For all those who've been interested in getting some more clarity about what's meant when the term "imperialism" is used, I highly recommend Foster's interview. In it, he outlines the historical phases of imperialism, the differing ways of looking at it or using the term, the innovative and fruitful approach that those associated with Monthly Review have taken, pitfalls and typical problems, and so on. I didn't know this until recently, but Foster had a Canadian connection through York University and some other post-secondary institutions of higher learning in Canada.

Overall, their tendency is to make grandiose and unverifiable statements about the future course of world events. This is related to their Marxism, of course.

The author here being recommended may be a reasobale fellow. I actually read one of his books about 20 years ago, and learned something from it.

I seem to recall that he predicted the destruction of capitalism due to its inherent contradictions, though. That same claim has been made by Monthly Review since about the year 1948.

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Originally posted by jeff house:
Ah yes, Monthly Review. I remember when they were Maoists.

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They were never Maoists.

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Q: What's also meant by "third worldism" - and this I think you'll agree is true - is that there was a Maoist component to the editors' thinking.

MAGDOFF: Oh, there was a Maoist component. There's no question about it. There were things that Mao said that we felt were major contributions to Marxist theory and to understanding of the problems of the third world, to this day.

Q: Yet at the same time you opened the pages of the magazine to people who weren't Maoist at all. For example, Trotskyists or people who came out of Trotskyist backgrounds: Isaac Deutscher, Ernest Mandel, Adolfo Gilly, Hal Draper, Grace and James Boggs, and, more recently, Michael Lowy and Alan Wald. Nowhere else on the Maoist left would you find that, and rarely on the Trotskyist left.

MAGDOFF: No. I got a letter from a member of the Maoist party in Norway. "My friends," he said, and I'm sure he includes himself in that, "agree that there's a lot of good stuff in Monthly Review. But it's also a bit reformist." We don't go with Mao all the way. [Laughs.]

I think the point that you're making is a very important one, and it needs to be recognized. One of the things that attracted me to Monthly Review from the beginning was its non-sectarian character

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[ 21 September 2006: Message edited by: M. Spector ]

Because fifteen years of articles which celebrated China and only China must mean nothing in the face of a semi-denial.

So, when they wrote that historically, the ONLY importance of the Russian revolution was that it served as a spark for the Chinese Revolution, we can just ignore that.

As for their Maoism, the respected non-communist magazine Socialist Review had this to say:

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This was a vision of capitalism perceived as founded and dependent on the neo-imperialism of the late 20th century.

It was this dependency model that inclined Sweezy and his associates to sympathise with Maoism and a Maoist strategy for world revolution - the progressive isolation of the metropolitan centres through Third World and peasant revolutions. It was a model blind to the degree to which advanced capitalist industry had progressively insulated itself from any substantive dependence on underdeveloped countries, either as markets for their products or as sources of raw materials.

The model excluded the possibility of independent centres of capital accumulation in poor countries. The rise of the Asian Tiger economies, of Brazil and Mexico, China and India, were an embarrassment to it. So too was the spread of neoliberalism as state policy in the 1980s. Not least of the problems for the journal was its compromises with Stalinism - its continued inclination to see the model for a transition to socialism as being offered by Mao's China and Castro's Cuba.

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Here's something from an interview, in 1986, with Paul Sweezy, the founder and co-editor of Monthly Review for most of the relevant period:

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I think very likely, we were all living in a bit of a dream world when we imagined that the Communist movement in China had developed in the masses to the point of changing popular consciousness and class consciousness and so on. That came from other models and not from reality, I think. Mao, himself, recognized it in some of his more candid moments--in that last collection of his talks (I forget what it was called when it was finally published. The preliminary title was Mao Unrehearsed, and it contained speeches, letters, documents from the Cultural Revolution period). In some of those, he comes on understanding very well, I think, how skin-deep the Cultural Revolution really was, how it really didn't get into the masses and didn't change the masses. I don't think the failure can be blamed on Mao. What else could he do?

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So even Sweezy thinks they were living in a Maoist dreamworld. And though he's able to make that critique of the mag, he doesn't really make much of a criticism of Mao here, does he? To me, it seems more like he still thinks the Great Helmsman was right in most of what he did.

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Originally posted by jeff house:
By the way, claiming that someone is Maoist does not pigeonhole them. It describes their political affiliation.

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It serves you as a convenient means of sneering at an article about imperialism (which was the topic of this thread) without actually having to (a) read it or (b) deal with what it says.

Here's a

review of a book about Chinese Communism, published by Monthly Review. The author of the book is an academic Marxist. The book is highly favourable to Maoist China. At the end, it quotes Sweezy, the head honcho at Monthly Review:

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For socialist revolutionaries, China also provided inspiration for theoretical regeneration of Marxism. Dissatisfied with the soviet type "bureaucratic state socialism" and Yugoslav type "market socialism", they looked towards this new path of "transition to socialism" which, many serious thinkers claimed, revived the original socialist values of equality, participation and collectivism.

Renowned economist Paul M. Sweezy went so far as to assert that, "Mao was undoubtedly the greatest Marxist and revolutionary since Lenin, and history may in time rate him even higher".

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Like maybe the new Jesus.

Edited to add the link:

http://www.asianstudies.emory.edu/sinhas/kprb0206.html

[ 21 September 2006: Message edited by: jeff house ]

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Politically, Sweezy remained more or less a Stalinist, although an eclectic one, throughout his career. "By 'socialism,'" the editorial statement of Monthly Review affirmed, "we mean a system of society with two fundamental characteristics: first, public ownership of the decisive sectors of the economy and, second, comprehensive planning of production for the benefit of the producers themselves. . . . Socialism became a reality with the introduction of the first Five Year Plan in Soviet Russia in 1928." While Khrushchev's "revelations" of Stalin's crimes left Sweezy with faith in the essential soundness of the Soviet regime, he soon shifted his main allegiance to Maoist China and, in later years, briefly to the North Korea of Kim II Sung.

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Edited to add link:

http://marcmulholland.tripod.com/histor/index.blog?entry_id=242686

[ 21 September 2006: Message edited by: jeff house ]

quote:

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Originally posted by jeff house:
So even Sweezy thinks they were living in a Maoist dreamworld. And though he's able to make that critique of the mag, he doesn't really make much of a criticism of Mao here, does he? To me, it seems more like he still thinks the Great Helmsman was right in most of what he did.

http://www.glovesoff.org/history_files/sweezy/sweezy_tonak.html

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And so what? Liberal-capitalist apologists like you would still have China devided up into cantons. Based on your past performance on issues relating to the political landscapes of "communist" countries, I doubt you really know much about the Cultural Revolution, other than some cheap shot pithyness you picked up in bars as a freshman on froshnight.

Quiz time: Which important Politburo member was the primary target of Cultural Revolution, and why?

[ 21 September 2006: Message edited by: Cueball ]

I pointed out that Sweezy and MR had Maoist tendencies.

I was right.

So those who corrected me were mistaken.

Consequently, anyone on Babble who was directed to MR will have a fuller understanding of the character of the magazine.

I am sure you are deeply informed about the Cultural Revolution, and that you can come up with a theoretically satisfying justification for it.

But, as I thought, you don't know anything about it. So why do you bother talking about it, when you obviously are out at sea on the subject?

[ 21 September 2006: Message edited by: Cueball ]

Because, you know, the initial post claimed it was an "independent magazine" and when I said it had been pro-Mao for decades, I was called a liar.

But now I find that the topic was actually the Cultural Revolution.

So, how about that opening post! That interview with Foster!

[ 21 September 2006: Message edited by: Michelle ]

Here I'll start you off on the sophmore year poli-sci "bird" course you missed:

Liu Shio Shi was the primary target of the Cultural Revolution, because he supported a policy of limited capitalism in the land reform program, giving small privately owned plots of land to peasant farmers, and supporting other kinds of small enterprises. Liu Shiao Shi, as Deputy Party Chairman, (essentially party boss) had immense influence of party organization, so as part of the campaign to oust him, Chiang Ching and others mobilized the population to attack Liu Shia Shi stalwarts in the party structure, as it was nearly impossible to disempower him through the party mechanism itself.

How can you possibly attack Sweazy or anyone for their Maoist tendencies, or for supporting the "Cultural Revolution" when you don't even know anything about Maoism or the Cultural Revolution?

[ 21 September 2006: Message edited by: Cueball ]

For those who have a genuine interest in understanding how today's capitalism, today's imperialism, actually works, without a sectarian sales pitch [whatever lofty denunciation might be forthcoming from Jeff the Magnificent], MR isn't a bad place to start. Of course babble is great for debate but it ain't everything.

Perhaps the most interesting theoretical novelty or insight from the MR crowd over the years is the way they have come to view capitalist development. Rather than try to explain periods of relative economic decline they have turned that on its head and looked at capitalism from the point of view of trying to explain periods of growth. Seem in this light, the post war period of astonishing growth is the thing to be explained. Sweezy, and others associated with MR have generated some remarkable insights about capitalism by taking this novel approach. I'm no Economist myself but others have noted and admired the work of Sweezy and others. Our own great Canadian Economist, John Kenneth Galbraith, hardly a lightweight, was a true friend and supporter of Sweezy to the end of his days.

This is what Paul Sweezy's daughter had to say about "Ken" Galbraith:

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Martha Sweezy: When my father, Paul Sweezy, died at the end of February 2004, John Kenneth Galbraith, or Ken, as he preferred to be called, invited my mother to gather her children and come talk. He told us that the New York Timesand other newspapers had called to interview him for Paul’s obituary but he had declined. He felt bad about doing so, but he said, their questions focused on political differences and that is not what he wanted to say about Paul. ....

Ken liked to advertise his aversion to humility but he should be remembered for his generosity and his intense personal loyalty. He joked about admiring himself yet he was abundant in his admiration of others. Ken once drew me aside at a social event in the 1980s to tell me that Paul was a “great man” whose contribution would last. He also had a prodigious fondness for Paul Baran and loved to tell stories about their escapades together during the Second World War. Ken was a consistent supporter of Monthly Review, donating money every year as well as helping out in other small ways whenever asked. He stayed in contact with my father right to the end of his life. Monthly Review has lost a friend.

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Remembering John Kenneth Galbraith

This poster I think is themed within the "Five Kinds of Red" class background.

Interestingly, one of the first reforms implimented in schools was the direct selection of candidates to stand for election in student adminstrative bodies by the students themselves, as opposed to having a single candidate selected by the local party administration to be affirmed by the student body.

Tee hee. That little tid-bit should drive JH mad...

[ 21 September 2006: Message edited by: Cueball ]

According to China, the USSR changed from "socialist" (good) to "social imperialist" (very very bad) overnight.

Nothing really changed in the economy, though, because it is just an Orwellian method of qualifying others according to the political needs of the leadership of the Party.

Stalin did the same thing with Hitler, more or less, during the 1939-1941 period. One day a monster, then an ok guy, then back to a monster overnight.

The US does this, too, of course, as with Iraq and Libya most recently.