Monthly Review - Political Orientation

Political Orientation

From its first issue, Monthly Review attacked the premise that capitalism was capable of infinite growth through Keynesian macroeconomic fine-tuning. Instead, the magazine's editors and leading writers have remained true to the traditional Marxist perspective that capitalist economies contain internal contradictions which will ultimately lead to their collapse and reconstitution on a new socialist basis. Topics of editorial concern have included poverty, unequal distribution of incomes and wealth, racism, imperialism in relations between economically developed and less developed nations, and inefficiencies in production and distribution seen as endemic to the capitalist system.

Although not adverse to discussion of esoteric matters of socialist theory, MR was generally characterized by an aversion to doctrinaire citations of Marxist canon in favor of the analysis of real world economic and historical trends. Readability was emphasized and the use of academic jargon discouraged.

Editors Huberman and Sweezy argued as early as 1952 that massive and expanding military spending was an integral part of the process of capitalist stabilization, driving corporate profits, bolstering levels of employment, and absorbing surplus production. The illusion of an external military threat was required sustain this system of priorities in government spending, they argued; consequently effort was made by the editors to challenge the dominant Cold War paradigm of "Democracy versus Communism" in the material published in the magazine.

While in form and content Monthly Review closely resembled Political Affairs, the monthly theoretical journal of the Communist Party USA, Sweezy and Huberman were critical of that organization, contending that it had lost its bearings as a conduit for socialist analysis and education. The two men were additionally critical of the CPUSA's tendency to undercut broad cooperation on the left by denouncing those who did not full and uncritical support of the party line.

In its editorial line Monthly Review was generally supportive of the Soviet Union although over time the magazine became increasingly critical of Soviet dedication socialism in one country and peaceful coexistence, seeing that country as playing a more or less conservative role in a world marked by national revolutionary movements. After the Sino-Soviet split of the 1960s, Sweezy and Huberman soon came to see the People's Republic of China as the actual center of the world revolutionary movement.

Monthly Review remained true to an independent orientation throughout its history and never aligned with any specify revolutionary movement or political organization. Many of its articles have been written by academics, journalists, and freelance public intellectuals, including W. E. B. Du Bois, Jean-Paul Sartre, Che Guevara, Joan Robinson, Tariq Ali, Grace Lee Boggs, Noam Chomsky, Bernardine Dohrn, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Marilyn Buck, Doug Henwood, Michael Klare, James Petras, Frances Fox Piven, and Adrienne Rich.

In 2004, Monthly Review editor John Bellamy Foster told the New York Times

"The Monthly Review was attractive to people who were leaving the Communist Party and other sectarian groups. It was and is Marxist, but did not hew to the party line or get into sectarian struggles."