May 2001
Volume 53, Number 1
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May 2001 |
Volume 53, Number 1 |
New! Spring 2001
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c o n t e n t s » In September 1969 Monthly Review published Margaret Benston's article, "The Political Economy of Women's Liberation"-one of the most important early intellectual contributions to the current wave of feminist struggle in the United States. In the more than three decades since we have continued to publish articles by socialist feminists (along with a steady flow of important feminist texts through Monthly Review Press' New Feminist Library).| more | REVIEW
OF THE MONTH From the late sixties into the eighties there was a vibrant women's movement in the United States. Culturally influential and politically powerful, on its liberal side this movement included national organizations and campaigns for reproductive rights, the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), and other reforms. On its radical side it included women's liberation and consciousness raising groups, as well as cultural and grassroots projects. The women's movement was also made up of innumerable caucuses and organizing projects in the professions, unions, government bureaucracies, and other institutions. The movement brought about major changes in the lives of many women, and also in everyday life in the United States. It opened to women professions and blue-collar jobs that previously had been reserved for men. It transformed the portrayal of women by the media. It introduced the demand for women's equality into politics, organized religion, sports, and innumerable other arenas and institutions, and as a result the gender balance of participation and leadership began to change. By framing inequality and oppression in family and personal relations as a political question, the women's movement opened up public discussion of issues previously seen as private, and therefore beyond public scrutiny. The women's movement changed the way we talk, and the way we think. As a result, arguably most young women now believe that their options are or at least should be as open as men's. Mergers, Concentration, and the Erosion A new surge of corporate concentration is in process in the United States and abroad, driven in large measure by a restructuring of global markets through mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Announced worldwide merger deals reached $3.4 trillion in 1999, an amount equivalent to 34 percent of the value of all industrial capital (buildings, plants, machinery and equipment) in the United States in 1999. Of this total, nearly a third were cross-border transactions that involved companies based in different countries, up from an average of one-fourth of all mergers during most of the 1990s. The Geopolitics of Plan Colombia Its critics describe plan Colombia as a U.S. authored and promoted policy directed toward militarily eliminating the guerrilla forces in Colombia and repressing the rural peasant communities that support them. U.S. policymakers describe Plan Colombia as an effort to eradicate drug production and trade by attacking the sources of production that are located in areas of guerrilla influence or control. Since the guerrillas are associated with the coca producing regions, this line of argument proceeds, Washington has directed its military advisory teams and military aid to destroying what they dub the "narco guerrillas." More recently, particularly with the political and military successes of the two major guerrilla movements—the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) and the National Liberation Army (ELN)—Washington has increasingly acknowledged the fact that its war is directed against what is now dubbed the guerrilla insurgency. While the economic stakes are substantial in Colombia, for both Washington and the ruling oligarchy in Bogota, the larger and more important issue is the rapid and massive build-up. U.S. military involvement in Colombia is geopolitical. Strategists in Washington are concerned with several key geopolitical issues that could adversely affect U.S. imperial power in the region and beyond. The Queer/Gay
Assimilationist Split: "I'll say it loud; I'll say it proud: I love drug companies," HIV-positive Andrew Sullivan recently boasted in The New York Times Magazine. As one of the most visible gay journalists in the nation, the statement spoke to a core dilemma within a gay and lesbian movement split between gay assimilationists, such as Sullivan, and social justice minded queers. The question was, how had this free-market loving Tory Thatcherite become a spokesman for the gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (GLBT) movement? Sullivan's cavalier boast neglected the point that ACT UP, the pro-queer AIDS direct action group, had not only spent almost fifteen years fighting to get expedited approval for life saving medications, but had put their bodies on the line to get drug companies to lower prices so people could actually afford them. If ever there was a beneficiary of ACT UP's work, it was Sullivan, yet on more than one occasion in the mainstream press this gay, HIV-positive man has flaunted his contempt for their legacy. Sullivan explained that his medications cost his insurance company some $15,600 a year. And he seemed to be saying now that "I've got mine," the ongoing AIDS epidemic-now predominantly affecting poor people, drug users, minority women, and those in the developing world who cannot afford the life saving drugs-no longer mattered. The problem was that Sullivan was not alone. |
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About the Editors: Paul M. Sweezy· Harry Magdoff If you have any questions or comments |
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