Glossary of Revolutionary Marxism

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SARTRE, Jean-Paul   (1905-1980)
A prominent French bourgeois philosopher of existentialism, who was also somewhat influenced by Marxism. [More to be added.]
        See also: Philosophical doggerel about Sartre.

[The second stanza of the American translation of the Internationale:]
         We want no condescending saviors
         To rule us from their judgment hall,
         We workers ask not for their favors
         Let us consult for all:
         To make the thief disgorge his booty
         To free the spirit from its cell,
         We must ourselves decide our duty,
         We must decide, and do it well.

“For the bourgeois world, based upon the principles of these philosophers [the utopian socialists], is quite as irrational and unjust, and, therefore, finds its way to the dust-hole quite as readily as feudalism and all the earlier stages of society. If pure reason and justice have not, hitherto, ruled the world, this has been the case only because men have not rightly understood them. What was wanted was the individual man of genius, who has now arisen and who understands the truth. That he has now arisen, that the truth has now been clearly understood, is not an inevitable event, following of necessity in the chain of historical development, but a mere happy accident. He might just as well have been born 500 years earlier, and might then have spared humanity 500 years of error, strife, and suffering.
         “This mode of outlook is essentially that of all English and French and of the first German socialists, including Weitling. Socialism is the expression of absolute truth, reason and justice and has only to be discovered to conquer all the world by virtue of its own power. And as absolute truth is independent of time, space, and of the historical development of man, it is a mere accident when and where it is discovered. With all this, absolute truth, reason, and justice are different with the founder of each different school. And as each one’s special kind of absolute truth, reason, and justice is again conditioned by his subjective understanding, his conditions of existence, the measure of his knowledge and his intellectual training, there is no other ending possible in this conflict of absolute truths than that they shall be mutually exclusive one of the other.” —Engels, Anti-Dühring (1878), MECW 25:20.

SAY, Jean-Baptiste   (1767-1832)
French economist who systematized and vulgarized Adam Smith’s theory. Almost exclusively known today for what later came to be known as his “principle” or “Law” (see below).

“SAY’S LAW”
The simple-minded (and grossly incorrect) claim that capitalist production creates its own demand (i.e. its own full demand), and consequently that there cannot possibly be any “gluts” or overproduction. This so-called “law” is one of the fundamental axioms of bourgeois economics, though it often goes unacknowledged.
        [Further material to be added...]

“Say’s earth-shaking discovery [Marx is being ironic here!] that ‘commodities can only be bought with commodities’ simply means that money is itself the converted form of the commodity. It does not prove by any means that because I can buy only with commodities, I can buy with my commodity, or that my purchasing power is related to the quantity of commodities I produce.” —Marx, TSV, 3:119.

SCHOLASTICISM
[To be added...]
        See also: Philosophical doggerel about Scholasticism.

SCHUMPETER, Joseph   (1883-1946) [Pronounced: SHUM-PAY-ter]
Important Austrian bourgeois economist of the first half of the 20^th century. His father owned a textile factory, and not surprisingly Schumpeter found great virtues in the capitalist system. He emphasized the importance of change under capitalism, and is famous in bourgeois circles for his description of capitalism as “creative destruction”. (Of course this is old news to us Marxists! In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels say “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.” [MECW 6:487.])
        At a time when most bourgeois economists denied that economic cycles should even exist, Schumpeter said there were actually three different ones:
1) A very short-term inventory cycle (which he called the “Kitchin Cycle”, after another bourgeois economist, Joseph Kitchin), and which lasted 3 to 4 years;
2) An approximately 10-year cycle, which is the industrial cycle that Marx focused on (but which Schumpeter—loathe to give any credit to Marx—called “Juglar Cycles”, after a minor French economist, Clément Juglar, who talked about them long after Marx did). These cycles were erroneously explained by Schumpeter as being due to changes in investment patterns; and
3) Schumpeter’s version of Kondratiev’s 45-year long-term waves, which Schumpeter attributed to waves in invention and innovation.
        None of his discussion of economic cycles had much validity, but by bourgeois standards even to have recognized the existence of any cycles or waves makes you seem rather smart these days!
        One of Schumpeter’s students was Paul Sweezy, the primary founder of the Monthly Review school of Marxist political economy. While Sweezy broke away from Schumpeter and bourgeois economics in many ways, there is still more than a touch of his ideas that were carried over.

SECT (In politics)
In the non-pejorative sense, a sect is simply “a group adhering to a distinctive doctrine or leader”. [Merriam Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 10^th ed.] However, the word ‘sect’ also carries with it the connotation of small size, and being outside of the mainstream. Thus a revolutionary sect is a small group which is outside the mainstream of the revolutionary movement. All new political parties either start off as sects, or else form out of other parties or mass movements which themselves started out as sects. There is nothing necessarily wrong about starting out small and different from the mainstream; but it is foolish and self-defeating for any political group to permanently remain just a sect, i.e. a small group unconnected to the masses and the mass movement.
        See also SECTARIAN (below), and: CULT.

“The International was founded in order to replace the socialist or semi-socialist sects by a real organization of the working class for struggle. The original Rules and the Inaugural Address show this at a glance. On the other hand, the International could not have asserted itself if the course of history had not already smashed sectarianism. The development of socialist sectarianism and that of the real labor movement always stand in indirect proportion to each other. So long as the sects are justified (historically), the working class is not yet ripe for an independent historical movement. As soon as it has attained this maturity all sects are essentially reactionary....
         “And the history of the International was a continual struggle of the General Council against the sects and attempts by amateurs to assert themselves within the International itself against the real movement of the working class.” —Marx, Letter to Adolphe Hubert, Aug. 10, 1871, MECW 44:252.

SECTARIAN (Adj.)
[Primary sense in Marxist politics:] 1. Having and promoting ideas which prevent or obstruct a political group or party from connecting up with the masses and the mass movement, and from transforming existing reformist mass struggle into revolutionary mass struggle. (See also: mass perspective.)
[Secondary sense in Marxist politics:] 2. Being unwilling to work with individuals or groups (other than your own) for some common purpose, or obstructing such cooperation and “united fronts” through hostility and disrespect towards those with ideas differing from your own.

SEMANTICS
The branch of linguistics concerned with the meaning of words and sentences. The sub-branch concerned with the meaning of words, specifically, is known as lexical semantics. Scientific semantics should not be confused with the bourgeois pseudo-scientific academic sect which goes by the name of General Semantics.

SENECA, Lucius Annaeus   (c. 4 BCE-65 CE)
Roman philosopher; one of the great representatives of Stoicism.

SENSE DATA
The sensory qualities of things (colors, shapes, smells, etc.) which we supposedly experience directly, without any rational interpretation, and without any consideration of the physical objects which may be causing them. Empiricists usually make “sense data” the foundation of their theory of knowledge, but doing so tends to beg many questions.
        See also: QUALIA.

SERVE THE PEOPLE
[To be added... ]
        See also: PATERNALISM.

SERVICE INDUSTRY
That part of the economy which provides services rather than producing articles for sale.
        See also: PETTY’S LAW.

SISMONDI, Jean Charles Léonard Simonde de   (1773-1842)
Swiss economist and historian. Considered by some to be sort of an early socialist. Marxist attitudes towards Sismondi have varied tremendously. Lenin looked down upon him as a vulgarizer of Ricardo. But Marx himself (in volume 3 of TSV which was not available to Lenin at the time he made his judgments) had much more sympathy toward Sismondi and viewed him as understanding some very fundamental points about capitalism that Ricardo could not grasp or accept:

      “Sismondi is profoundly conscious of the contradictions in capitalist production; he is aware that, on the one hand, its forms—its production relations—stimulate unrestrained development of the productive forces and of wealth; and that, on the other hand, these relations are conditional, that their contradictions of use-value and exchange-value, commodity and money, purchase and sale, production and consumption, capital and wage-labor, etc., assume ever greater dimensions as productive power develops. He is particularly aware of the fundamental contradiction: on the one hand, unrestricted development of the productive forces and increase of wealth which, at the same time, consists of commodities and must be turned into cash; on the other hand, the system is based on the fact that the mass of producers is restricted to the necessaries. Hence, according to Sismondi, crises are not accidental, as Ricardo maintains, but essential outbreaks—occuring on a large scale and at definite periods—of the immanent contradictions.” —Marx, TSV, 3:56.

Marx does go on to say that Sismondi “wavers constantly” on many issues, and that his ideas are anything but well-worked out. “He [Sismondi] forcefully criticizes the contradictions of bourgeois production but does not understand them, and consequently does not understand the process whereby they can be resolved.” [Ibid.] Nevertheless, Marx later says that “Sismondi was epoch-making in political economy because he had an inkling of this contradiction” (the profound difference between Labor and Capital in the capitalist production process), that Ricardo could not understand. [TSV, 3:259.]

SKEPTICISM
1. Questioning, or caution, in accepting things as certainly true.
2. The view that human beings can attain no certain knowledge of the world; i.e., philosophical or epistemological agnosticism.
        Sense #1 is clearly rational and scientific, but sense #2 carries things to a ridiculous extreme.
        For an essay discussing this matter in more depth, see: “Do We Know For Certain that the Earth Goes Around the Sun?” at: http://www.massline.org/Philosophy/ScottH/certain.htm.

SLAM [Student Liberation Action Movement]
This was a multiracial radical student organization based in colleges in New York City from 1996 to 2004, especially Hunter College in Manhattan.
        In early 1995 the City University of New York (CUNY) announced a major tuition increase and threatened to end (and later did end) the policy of open admissions, which had been won through earlier student stuggles in 1969. In response the students, under the leadership of an ad hoc coalition, organized a protest of 20,000 people which surrounded City Hall. This demonstration was attacked by the police, but the coalition continued and in 1996 transformed itself into the Student Liberation Action Movement. The group spread to CUNY colleges in all parts of New York City, and worked to construct a “left culture” among students. But over time the movement gradually lost force, and SLAM was disbanded in 2004. It did, however, leave a powerful imprint upon the many college students involved.
        See also: http://SLAMherstory.wordpress.com for an oral history project by many of the women students involved in SLAM.

SLAVE SOCIETY
The first form of class society, based on private ownership of property and the outright ownership and exploitation of individuals of one class (the slaves) by individuals (or groups of individuals) of another class (the slave owners). Slave society developed out of primitive communal society, and was replaced by feudalism (though the existence of some chattel slavery continued to exist well into the capitalist era and even still continues today, though nowhere is it the dominant form of exploitation any more. Sometimes people being held in slave conditions (often as prostitutes) are even found in advanced capitalist countries like the United States.

SMITH, Adam   (1723-1790)
The most important classical political economist before Ricardo. He gave classical bourgeois political economy its developed form.

SOCIAL CONTRACT
An idealist theory in which society, law and morality are the result of either a conscious or implicit “contract” concluded among the people, or between the people and the state. The idea is that humans have agreed to give up some of their personal freedoms in exchange for a stable and secure political existence. This doctrine is historically incorrect, in that (among other reasons) it supposes that human society existed in a state of complete anarchy and bestiality (or alternately idyllic freedom according to Rousseau) until the “contract” was concluded. It is a crude, early attempt to understand how slave, feudal and bourgeois society could have developed. The view arose in antiquity but received its greatest development with the rising bourgeoisie in Hobbes, Locke and Rousseau.

SOCIAL DARWINISM
The theory that the struggle for existence and natural selection govern social development. It is an invalid extension of Darwin’s theory of biological evolution to society. Its most famous exponent was Herbert Spencer, but in various forms it is still quite popular in bourgeois circles.

SOCIAL DEMOCRACY
1. A form of the liberal capitalist welfare state mascarading as genuine socialism.
2. Political parties and movements which have this reformist accomodation with capitalism as their highest goal.
        See also: COMMUNISM—Aims Of

SOCIAL ORGANIZATION
        See: PRIMITIVE SOCIAL ORGANIZATION, and SOCIOECONOMIC FORMATION

SOCIALISM (Socialist Society)
An intermediate and transitional form of society between capitalism and communism, characterized in its economic aspect by the principle “From each according to his ability, to each according to his work,” and characterized in its political aspect by the genuine control and rule of society by the revolutionary proletariat and its party or parties.
        Socialism is still a form of class society, where class struggle still exists, and bourgeois and proletarian ideology and tendencies still do battle. The ruling class in a genuine socialist society is the proletariat. But many countries call (or have called) themselves socialist even though the proletariat either never had power, or else no longer has power, and where society is not (or is no longer) advancing towards communism (e.g., China after Mao’s death in 1976).

SOCIOECONOMIC FORMATION
One of the following stages in the development of society: primitive communalism (or primitive communism); slave society; feudalism; capitalism; socialism; and communism. Except for the first and the last of these, all are class societies. Slave society, feudalism and capitalism all rest upon the exploitation of one class by another, though this is somewhat hidden from view under capitalism.
        These historical stages have been identified primarily through the study of European history, and sometimes variations are hypothesized for other areas, such as the Asiatic mode of production which Marx talked about at times in his writings. It is more common these days to view the “Asiatic mode of production” as a variety of feudalism.

SOCRATES   (469-399 BCE)
[To be added...]
        See also: Philosophical doggerel about Socrates.

SOLIPSISM
The crazy idealist view that there is only one thinker in the world, me!, and that everyone and everything else is a figment of my imagination. It is doubtful if anyone has ever taken this view seriously, but bourgeois philosophers talk about it a lot since many of them seem to think it is difficult or impossible to refute the notion!
        See also: Philosophical doggerel on the topic.

SOUL
[In religion:] An imagined immaterial essence of a human being which God supposedly “puts into” the body at conception or birth (or sometime in between!), and which “leaves” the body at death to go to heaven or hell or some other “place”. It is hard for a materialist not to simply guffaw at such a primitive, absurd and unscientific notion.
[In wider use:] Because of humanity’s religious past, the word ‘soul’ is also used even by non-religious people, but in more rational (if still somewhat poetic) ways, as in describing the essential aspect or nature of something as its “soul”. Example: “Her hard work and dedication make her the soul of the strike support committee.”
        See also: SPIRIT.

SOVIET UNION — Revisionist Seizure of Power In
[To be added...]
        See also: PATERNALISM.

SOVIETS (Councils)
The word ‘soviet’ means “council” in Russian. During the 1905 Revolution councils, or Soviets, were first formed in a major way by the workers, peasants and soldiers to represent their revolutionary interests. After the defeat of the 1905 Revolution these Soviets mostly ceased functioning. But with the overthrow of the Tsar in the February Revolution, they sprang suddenly back into existence as an even greater force. During the course of 1917 they settled down into being the primary representatives of the workers in their day-to-day struggles against the capitalists, of the peasants against the landlords, of the ordinary soldiers against the officer corps, and of all the masses against the flaky bourgeois Provisional Government. Lenin understood the nature of the situation, that despite the current practice of the Soviets as reformist or union-type organizations, they in effect formed a dual power along with the formal Russian government. He further recognized that because of this, and because the workers, peasants and soldiers viewed the Soviets as their own organizations which truly did represent their interests (unlike the government), that an insurrection could be led with a central slogan being “All power to the Soviets!” And, of course, Lenin proved to be correct in his assessment.
        The strategy of working toward the formation of “soviets” or councils of workers in other countries as a step toward revolution has so far not been successful, though it was widely attempted—especially in the first decades after the Bolshevik Revolution. However, in the advanced capitalist world no other strategy has worked so far either, and it is still quite possible that something like workers’ councils will once again prove quite useful in promoting revolution.

SPENCER, Herbert   (1820-1903)
English philosopher and sociologist, and one of the founders of positivism. [More to be added.]
        See also: SOCIAL DARWINISM.

SPLIT-CYCLE THEORY
The theory that in the imperialist era the capitalist industrial cycle has “split in two”, i.e., into two separate (though connected) cycles with differing periods. The short-term cycle, which like the industrial cycle in the pre-monopoly era still usually lasts from 5 to 10 years, leads to recessions, but most of these tend to be mild and rather easily dealt with through government actions (such as by lowering the prevailing bank interest rates, lowering taxes, increasing Keynesian deficit financing for government expenditures, and the like). The long-term cycle, which is of much more irregular duration, comes to a head when government measures can no longer “short-circuit” the developing economic contradictions which have led to a recession, and therefore which continue to develop into an all out depression. These depressions can only be ended through the massive destruction of the excess capital that has built up since the previous depression.
        For an elaboration of this theory see “Chapter 5: The Industrial Cycle Has Split In Two!” of my work in progress, An Introduction to Capitalist Economic Crises at: http://www.massline.org/PolitEcon/crises/Crises05.htm . —S.H.

STAGFLATION
The combination of economic stagnation (see below) and inflation at the same time. According to bourgeois economics this was supposed to be impossible, but when it first reared its ugly head in the U.S. in the late 1970s and 1980s they were forced to admit that it could indeed happen, though they still could not explain why.
        From a Marxist standpoint the explanation for stagflation poses no problems: the stagnation aspect is simply an early sign of a developing overproduction crisis, and inflation is just a sign that the government is expanding the currency too fast (because of excessive government budget deficits usually). While it is true that massive Keynesian budget deficits can forestall stagnation or recession (for a while!), lesser bouts of deficit financing may only slightly mitigate the stagnation/recession while at the same time causing inflation.

STAGNATION (Economic)
The failure of an economy to grow, or for it only to grow at a very slow pace. This is often an early indicator of a developing overproduction crisis that is only being kept somewhat in check for a time through the expansion of government or consumer debt but on an insufficient scale to create a more solid rate of growth for the economy.
        See also: Paul Sweezy.

STALIN — Errors and Crimes Of
[To be added... ]
        See also: PATERNALISM.

STATE CAPITALISM
1. The form of capitalism in which the capitalists own the means of production (factories, machinery, etc.) collectively and as a class, rather than individually or in small associations (partnerships, corporations, etc.). The Soviet Union was the prime example after the restoration of capitalism there in the mid 1950s and until its collapse in late 1991. It seems fair to conclude these days that state capitalism is unstable and tends to decay back into more traditional forms of monopoly capitalism.
2. [As used by various other left theorists:] Western-style monopoly capitalism, or specific periods of it during which the state plays a more prominent role than other periods. The bourgeois state does play a much increased role in the control and direction of capitalism in the imperialist or monopoly capitalist era (as compared to earlier capitalism); and since the 1930s the role of the state has been further increased in monopoly capitalism. But this state role is still qualitatively much less than it was in the Soviet Union in the revisionist era and it is incorrect and confusing to call any period of Western-style monopoly capitalism by the name “state capitalism” or “state monopoly capitalism”.

STOICISM
[To be added...]
        See also: Philosophical doggerel about Stoicism.

STRATEGY AND TACTICS
[To be added... ]
        See also: OCTOBER ROAD.

STRUGGLE — CRITICISM — TRANSFORMATION
A policy stage during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution promoted by Mao and his followers, starting in 1968. As explained by Mao:

“Struggle-criticism-transformation in a factory, on the whole, goes through the following stages: establishing a three-in-one revolutionary committee; carrying out mass criticism and repudiation; purifying the class ranks; consolidating the Party organization; and simplifying the administrative structure, changing irrational rules and regulations and sending office workers to the workshops.” —Mao, quoted in “Unprecedentedly Excellent Situation in China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution”, Peking Review, #44, Nov. 1, 1968, p. 12.

SUBJECTIVE IDEALISM
The extreme form of philosophical idealism which claims that everything, including material objects, exists only because they are collections of sensations or “ideas” in someone’s mind, or else in the mind of God. A prominent champion of this bizarre view was Bishop Berkeley.

SUB-PRIME MORTGAGE
A mortgage issued to someone with a fairly poor credit rating.
        Why would a bank or other financial institution make such a loan which stands a high likelihood of default? First of all, they usually charge a higher interest rate and a larger up-front fee. However, one of the main reasons that sub-prime mortgages became so common in the first decade of the 21^st century is that the issuers of the mortgage (the banks, etc.) found ways to “securitize” it, i.e. to repackage the mortgage in small slices and sell them to other investors in a form where their stupidity was not obvious. (See Collateralized Debt Obligation.) Thus the bank issuing the mortgage would not suffer even if the mortgage did go into default; that would only harm the suckers who bought the “sliced-and-diced” securities. Ironically, many of the issuers of CDOs seem to have got caught up in the marketing hype they generated to sell these wonderful new investments, forgot just what they were up to, and often kept or invested in these securitized bad mortgages themselves! Thus they also got caught in this trap of their own making.

SUN SPOT THEORY (Of Economic Crises)
A theory originated by the bourgeois economist William Stanley Jevons (1835-82) which claims that the periodic prominence of dark spots on the surface of the sun is responsible for economic crises in the capitalist economies on earth. Though erroneous, this is not quite as ridiculous as it initally sounds! The sun goes through a 11-year cycle of varying numbers of sun spots, from almost none, to a great many, and back to almost none. These spots are actually plasma storms, and when they are abundant large quantities of charged particles are spewed off into space, some of which reach the earth and cause effects here, including the auroras and interruptions to radio communications. It is possible that there may also be small changes to crop yields because of atmospheric and weather changes, and this was the basis for Jevons’ theory. However, such crop changes are very small—if they occur at all. Moreover, neither the peaks nor valleys of the 11-year cycle of sun spots correlate well with the varying periods of 5 to 10 years in the standard industrial cycle.
        Clearly the bourgeois economists come up with rather silly theories like this, which try to explain economic crises by “exogenous” factors (i.e., factors external to the capitalist system), because they simply cannot accept that capitalism itself has any internal flaw which leads to such crises, despite the fact that Marx explained in detail how this occurs.

SUPERSTRUCTURE
See: BASE and SUPERSTRUCTURE

SWEEZY, Paul Malor   (1910-2004)
Paul Sweezy was an influential American Marxist political economist and in 1949 the co-founder (along with the Marxist historian, Leo Huberman) of the important publication for the American Left, Monthly Review. Along with Paul Baran and Harry Magdoff he formed the core of the “Monthly Review school” of Marxist political economy centered around that magazine.
        Sweezy was born in New York City, the son of a bank executive. He attended an elite prep school, Phillips Exeter Academy and then Harvard University where he graduated in 1931. He then spent a year at the London School of Economics where he was first exposed in a serious way to Marxist economic ideas. He returned to Harvard as a graduate student, where one of his professors was Joseph Schumpeter. He received his doctorate in 1937, and then began teaching economics at Harvard. During World War II he was a member of the research and analysis division of the Office of Strategic Services (forerunner to the CIA), where one of his jobs was in effect to spy on the British government! (U.S. imperialism was already thinking very seriously about the contention among the victors in the war for the control of the world that would ensue after it ended.)
        In 1942 Sweezy published one of his most important books, The Theory of Capitalist Development, which summarized Marxist economic ideas (though with a partially Keynesian interpretation), and argued for what its opponents call an “underconsumptionist” theory of capitalist economic crises. This was one of the first books in English to extensively deal with a number of important topics in Marxist political economy, including the “transformation problem”.
        In 1966 there appeared another important book, Monopoly Capital, by Sweezy and Paul Baran. This put forth the theory that modern monopoly capitalism is inherently prone to stagnation. However, a lot of the argument in that book is actually about how the capitalists can overcome (at least to a large degree and for a long time) this tendency. The authors say this can be done through massive corporate waste, through enormously intensified marketing, through a special focus on military production for the government, through innovation and new industries, and through the massive build-up of debt of all kinds (consumer, business and government debt). That last point is the most central, and does not receive sufficient emphasis in the book. Moreover, it seems to me that their position here is somewhat between that of Keynes and Marx. Sweezy and Baran seemed to grant the capitalists too much in the way of an ability to permanently forestall another great depression, and even—it seems at times—to grant them too much ability to forestall the lesser difficulty of “stagnation” that they talked about. That is, they did not seem to fully understand that Keynesian deficits, consumer debt, etc., themselves have definite limits and must fail in the end, and they may not have realized just how serious this would become for capitalism. Today, in early 2009, we are already getting a glimmer of the fact that for the capitalists, the real problem is not just a “tendency toward stagnation”, but something far, far worse: the inevitability of a prolonged, intractable economic depression.
        Politically, Sweezy and Magdoff (who became co-editor of Monthly Review after Huberman’s death) generally improved their outlook over time. While initially enamored by Fidel Castro and the Cuban Revolution, they later developed a more cautious attitude. As time went on they became more appreciative of Mao and the great Chinese Revolution. However, like most Marxists of their generation they found it hard to completely break with the triumphant revisionism of the Soviet Union. Sweezy was one of those who used to talk about “actually existing socialism” in the USSR, meaning that with all its actual faults, it should still be viewed as “socialism”. (At least from the mid-1950s on this was definitely not the case!)
        The articles that Sweezy and Magdoff themselves wrote for MR were in general much better than many of the articles they accepted for the magazine as its editors. While some of those articles were also quite good, there were also quite a number of others supporting revisionist “Euro-Communism”, reformist politics, and the like. Late in his life Sweezy admitted that their magazine should also have played a much greater role in helping to create a new revolutionary proletarian party in the U.S. Interestingly, after Sweezy and Magdoff died, and under its new editor, John Bellamy Foster, MR has further improved, and now has a stronger Maoist flavor to it.
        See also: Monopoly Capital (the book).

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