
Berkeley and the New Conservative Backlash
“The University of California at Berkeley, which has been ranked as one of the foremost educational establishments in the world has recently been the scene of a prolonged and massive confrontation between the students and administration with a great majority of the faculty siding with the students. Many . . .” read more
The High Cost of Dissent in the USA
“A us intellectual is free to hold whatever opinions he likes on Vietnam, Cuba, the Congo, or other foreign policy issues, but his freedom to express these views publicly is often limited in several subtle ways. The most effective of these is money. From grants, subsidies, and . . .” read more
The Myths of Counter-Insurgency
“More myths and fantasies seem to have arisen in regard to guerrilla warfare than about any other aspect of contemporary history. For many revolutionaries it has assumed a positively romantic aura, particularly since the bearded ones of the 26th of July Movement swept with dash and verve out . . .” read more