Martin Glaberman

The Hungarian Revolution of 1956

The tima of that superstition which attributed irvotatiom to the 31-will of a few agitators have long passed away. Everyone knows nowadays that, wherever there is a levotatknaiy convulsion, there most be some social want in the background which is prevented by outworn institutions from satisfying itself.... Every attempt at forcible repressian will only bring it forth stronger until it bants its fetters. Karl Marx

Back to the future: The continuing relevance of Marx

In the Manifesto of the Communist Party Marx and Engels wrote: ‘The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society.’ Marx thought enough of these words to reproduce them in Capital. Much of what has been written by Marxists since Marx has been to document that statement, but not always with an understanding of its total meaning. Some writers complain, a century after his death, that Marx did not document the working out of his predictions. What this position reflects is an unwillingness to understand and use Marxs methodology, as Lenin did in his work on imperialism.

Response to Martin Glaberman; Reply to Nelson Lichtenstein

Martin Glabermans political outlook stands in the long shadow cast by C.L.R. James and George Rawick, but his review (November 1996) of my recent biography of Walter Reuther does this scholarly tradition no credit. Glaberman buries a useful critique of my work beneath an assault so careless and confusing as to make one wonder if he understands the historical method, or perhaps more charitably, if he actually took the time to sit down and read the book. As a consequence, Glaberman often attacks me for agreeing with him, while ignoring those sections of the biography at which real political differences arise. This article can also be found at the Monthly Review website , where most recent articles are published in full. Click here to purchase a PDF version of this article at the Monthly Review website.

Book Review: Trotskyism in the United States: Historical Essays and Reconsiderations, by George Breitman, Paul Le Blanc, and Alan Wald. Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Humanities Press, 1996

Although committed to reversing the misery of colonialism and of apartheid, the new South African government has barely addressed the progressive program on which hundreds of thousands staked their lives and limited freedom to obtain. To acknowledge these aspirations and to transform South African society, Mayekiso has &dquo;set straight&dquo; the achievements of the civic movement during this period and presented viable strategies for social movements and community activists both in South Africa and internationally.

Dialectis and Dialectics

chose instead to call himself a humanist because, in part, the mind-matter dichotomy of the materialists was not acceptable to him. 2. A problem which most who study Marxian dialectics ignore, including those who study Hegel, is that the only place where the system of dialectical thought is presented as a totality is in Hegel’s writing. Marx intended to write a Marxian dialectic but never got around to it. To think that the superficial and pedagogical writings on dialectic of Stalin and Mao are a substitute for studying Hegel is like thinking that a study of Wage Labor and Capital is an adequate substitute for studying Capital, with the added qualification that Wage Labor and Capital is at least faithful to the larger work while the philosophical writings of Stalin and Mao are not at all faithful to the Marxian dialectic. 3. It would be useful for those interested in Marxian

Book Review: Fascism and Big Business: Fascism and Big Business, by Daniel Guerin. Translated from the French by Frances and Mason Merrill. Second American edition. New York: Monad Press, 1973, 318 pp.,

than in response to disturbances in their own economic system. The sickness they aim to banish is within, not without&dquo; (p. 22). &dquo;At the moment fascism took power,&dquo; begs the question--the entire period was one of intense class struggle, street fighting, armed contingents of the working class, etc. , all of which made it impossible for capitalism to discipline the working class. In any case, what is important for us today is to be aware of the fact that the German and Italian working class did not accept fascism and that facism could not

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The clas sic complaint of the American Left has been the political backwardness of the American people. The large Marxist and socialist parties which are taken for granted by European workers have never existed here. Except for the Socialist Party for a few years during the period of the leadership of Eugene V. Debs, there has been no American equivalent. The American representatives of the Marxist move-