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MONTHLY REVIEW’S November 2000
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c o n t e n t s » Praise for Karl Marx—albeit of a somewhat mocking kind—comes from the strangest places nowadays. In their new book Future Perfect: The Challenge and Hidden Promise of Globalization, John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, bestselling business authors and correspondents for the adamantly procapitalist Economist magazine, declare that, "as a prophet of socialism Marx may be kaput; but as a prophet of ‘the universal interdependence of nations,' as he called globalization, he can still seem startlingly relevant. His description of globalization remains as sharp today as it was 150 years ago" (pp. 332-333). The same thing has been noticed in a quite different way in colleges and universities, as demand for courses on Marx, Marxism, and political economy appear once again to be on the rise. REVIEW
OF THE MONTH The standard solution offered to the environmental problem in advanced capitalist economies is to shift technology in a more benign direction: more energy-efficient production, cars that get better mileage, replacement of fossil fuels with solar power, and recycling of resources. Other environmental reforms, such as reductions in population growth and even cuts in consumption, are often advocated as well. The magic bullet of technology, however, is by far the favorite, seeming to hold out the possibility of environmental improvement with the least effect on the smooth working of the capitalist machine. The 1997 International Kyoto Protocol on global warming, designed to limit the greenhouse-gas emissions of nations, has only reinforced this attitude, encouraging many environmental advocates in the United States (including Al Gore in his presidential campaign) to advocate technological improvement in energy efficiency as the main escape from the environmental mess. Iraq Under Siege:
Ten Years On It has been ten years since the United Nations imposed comprehensive sanctions on Iraq. The sanctions were adopted on August 6, 1990, forty-five years to the day after the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan, killing an estimated one hundred thousand people and leaving a toxic legacy that still affects the population of the area. The bombing was soon followed by an attack on Nagasaki. The coincidence is a telling one. For all the US government's rhetoric about halting the use of weapons of mass destruction, the United States stands in a league of its own in using and proliferating them. As horrific as the use of nuclear weapons against Japan was, perhaps five to ten times as many people have died in Iraq as a consequence of the war led by the United States and Britain, under United Nations (UN) auspices, during the last decade. The Role of Professional and Technical
Workers in Progressive Social Transformation During the 1930s, a small but significant group of radical pro-fessional and technical workers formed the Federation of Architects, Engineers, Chemists, and Technicians (FAECT), a predominantly left-led labor union within the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). The formation of this union took place within the context of the emerging "new working class" of professional and technical workers, the consequence of US capital's embrace of science and "scientific management" during the period of rapid capitalist development between 1890 and 1930. FAECT was instrumental in demonstrating that at least one sector of these workers could break the hegemony that the elitist and often anti-union professional societies had over those work-ers by more successfully addressing their pressing economic and professional concerns. By integrating these members of the "new working class" into the older, blue-collar working class, FAECT also helped to weaken the ideological, psychological, and organizational ties management had sought to build with this new stratum, winning them instead to the progressive social agenda of the growing trade-union movement. An examination of FAECT's history and ultimate demise offers us insight into the prospects for organizing such workers today and illuminates the role they can play in progressive social transformation. Freedom
Schooling Today's schools create addicts and prepare our children for prison because they teach passivity. What our children need most is a sense of themselves as agents of change and decision-makers. They don't only need academics. The need to become resourceful, independent and critical thinkers; to see themselves in the context of community and practice what enhances community life, to recognize their worth because their input makes a difference. BOOK
REVIEWS Imperial Democracy: Conundrums |
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