Harry Magdoff - Post-government Career

Post-government Career

Magdoff was happy9 to leave his position with the United States Department of Commerce, on December 30, 1946, and went to work for the New Council on American Business in New York until 1948, at which time he began employment with Trubeck Laboratories in New Jersey.

He was an economic adviser and speechwriter to former Vice-President and then unsuccessful Presidential candidate Henry Wallace, who ran as the Progressive Party candidate in 1948. Unable to be reemployed in government because of security concerns, he found a career in academia beginning in the 1950s.

After the Cuban Revolution, Magdoff had an opportunity to travel to Cuba and have an all night meeting with Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, whom he later described as a “sweet and polite man”. This long brainstorming session on the potential obstacles the new revolution would face, sparked a mutual camaraderie that led to Magdoff also meeting with Guevara during his 1964 visit to the United Nations in New York City.

One of his most famous works, The Age of Imperialism, his first and arguably most influential book, came out in 1969. The book sold over 100,000 copies and was translated into fifteen languages. Two years later after the death of Leo Huberman, Magdoff began co-editing the Monthly Review with Paul Sweezy, and has continued to edit the magazine into his 90th year. Magdoff and Sweezy together produced five books, as well as many years of Monthly Review. Magdoff's most recent book is Imperialism without Colonies, published at age 89. Monthly Review is one of the preeminent socialist journals in the world, a journal characterized by its independent, nonsectarian Marxist approach.

Under Magdoff's direction, the Monthly Review focused more and more upon imperialism as the key unit of analysis for global development and the forces challenging neocolonialism in the Third World. This perspective put the magazine and its press squarely on the New Left intellectual agenda since the late 1960s. His work also kept him in the forefront of socialist thought in the U.S. from the 1930s to this day. The Great Depression left a strong impact on Magdoff's perspective on capitalism, as Magdoff recalls a sense of doom felt in the mid-century by pro-capitalists, holding that nothing since 1929 led him to believe that the economy has become immune to cycles of severe crisis. Until his death, Magdoff co-edited the Monthly Review with John Bellamy Foster.