It is popular nowadays to distinguish between the inflation of time past and a new kind of inflation, which accordingly requires a new explanation, although in its monetary aspects inflation has the same features now as before: rising prices or the diminishing buying power of money. While its opposite, deflation, was viewed as contracted demand resulting in falling prices, inflation was explained by insufficient supply, driving prices up. Since, however, in this view it is the commodity market that determines price formation, little attention was paid to monetary policy. Money was seen merely as a veil concealing real processes, obfuscating them, but altering little in their essential nature.
This theory was also accompanied by the illus... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: Western Socialist, Boston, USA, July-August, 1956; Transcribed: by Adam Buick.
THE SANE SOCIETY. By Erich Fromm. Rinehart & Company, New York, 1955, pp. 370, $5.00
I
According to Fromm, and in distinction to orthodox Freudianism,
man’s “basic passions are not rooted in his instinctive needs, but
in the specific conditions of human existence.” These are now the
conditions of capitalism. In the light of the requirements of mental health, as
seen by Fromm, the prevailing society may be regarded as “insane.”
Although some people are more affected than others, all behave irrationally in
this irrational world. In order to change this situation, Fromm suggests the
transformation of capitali... (From: Marxists.org.) Published: in International Council Correspondence Vol. 1, no.1, October 1934, pp 11-14. Source: Antonie Pannekoek Archives Transcribed: by Graham Dyer
Any speculation regarding the possibilities of the German labor
movement must take into account, not merely the aims of the various
organizations, but the structural transformations in modern society
during the last decade. This change in the economic setup, together with
its political consequences, is likewise the indispensable key to the
complete understanding of fascism.
In the present crisis, the monopolist form of economy develops within
itself stagnating tendencies directed economically against the
laissez-faire principle and politically against "formal democracy". The
... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: Western Socialist, Boston, USA, August 1944; Transcribed: by Adam Buick; Proofed: and corrected by Geoff Traugh, August 2005.
The Growth of American Thought. By Merle Curti. Harper & Brothers, New York, 1943. (848pp., $5.00)
Well written, interestingly constructed and partly original in its
researches, Curti’s book is nevertheless a dull affair. This is not the
writer’s fault, but results from the fact that American thought has not
grown in depth but has been a mere accumulation of detailed knowledge incapable
of changing the general climate of opinion. Save in technology, the whole
intellectual development from colonial times to the present war has not been
very impressive. However unwillingly, Curti&r... (From: Marxists.org.) Published: in International Council Correspondence Vol. 1, no.2, October 1934, pp 26-28. Source: Antonie Pannekoek Archives Transcribed: by Graham Dyer
A short time back the Militant expressed quite a lot of
pity for some of the Lovestone group who were trying to find their way
back to the Socialist Party. A few weeks ago, too, they became vehement
in complaints against “the treacherous Third International”
because it started a United Front from the top with the Socialist
Parties, with a proposal of merging the two organizations. “The
Stalinists are liquidating the Communist Movement”, cried the
Unser Wort, the Trotsky organ in France. “Down with
such a merger. It will weaken, not strengthen the r... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: Partisan Review, New York, Vol. VIII, No. 4, July/August 1941, pp. 289-310. Transcribed: by Thomas Schmidt;
The democratic nations recognize in the totalitarian regimes new social and
economic systems incompatible with their own ideas of freedom and progress. The
fascists, too, speak of the existence of “two worlds” which must
fight each other until one of them succumbs. The democracies become
increasingly more “fascistic” the more vigorously they defend their
system. And the fascists claim that there is more “real democracy”
within their “new order” than there ever was in liberal capitalism.
They see in their own rise to power a real revolution that is changing the
whole o... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: Anti-Bolshevik Communism by Paul Mattick, published by Merlin Press, 1978; Also published: International Socialism (1st series), No.22, Autumn 1965, pp.14-18. Transcribed: by Andy Blunden, for marxists.org 2003.
Like science, industry, nationalism and the modern state, humanism is a product of capitalist development. It crowns the ideology of the bourgeoisie, which arose within the social relations of feudalism, whose main ideological support was religion. Humanism is a product of history, i.e. the product of men engaged in changing one social formation into another. Because it evolved with the rise and development of capitalism, it is necessary to consider the humanism of bourgeois society before dealing with its relationship to ... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: International Socialism, No.25, Summer 1966. Transcription: Adam Buick. Letter in reply to Robin Derricourt
It seems to me that Robin Derricourt’s distinction between humanism and working-class socialism (IS 24) treats humanism not as an historical but as a universal category in the sense in which the young Marx identified humanism with communism, i.e., as the realization of the human essence. In Derricourt’s view, humanism seems to be something independent of, and different from, definite social relationships and, presently, a kind of monopoly of the “intellectual or middle-class persons.” This is a variation on the theme dear to Kautsky and Lenin, namely, that the workers themselves cannot develop a revol... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: Kurasje Archive; Transcribed: by Andy Blunden, for marxists.org 2003; Proofed: and corrected by Geoff Traugh, July 2005. Italics added by Jonas Holmgren, June 2009.
The viewpoint of totality in the materialist dialectic
is something different from the longing of the economically distracted
bourgeoisie for harmony, for a self-contained system, for eternal
truths and an all-embracing philosophy of the Whole ending up in the
Absolute. To Marxism, there is nothing closed off. All concepts, all
knowledge is the recognition that in the material interaction between
man and nature social man is an active factor, that historical
development is conditioned not only by objective relations arising
through nature but quite as much so... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: Kurasje Archive; Transcribed: by Andy Blunden, for marxists.org 2003.
Question: What relevance does Pannekoek’s book have in Europe today? Do you think that the analytic memory and theory of the past experience
of council communism, as Pannekoek expresses them, can be “heard” and understood
by workers here today?
Answer: A book, such as Pannekoek’s, is not in need of
immediate relevance. It concerns itself with a historical period; with past occurrences as
well as possible future experiences, in which the phenomenon of workers’ councils
appearing and disappearing points to a trend of development in workers’ class struggle and
its changing objectives. Like anything else, forms of class... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: Kurasje Archive; Transcribed: by Andy Blunden, for marxists.org 2003.
Question: We seem to be entering into a new period of serious economic and social crisis. Whar are the new features of this period, in
comparison with the 1930’s?
Answer: The basic reasons for the current crisis at the same
as those which caused all previous capitalist crises. But all crises have also specific
features with respect to their initiation, the reactions released by them, and their
outcome. The changing capital structure accounts for these peculiarities. Generally, a
crisis follows in the wake of a period of successful capital accumulation, wherein the
profits produced and realized are sufficient to maintain a given rate of expansion. ... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: Anti-Bolshevik Communism by Paul Mattick, published by Merlin Press, 1978; Transcribed: by Andy Blunden, for marxists.org 2003.
The reprinting of this collection of essays and reviews, which
were written during the last 40 years, may find its justification in the
current ferment of ideas by which a new left-wing within the socialist movement
attempts to derive a theory and practice more adequate to the present situation
and the needs of social change. As yet merely of a theoretical nature, this
trend has led to a growing interest in the comprehension of past revolutionary
movements. However, although its proponents try to differentiate themselves
from the old and discredited labor movement, they have not as yet been able ... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: Paul Mattick Home page; First Published: New Essays, Vol. VI no. 4, 1943; Proofed: and corrected by Geoff Traugh, August 2005.
The Modern Machiavellians. By James Burnham. John Day Co., New York, 1943.
James Burnham’s second attempt to purge himself of the
misunderstood Marxism of his earlier years is slightly more successful than his
first effort, The Managerial Revolution. In the latter book, he
still tried to explain the problem of power in economic terms, although no
longer from the social point of view of Marx but from that of the technocrats.
Nevertheless, he insisted that not the politicians, but those who control the
means of production directly, are the real rulers of society. In the present
book he find... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: International Review, New York, April 1937, May 1937; The Theory and Practice of Socialism. By John Strachey, Random House, New York; Transcribed: by Adam Buick; Proofed: and corrected by Geoff Traugh, July 2005.
Writing on Strachey’s book The Nature of Capitalist
Crisis (Modern Monthly, April 1935) the present reviewer had to close
with the remark that anyone, like Strachey, “who does not understand
capitalism is also incapable of getting at the state of society which must of
necessity result from it.” This statement is well illustrated by
Strachey’s new book. His Theory and Practice is essentially
the last revision of the program of the Communist Party spread over five
hundred pages. It re-chews ... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: Anti-Bolshevik Communism. Paul Mattick, published by Merlin Press, 1978; Transcribed: by Andy Blunden, for marxists.org 2003; Proofed: and corrected by Geoff Traugh, July 2005.
In the fall of 1938, Karl Kautsky died in Amsterdam at the age
of 84 years. He was considered the most important theoretician of the Marxist
labor movement after the death of its founders, and it may well be said that
he was its most representative member. In him were very clearly incorporated
both the revolutionary and the reactionary aspects of that movement. But
whereas Friedrich Engels could say at Marx’s grave that his friend
“was first of all a revolutionist,” it would be difficult to say
the same at the grave of his best-kn... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: Anti-Bolshevik Communism Paul Mattick, published by Merlin Press, 1978; Transcribed: by Andy Blunden, for marxists.org 2003; Proofread: by Chris Clayton 2006.
Karl Korsch was born in 1886 in Tostedt in the Luneburger Heath
and died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1961. The son of a middle-class
family, he attended the Gymnasium in Meiningen and studied law,
economics, sociology and philosophy in Jena, Munich, Berlin and Geneva.
Becoming a Doctor Juris of the University of Jena in 1911, he spent the years
from 1912 to 1914 in Great Britain in the study and practice of English and
International Law. The First World War brought him back to Germany and into the
German Army for the next four years. Twice wounded, demoted and pro... (From: Marxists.org.) Published: in Contemporary Issues 8, Spring 1951 Transcription: Adam Buick HTML-markup: Jonas Holmgren
I
Anticipating America's role in the wake of the first world war,
President Wilson encouraged his fellow-citizens in 1916 by saying that 'we must
play a great part in the world whether we chose it or not. We have got to
finance the world in some important degrees and those who finance the world must
understand it and rule it with their spirits and with their minds'. The simple
message he had to bring, he added, was merely this: 'lift your eyes to the
horizon of business.'[1] His anticipations were fulfilled beyond all
expectations. The war destroyed Europe's dominating position within the world
economy and the United Sta... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: Western Socialist, Boston, USA, January-February 1956; Transcribed: by Adam Buick.
MUTUAL AID. By Peter Kropotkin, with Foreword by Ashley Montague, and including “The Struggle for Existence” by T. H. Huxley. Extending Horizons Press, Boston, 1955, pp. 362, $3.00.
This new issue of Kropotkin’s work on Mutual
Aid, first published at the turn of the century, not only satisfies the
need for its continued availability but — in some measure — also
helps to combat the current neo-Malthusianism and the renewed, though futile,
attempts to present capitalist competition as a “law of nature.”
Provoked by Huxley’s belief that in nature and society the struggle for
existence is one of all... (From: Marxists.org.) Published: in International Council Correspondence Vol. 1, no.5, February 1935, pp 1-5. Source: Antonie Pannekoek Archives Transcribed: by Graham Dyer
“Sensitive souls will again lament,” wrote Rosa Luxemburg at the end of her
quarrel with the pseudo-Marxists of the Second International, “that Marxists
wrangle among themselves, and that approved ‘authorities’ are
combated. But
Marxism is not a handful of individuals who confer upon each other the right of
‘expert judgment’ and before whom the great mass of believers is expected to die
in a state of blind confidence. Marxism is a revolutionary view of the world
which must constantly strive for new insights, which eschews nothing so much ... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: Kurasje Archive; Written: by Paul Mattick, published in International Council Correspondence Vol. 2, no. 1, December 1935 and reprinted in Western Socialist Vol. 13. no. iii. January 1946. In 1978 it was included in Paul Mattick Anti-Bolshevik Communism Merlin Press, London, 1978 ISBN: 0 850 36 222 7/9. The e-version of this text was made by Kavosh Kavoshgar for Kurasje; Transcribed: by Andy Blunden, for marxists.org 2003; Proofed and corrected: by Geoff Traugh, July 2005.
Further corrected by Jonas Holmgren, July 2009.
The yellower and more leathery the skin of the mummified Lenin
grows, and the higher the statistically determined number of visitors to the
Lenin Mausoleum climbs, the less are people concerned about the real... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: Living Marxism, Fall 1940; Transcribed: by Adam Buick; Proofed: and corrected by Geoff Traugh, August 2005.
With Leon Trotsky there passed away the last of the great
leaders of bolshevism. It was his activity during the last fifteen years that
kept alive some of the original content of the Bolshevik ideology — the
great weapon for transforming backward Russia into its present
state-capitalistic form.
As all men are wiser in practice than in theory, so also Trotsky by his
accomplishments achieves far greater importance than through his
rationalizations that accompanied them. Next to Lenin, he was without doubt the
greatest figure of the Russian Revolution. However, the need for leaders like
Lenin and Trotsky, a... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: Anti-Bolshevik Communism. Paul Mattick, published by Merlin Press, 1978; Transcribed: by Andy Blunden, for marxists.org 2003; Proofed and corrected: by Geoff Traugh, July 2005.
Rosa Luxemburg as well as Lenin developed from the Social Democracy, in which both played important roles. Their work influenced not only the Russian, Polish and German labor movement, but was of worldwide significance. Both symbolized the movement opposed to the revisionism and reformism of the Second International. Their names are inseparably entwined with the re-organization of the labor movement during and after the World War, and both were Marxists to whom theory was at the same time actual practice. Energetic human beings, they were – to use a... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: EndPage.com; First Published: Paul Mattick, Mandel’s Economics: Another View, International Socialism (1st Series), No.37, June/July 1969, pp.35-39; Transcribed: by Andy Blunden, for marxists.org 2003; Proofread: by Chris Clayton 2006.
In the last issue of International Socialism we printed a review of Mandel’s book[1] by Michael Kidron. We are now printing another review of the same book by the American Marxist, Paul Mattick; we do this because we think that it will be of interest to our readers, not because we necessarily agree with all of what he says. In particular we do not accept his view of the relationship between Stalinism and Bolshevism (see, for example, Tony Cliff: Russia. A Marxist Analysis and Trotsky on... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: Western Socialist, Boston, USA, November-December 1955; Transcribed: by Adam Buick.
Classical economy, whose beginning is usually traced to Adam
Smith, found its best expression and also its end in David Ricardo. Ricardo, as
Marx wrote, “made the antagonism of class-interest, of wages and profits,
of profits and rent, the starting-point of his investigation, naively taking
this antagonism for a social law of nature. But by this start the science of
bourgeois economy had reached the limits beyond which it could not pass,”
for a further critical development could lead only to the recognition of the
contradictions and limitations of the capitalist system of production. By doing
what could no longer be done by bour... (From: Marxists.org.) Marxist criticism of bourgeois society had to encompass more than proof of
the exploitation of labor by capital. The idea of surplus-value was inherent in
the labor theory of value, and socialists prior to Marx had utilized it in
their arguments. In order to show once more that profit or surplus-value is
gained in production and not in exchange, Marx found it advisable to disregard
the effects of market competition on value relations. This is possible only in
theory, because the production process cannot actually be divorced from the
exchange process. Yet, according to Marx, the laws of capitalist production
“cannot be observed in their pure state, until the effects of supply and
demand are suspended, or balanced.”[1] T... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: Western Socialist, Boston, USA, March-April, 1958; Transcribed: by Adam Buick.
MARXISM AND FREEDOM. FROM 1776 UNTIL TODAY. By Raya Dunayevskaya. New York, 1958, pp. 384, $6.00.
In writing this strange book the author’s intentions were
no doubt the best. But there is a wide gap between intentions and performance.
And although Dunayevskaya’s interpretation of Marxian doctrine is
occasionally true and eloquent, the book as a whole is an embarrassing,
scatterbrained hodge-podge of philosophical, economic and political ideas that
defy description and serious criticism. It may, however, serve as an example of
how Marxism cannot be “reexamined” and thus recovered from the
Russians.
The impulse for writi... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: International Review, vol. 2, No. 6, Aug. 1937, pp. 90-6; Transcribed: by Thomas Schmidt.
ASIDE FROM minor criticism directed at the series of economic studies
undertaken by the Brookings Institution under the general heading Income
and Economic Progress, these publications have been widely hailed as an
important contribution to contemporary economic research. A few details in the
studies have met with opposition on the part of some economists. The computing
methods and the results have been challenged by others. Still, looking at the
whole work from a general point of view, one may venture to say that even the
Marxist will be ready to pay homage to the Institution and to the authors of
the series, to which there has rec... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: Living Marxism, April 1939; Transcribed: by Adam Buick; Proofed: and corrected by Geoff Traugh, August 2005.
Recently the editors of Common Sense [1] have once more dealt with the “unscientific
character” of Marxism by pointing out that:
“Ricardo’s labor theory of value, taken over by
Marx and embellished with the theory of surplus value, was abandoned long ago
by all but Marxist economists, and a whole branch of ‘marginal
utility’ economics developed, of which Marx could know nothing ... that
even in the Soviet Union (so far as Five Year Plans go, if not at the
Marx-Engels Institute) marginal utility economics have displaced the useless
and misleading Marxian economics.”
H... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: Western Socialist, Boston, USA, March-April 1957; Transcribed: by Adam Buick.
Contemporary Capitalism. By John Strachey, Random House, New York, 1956 (pp. 374; $5.00).
This book represents John Strachey’s second major attempt
to understand the society he lives in and to detect its general developmental
trend. The first attempt — made prior to the second world war —
brought him straight to Bolshevism. This second try is a rationalization of
British Labor Party policies.
Capitalism, Strachey relates, finds itself in a new stage of development,
characterized by monopolization, trustification, centralization, state
interferences and the divorce of management from ownership. A certain amount of
controlabili... (From: Marxists.org.) Source: Marxism. Last Refuge of the Bourgeoisie? by Paul Mattick, edited by Paul Mattick Jr., published by Merlin Press, 1983; Transcribed: by Andy Blunden, for marxists.org 2003. Proofed: by Brandon Poole, 2009.
In Marx’s conception, changes in people’s social and
material conditions will alter their consciousness. This also holds for Marxism
and its historical development. Marxism began as a theory of class struggle
based on the specific social relations of capitalist production. But while its
analysis of the social contradictions inherent in capitalist production has
reference to the general trend of capitalist development, the class struggle is
a day-to-day affair and adjusts itself to changing social conditions. The... (From: Marxists.org.)