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104-565: New Masses (1926–1948) was an American Marxist magazine closely associated with the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). It was the successor to both The Masses (1911–1917) and The Liberator (1918–1924). New Masses was later merged into Masses & Mainstream (1948–1963). With the widespread economic hardships brought on by the Great Depression of 1929, many Americans were more receptive to socialist and leftist ideas. As
208-464: A blacklist (particularly in the arts) by their peers, and so denied employment and the opportunity to earn a living, despite many such acknowledged ex-communists moving on from the fellow traveler stage of their political lives, such as the Hollywood blacklist . The New Fontana Dictionary of Modern Thought (1999), defines the term fellow-traveller as a post-revolutionary political term derived from
312-514: A socialist revolution in contemporary society is inevitable. While the inevitability of an eventual socialist revolution is a controversial debate among many different Marxist schools of thought , all Marxists believe socialism is a necessity. Marxists argue that a socialist society is far better for most of the populace than its capitalist counterpart. Prior to the Russian Revolution , Vladimir Lenin wrote: "The socialisation of production
416-402: A Marxist perspective. Other developments include: The latest field of research examines and develops Marxist pedagogy in the postdigital era. Fellow travelers A fellow traveller (also fellow traveler ) is a person who is intellectually sympathetic to the ideology of a political organization, and who co-operates in the organization's politics, without being a formal member. In
520-519: A Marxist would conclude that capitalism exploits and oppresses the proletariat; therefore, capitalism will inevitably lead to a proletarian revolution . In a socialist society, private property —as the means of production—would be replaced by cooperative ownership. A socialist economy would not base production on the creation of private profits but on the criteria of satisfying human needs—that is, production for use . Friedrich Engels explained that "the capitalist mode of appropriation, in which
624-475: A backlash against Marxist thought in post-communist states, such as Poland . However, it remains prominent in the sociological research sanctioned and supported by communist states, such as in China . Marxian economics is a school of economic thought tracing its foundations to the critique of classical political economy first expounded upon by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. Marxian economics concerns itself with
728-837: A bastion of Marxist conformity. By the end of 1928, when Mike Gold and Joseph Freeman gained full editorial control, the “ Stalinist / Trotskyist ” division began in earnest. Gold’s January 1929 column, "Go Left, Young Writers!", initiated the “ proletarian literature ” movement, one spurred by the emergence of writers with true working-class credentials. Barbara Foley points out, though, that Gold and his peers did not eschew various literary forms in favor of strict realism ; they advocated stylistic experimentation, but championed and preferred genuine proletarian authorship. A substantial number of poems, short stories, journalistic pieces, and quasi-autobiographical sketches by young working-class writers ( Richard Wright and Jack Conroy being prime examples) dominated New Masses in its earliest days because
832-526: A certain stage of development, the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production or—this merely expresses the same thing in legal terms—with the property relations within the framework of which they have operated hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters. Then begins an era of social revolution ." These inefficiencies manifest themselves as social contradictions in society which are, in turn, fought out at
936-542: A concrete study of the actual conditions in Europe. According to the Marxist theoretician and revolutionary socialist Vladimir Lenin, "the principal content of Marxism" was "Marx's economic doctrine." Marx demonstrated how the capitalist bourgeoisie and their economists were promoting what he saw as the lie that "the interests of the capitalist and of the worker are ... one and the same." He believed that they did this by purporting
1040-638: A known left-winger, moved to the right-wing and became a staunch anti-Communist . Likewise, the editor of The New Republic magazine, Malcolm Cowley had been a fellow traveler during the 1930s, but broke from the Communist Party, because of the ideological contradictions inherent to the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact (Treaty of Non-aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, 23 August 1939). The novelist and critic Waldo Frank
1144-413: A labourer—is synonymous with surplus labour, and capitalist exploitation is thus realised as deriving surplus value from the worker. In pre-capitalist economies , exploitation of the worker was achieved via physical coercion . Under the capitalist mode of production, workers do not own the means of production and must "voluntarily" enter into an exploitative work relationship with a capitalist to earn
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#17328510951361248-496: A materialist theory of history, Marx did not claim to have produced a master key to history and that the materialist conception of history is not "an historico-philosophic theory of the marche générale , imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself." In a letter to the editor of the Russian newspaper paper Otechestvennyje Zapiski (1877), he explained that his ideas were based upon
1352-443: A place for creative writing of a leftist character was one of the original missions of New Masses , but this mission was crowded out by urgent demands for political and economic discussion and by the need for adherence to Party doctrine. According to Arthur Ferrari, the fate of New Masses illustrates how the circumstances under which political and cultural forces converge can be temporary in nature. Despite being an official organ of
1456-403: A post-capitalist society—positive humanism, socialism, Communism, realm of free individuality, free association of producers, etc. He used these terms completely interchangeably. The notion that 'socialism' and 'Communism' are distinct historical stages is alien to his work and only entered the lexicon of Marxism after his death." According to orthodox Marxist theory, overthrowing capitalism by
1560-564: A result, New Masses grew in circulation and became highly influential in literary, artistic, and intellectual circles. The magazine has been called “the principal organ of the American cultural left from 1926 onwards." New Masses was launched in New York City in 1926 as part of the Workers (Communist) Party of America 's stable of publications, produced by a communist leadership but making use of
1664-576: A school of thought, Marxism has had a profound effect on society and global academia. To date, it has influenced many fields, including anthropology , archaeology , art theory , criminology , cultural studies , economics , education , ethics , film theory , geography , historiography , literary criticism , media studies , philosophy , political science , political economy , psychoanalysis , science studies , sociology , urban planning , and theatre . Marxism seeks to explain social phenomena within any given society by analysing
1768-685: A word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes." Marx considered recurring class conflicts as the driving force of human history as such conflicts have manifested as distinct transitional stages of development in Western Europe . Accordingly, Marx designated human history as encompassing four stages of development in relations of production: While historical materialism has been referred to as
1872-408: Is a process accomplished by the so-called thinker consciously, it is true, but with a false consciousness. The real motive forces impelling him remain unknown to him; otherwise it simply would not be an ideological process. Hence he imagines false or seeming motive forces." Because the ruling class controls the society's means of production, the superstructure of society (i.e. the ruling social ideas)
1976-453: Is a study of educational reform in the U.S. and its relationship to the reproduction of capitalism and the possibilities of utilising its contradictions in the revolutionary movement. The work of Peter McLaren , especially since the turn of the 21st century, has further developed Marxist educational theory by developing revolutionary critical pedagogy, as has the work of Glenn Rikowski, Dave Hill, and Paula Allman. Other Marxists have analysed
2080-401: Is bound to lead to the conversion of the means of production into the property of society. ... This conversion will directly result in an immense increase in productivity of labour, a reduction of working hours, and the replacement of the remnants, the ruins of small-scale, primitive, disunited production by collective and improved labour." The failure of the 1905 Russian Revolution , along with
2184-403: Is certain and that is that I am not a Marxist." The discovery of the materialist conception of history, or rather, the consistent continuation and extension of materialism into the domain of social phenomenon, removed two chief defects of earlier historical theories. In the first place, they at best examined only the ideological motives of the historical activity of human beings, without grasping
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#17328510951362288-402: Is determined by the best interests of the ruling class. In The German Ideology , Marx says that "[t]he ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is, at the same time, its ruling intellectual force." The term political economy initially referred to the study of the material conditions of economic production in
2392-458: Is difficult to say where this expression originated, but it is truly the only name they deserve. The use of this word has become so firmly entrenched in Soviet embassies that it is impossible to imagine any other name for these people. A conversation might run as follows: Today we've got a friendship evening with shit-eaters', or Today we're having some shit-eaters to dinner. Prepare a suitable menu'. In
2496-449: Is divided between the rich and the poor, and that some people subjugate and exploit other people, you're lost in a forest, not knowing anything. — Cuban revolutionary and Marxist–Leninist politician Fidel Castro on discovering Marxism, 2009 This new way of thinking was invented because socialists believed that common ownership of the means of production (i.e. the industries , land, wealth of nature, trade apparatus and wealth of
2600-448: Is introduced. Because the surplus produced by the workers is the property of the society as a whole, there are no classes of producers and appropriators. Additionally, as the state originates in the bands of retainers hired by the first ruling classes to protect their economic privilege, it will wither away as its conditions of existence have disappeared. According to The Oxford Handbook of Karl Marx , "Marx used many terms to refer to
2704-470: Is necessary to understand his later works properly. Contrary to the official dialectical materialism of the Soviet Union and interpretations of Marx rooted in the structural Marxism of Louis Althusser , Marxist humanists argue that Marx's work was an extension or transcendence of enlightenment humanism . Whereas other Marxist philosophies see Marxism as natural science , Marxist humanism reaffirms
2808-465: Is not prerequisite. In addition to criticism, Marx has also praised some of the results of capitalism stating that it "has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together" and that it "has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal arrangements." Marx posited that the remaining feudalist societies in the world and forms of socialism that did not conform with his writings would be replaced by communism in
2912-551: Is often critical of reformist positions such as those held by social democrats . Libertarian Marxist currents often draw from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels' later works, specifically the Grundrisse and The Civil War in France ; emphasising the Marxist belief in the ability of the working class to forge its destiny without the need for a vanguard party to mediate or aid its liberation. Along with anarchism , libertarian Marxism
3016-761: Is one of the main currents of libertarian socialism . Libertarian Marxism includes currents such as autonomism , council communism , De Leonism , Lettrism , parts of the New Left , Situationism , Freudo-Marxism (a form of psychoanalysis ), Socialisme ou Barbarie and workerism . Libertarian Marxism has often strongly influenced both post-left and social anarchists . Notable theorists of libertarian Marxism have included Maurice Brinton , Cornelius Castoriadis , Guy Debord , Raya Dunayevskaya , Daniel Guérin , C. L. R. James , Rosa Luxemburg , Antonio Negri , Anton Pannekoek , Fredy Perlman , Ernesto Screpanti , E. P. Thompson , Raoul Vaneigem , and Yanis Varoufakis ,
3120-613: Is wasting away either in repetitions or in silences, and the new art which is as yet unborn, there is being created a transitional art, which is more or less organically connected with the Revolution, but which is not, at the same time, the Art of the Revolution. Boris Pilnyak , Vsevolod Ivanov , Nicolai Tikhonov , the Serapion Fraternity , Yesenin and his group of Imagists and, to some extent, Kliuev – all of them were impossible without
3224-516: The Great Depression , motivated idealistic young people, artists , and intellectuals to become sympathetic to the Communist cause, in hope they could overthrow capitalism . To that end, black Americans joined the CPUSA (1919) because some of their politically liberal stances (e.g. legal racial equality ) corresponded to the political struggles of black people for civil rights and social justice , in
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3328-568: The war crimes of the Wehrmacht . For the term fellow traveller , the reactionary Régime of the Colonels (1967–74) used the Greek word Synodiporia ("The ones walking the street together") as an umbrella term that described domestic Greek Leftists and democratic opponents of the military dictatorship ; likewise, the military government used term Diethnis ("international Synodiporia ") to identify
3432-464: The "sum total of the forces of production accessible to men determines the condition of society" and forms a society's economic base. The base includes the material forces of production such as the labour , means of production and relations of production , i.e. the social and political arrangements that regulate production and distribution. From this base rises a superstructure of legal and political "forms of social consciousness " that derive from
3536-417: The 1920s and 1930s, the intellectuals of the U.S. either sympathized with or joined the U.S. Communist Party, to oppose the economic excesses of capitalism and fascism , which they perceived as its political form. In 1936, the newspaper columnist Max Lerner included the term fellow traveler in the article "Mr. Roosevelt and His Fellow Travelers" ( The Nation ). In 1938, Joseph Brown Matthews Sr. featured
3640-472: The 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, the term fellow traveler was primarily a pejorative applied to those on the political left, to suggest a person who was philosophically sympathetic to Communism , yet was not a formal, " card-carrying member " of the Communist Party USA . In political discourse, the term fellow traveler was applied to intellectuals, academics, and politicians who lent their names and prestige to Communist front organizations. In European politics,
3744-646: The 1940s, the Western Marxist school became accepted within Western academia, subsequently fracturing into several different perspectives, such as the Frankfurt School or critical theory . The legacy of Critical Theory as a major offshoot of Marxism is controversial. The common thread linking Marxism and Critical theory is an interest in struggles to dismantle structures of oppression, exclusion, and domination. Due to its former state-supported position, there has been
3848-546: The Communist Party, New Masses lost some of its Party support when the CPUSA's Popular Front stage began in 1936. That was when fighting the Spanish Civil War and the threat of world fascism trumped class conflict and political revolution in the U.S., at least for the foreseeable future. Although the magazine supported the Popular Front aims, it found itself in a difficult and complicated position as it tried to strike
3952-548: The Dickstein MacCormack Committee Suppressed” and “Wall Street's Fascist Conspiracy: Morgan Pulls the Strings”. Using a redacted version of congressional committee hearings, Spivak alleged there was a fascist conspiracy of U.S. financiers to take over the country, and cited the names of several implicated business leaders. In furtherance of the magazine’s editorial shift, “[t]he proletariat Stalinists of
4056-770: The Germans, as war mongers. In June 1941, when the Nazis launched Operation Barbarossa , to annihilate the U.S.S.R., again, the American Communist Party abided Stalin's party-line, and became war hawks for American intervention to the European war in aid of Russia, and becoming an ally of the Soviet Union. At War's end, the Russo–American Cold War emerged in the 1946–48 period, and American Communists found themselves at
4160-546: The Industrial Revolution which undermines the democratic agency of citizens. Marxists differ in their positions towards democracy. Types of democracy in Marxism include Soviet democracy , New Democracy , Whole-process people's democracy and can include voting on how surplus labour is to be organised. According to democratic centralism political decisions reached by voting in the party are binding for all members of
4264-551: The Intellectuals" ( Time 6 Jan. 1941), the ex-Communist Whittaker Chambers satirically used the term fellow traveler : As the Red Express hooted off into the shades of a closing decade, ex-fellow travelers rubbed their bruises, wondered how they had ever come to get aboard. … With the exception of Granville Hicks , probably none of these people was a Communist . They were fellow travelers who wanted to help fight fascism . In
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4368-461: The Party of Communists USA revived the name New Masses with its own publication. Marxist Marxism is a political philosophy and method of socioeconomic analysis. It uses a dialectical and materialist interpretation of historical development, better known as historical materialism , to analyse class relations, social conflict , and social transformation . Marxism originates with
4472-513: The Party's affiliated organizations. The goal was to expand the class struggle to the literary realm and support political revolution. In the mid-1930s, New Masses entered a new phase as a forum for left-wing political commentary. With its attention to literature confined mostly to book reviews, the magazine offered eye-catching articles aimed at non-Marxist readers. For instance, John L. Spivak published two provocative investigative pieces in 1935: “Wall Street’s Fascist Conspiracy: Testimony that
4576-406: The Revolution, either as a group or separately. ... They are not the artists of the proletarian Revolution, but her artist "fellow-travellers", in the sense in which this word was used by the old Socialists... As regards a "fellow-traveller", the question always comes up – How far will he go? This question cannot be answered in advance, not even approximately. The solution of it depends, not so much on
4680-568: The Russian word poputchik , with which the Bolsheviks described political sympathizers who hesitated to publicly support the Bolshevik Party and Communism in Russia, after the Revolution of 1917. The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (1993) defines the term fellow-traveller as "a non-Communist who sympathizes with the aims and general policies of the Communist Party"; and, by transference, as
4784-700: The U.S. Congress; and, in 1953, after Senator Joseph McCarthy became chairman of the Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations , they attempted to determine the extent of Soviet influence in the U.S. government, and in the social, cultural, and political institutions of American society. That seven-year period (1950–56) of moral panic and political witch hunts was the McCarthy Era , characterized by right-wing political orthodoxy. Some targets of investigation were created by way of anonymous and unfounded accusations of treason and subversion , during which time
4888-556: The administration of General Secretary Joseph Stalin , a great emphasis was placed on the adoption of Marxist archaeology throughout the country. These theoretical developments were subsequently adopted by archaeologists working in capitalist states outside of the Leninist bloc, most notably by the Australian academic V. Gordon Childe , who used Marxist theory in his understandings of the development of human society. Marxist sociology, as
4992-622: The aftermath of the Second World War , the Russian term poputchik (fellow traveller) was translated to the German as Mitläufer , to identify a person who, although not formally charged with participation in war crimes , was sufficiently involved with the Nazi régime to the extent that the Allied authorities responsible for the denazification of Germany could not legally exonerate them from association with
5096-509: The analysis of crisis in capitalism, the role and distribution of the surplus product and surplus value in various types of economic systems , the nature and origin of economic value , the impact of class and class struggle on economic and political processes, and the process of economic evolution . Although the Marxian school is considered heterodox , ideas that have come out of Marxian economics have contributed to mainstream understanding of
5200-414: The awareness—of itself and the social world—that a social class possesses and its capacity to act rationally in its best interests. Class consciousness is required before a social class can effect a successful revolution and, thus, the dictatorship of the proletariat . Without defining ideology , Marx used the term to describe the production of images of social reality. According to Engels, "ideology
5304-417: The capitalist system. In Marxism, political economy is the study of the means of production, specifically of capital and how that manifests as economic activity. Marxism taught me what society was. I was like a blindfolded man in a forest, who doesn't even know where north or south is. If you don't eventually come to truly understand the history of the class struggle, or at least have a clear idea that society
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#17328510951365408-415: The complex dynamics of modern society." Influenced by the thought of Karl Marx , Marxist sociology emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. With Marx, Max Weber and Émile Durkheim are considered seminal influences in early sociology . The first Marxist school of sociology was known as Austro-Marxism , of which Carl Grünberg and Antonio Labriola were among its most notable members. During
5512-399: The concept that "the fastest possible growth of productive capital " was best for wealthy capitalists and workers because it provided them with employment. Exploitation is a matter of surplus labour —the amount of labour performed beyond what is received in goods. Exploitation has been a socioeconomic feature of every class society and is one of the principal features distinguishing
5616-636: The course of his political career, the Republican Sen. McCarthy claimed at various times that there were many American citizens (secretly and publicly) sympathetic to Communism and the Soviet Union who worked in the State Department and in the U.S. Army , in positions of trust incompatible with such beliefs. In response to such ideological threats to the national security of the U.S., some American citizens with Communist pasts were suspected of being "un-American" and thus secretly and anonymously registered to
5720-493: The doctrine that "man is the measure of all things"—that humans are essentially different to the rest of the natural order and should be treated so by Marxist theory. According to a 2007 survey of American professors by Neil Gross and Solon Simmons, 17.6% of social science professors and 5.0% of humanities professors identify as Marxists, while between 0 and 2% of professors in all other disciplines identify as Marxists. The theoretical development of Marxist archaeology
5824-551: The early history of the Soviet Union , the Bolshevik revolutionary and Soviet statesman Anatoly Lunacharsky coined the term poputchik ('one who travels the same path'); it was later popularized by Leon Trotsky to identify the vacillating intellectual supporters of the Bolshevik government. It was the political characterisation of the Russian intelligentsiya (writers, academics, and artists) who were philosophically sympathetic to
5928-425: The economic base that conditions both the superstructure and the dominant ideology of a society. Conflicts between the development of material productive forces and the relations of production provoke social revolutions , whereby changes to the economic base lead to the superstructure's social transformation . This relationship is reflexive in that the base initially gives rise to the superstructure and remains
6032-408: The end of class society, which Marx saw as the fundamental division of all hitherto existing history. Marx saw the fundamental nature of capitalist society as little different from that of a slave society in that one small group of society exploits the larger group. Through common ownership of the means of production, the profit motive is eliminated, and the motive of furthering human flourishing
6136-613: The equivalent terms for fellow traveller are: Compagnon de route and sympathisant in France; Weggenosse , Sympathisant (neutral) or Mitläufer (negative connotation ) in Germany; and compagno di strada in Italy. In 1917, after the Russian Revolution, the Bolsheviks applied the term Poputchik ("one who travels the same path") to Russian writers who accepted
6240-405: The failure of socialist movements to resist the outbreak of World War I , led to renewed theoretical effort and valuable contributions from Lenin and Rosa Luxemburg towards an appreciation of Marx's crisis theory and efforts to formulate a theory of imperialism . Karl Marx criticised liberal democracy as not democratic enough due to the unequal socio-economic situation of the workers during
6344-406: The foreign supporters of the domestic anti-fascist Greeks. In the U.S., the European term fellow-traveller was adapted to describe persons politically sympathetic to, but not members of, the Communist Party USA (CPUSA), who shared the political perspectives of Communism . In the 1920s and 1930s, the political, social, and economic problems in the U.S. and throughout the world, caused partly by
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#17328510951366448-491: The forms and pedagogical processes of capitalist and communist education, such as Tyson E. Lewis, Noah De Lissovoy, Gregory Bourassa, and Derek R. Ford. Curry Malott has developed a Marxist history of education in the U.S., and Marvin Gettleman examined the history of communist education. Sandy Grande has synthesised Marxist educational theory with Indigenous pedagogy, while others like John Holt analyse adult education from
6552-482: The foundation of a form of social organisation . Those newly formed social organisations can then act again upon both parts of the base and superstructure so that rather than being static, the relationship is dialectic , expressed and driven by conflicts and contradictions. Engels clarified: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave , patrician and plebeian , lord and serf , guild -master and journeyman , in
6656-458: The founding group,” according to Samuel Richard West, “began applying a Marxist litmus test to every contribution; as a result, the less ideological contributors and editors began to drop away”. But the magazine still managed to include literary, artistic, and sociological content, just not in the same abundance as in previous years. While this content was slowly phased out in favor of politically oriented journalism, New Masses continued to influence
6760-564: The free world who have sold themselves to the GRU, one cannot avoid touching on yet another category, perhaps the least appealing of all. Officially one is not allowed to call them agents, and they are not agents in the full sense of being recruited agents. We are talking about the numerous members of overseas societies of friendship with the Soviet Union. Officially, all Soviet representatives regard these parasites with touching feelings of friendship, but privately they call them 'shit-eaters' ('govnoed'). It
6864-405: The future in a similar manner as with capitalism. Marx distinguishes social classes based on two criteria, i.e. ownership of means of production and control over the labour power of others. Following this criterion of class based on property relations, Marx identified the social stratification of the capitalist mode of production with the following social groups: Class consciousness denotes
6968-544: The global economy. Certain concepts of Marxian economics, especially those related to capital accumulation and the business cycle , such as creative destruction , have been fitted for use in capitalist systems. Marxist education develops Marx's works and those of the movements he influenced in various ways. In addition to the educational psychology of Lev Vygotsky and the pedagogy of Paulo Freire , Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis' Schooling in Capitalist America
7072-548: The history of the women's struggle for equality in the U.S., the USSR, and within the international socialist movement. Though the Great Depression caused a surge in American communism and expanded New Masses readership – so much so that Mike Gold and his colleagues responded by turning the magazine into a weekly publication starting in January of 1934 – New Masses would eventually encounter competition from Partisan Review . Providing
7176-447: The ideological rigidity of the Communist party-line, Hofstadter remained a fellow traveler until the 1940s. In Who Owns History?: Rethinking the Past in a Changing World (2003), Eric Foner said that Hofstatdter continued thinking of himself as a political radical , because his opposition to capitalism was the reason he had joined the CPUSA. Moreover, in the elegiac article "The Revolt of
7280-420: The late 1920s to 1940s was an attempt to create a radical culture in opposition to mass culture . Infused with a defiant, outsider mentality, this leftist cultural front represented a rich period in American history. Michael Denning has called it a "Second American Renaissance" because it permanently transformed American modernism and popular culture as a whole. One of the foremost periodicals of this renaissance
7384-575: The late 1930s, most fellow-travelers broke with the Communist party-line of Moscow when Stalin and Adolf Hitler signed the German–Soviet Non-aggression Pact (August 1939), which allowed the Occupation of Poland (1939–45) for partitioning between the U.S.S.R. and Nazi Germany. In the U.S., the American Communist Party abided Stalin's official party-line, and denounced the Allies , rather than
7488-550: The latter claiming that Marx himself was a libertarian Marxist. Marxist humanism was born in 1932 with the publication of Marx's Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844 and reached a degree of prominence in the 1950s and 1960s. Marxist humanists contend that there is continuity between the early philosophical writings of Marx, in which he develops his theory of alienation , and the structural description of capitalist society found in his later works, such as Capital . They hold that grasping Marx's philosophical foundations
7592-487: The leftist cultural scene. For example, in 1937 New Masses printed Abel Meeropol 's anti-lynching poem " Strange Fruit ", later popularized in song by Billie Holiday . The magazine also sponsored the first From Spirituals to Swing concert on 23 December 1938 at Carnegie Hall , an event organized by John Hammond . In one of the magazine's last issues on 30 December 1947, editor Betty Millard published her groundbreaking feminist text, "Woman Against Myth", which examined
7696-426: The level of class struggle . Under the capitalist mode of production , this struggle materialises between the minority who own the means of production (the bourgeoisie ) and the vast majority of the population who produce goods and services (the proletariat ). Starting with the conjectural premise that social change occurs due to the struggle between different classes within society who contradict one another,
7800-533: The magazine sought "to make the ‘worker-writer’ a reality in the American radical press." Rather than cater only to the college-educated intelligentsia, the editorial policy lauded rough-hewn literature considered more appealing to a working-class audience. The convergence of this literary philosophy and CPUSA policy in Depression-era America was facilitated by the John Reed Club of New York City , one of
7904-570: The material conditions and economic activities required to fulfill human material needs. It assumes that the form of economic organisation, or mode of production , influences all other social phenomena, including broader social relations, political institutions, legal systems, cultural systems, aesthetics and ideologies. These social relations and the economic system form a base and superstructure . As forces of production (i.e. technology ) improve, existing forms of organising production become obsolete and hinder further progress. Karl Marx wrote: "At
8008-407: The necessities of life. The worker's entry into such employment is voluntary because they choose which capitalist to work for. However, the worker must work or starve. Thus, exploitation is inevitable, and the voluntary nature of a worker participating in a capitalist society is illusory; it is production, not circulation, that causes exploitation. Marx emphasised that capitalism per se does not cheat
8112-511: The objective laws governing the development of the system of social relations. ... in the second place, the earlier theories did not cover the activities of the masses of the population, whereas historical materialism made it possible for the first time to study with scientific accuracy the social conditions of the life of the masses and the changes in these conditions. — Russian Marxist theoretician and revolutionary Vladimir Lenin , 1913 Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses
8216-530: The party. Classical Marxism denotes the collection of socio-eco-political theories expounded by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . As Ernest Mandel remarked, "Marxism is always open, always critical, always self-critical." Classical Marxism distinguishes Marxism as broadly perceived from "what Marx believed." In 1883, Marx wrote to his son-in-law Paul Lafargue and French labour leader Jules Guesde —both of whom claimed to represent Marxist principles—accusing them of "revolutionary phrase-mongering" and denying
8320-503: The personal qualities of this or that "fellow-traveller", but mainly on the objective trend of things during the coming decade. Victor Suvorov in his "Soviet military intelligence" (1984) referred to a less respectable term "shit-eaters" ( Russian : говноед ) used by the GRU handlers when talking about the category of agents of influence who were conscious sympathisers of the Soviet movement: In examining different kinds of agents, people from
8424-400: The political margins of U.S. society – such as being forced out of the leadership of trade unions; in turn, membership to the Communist Party of the U.S.A. declined. Yet, in 1948, American Communists did campaign for the presidential run of Henry A. Wallace , President Franklin D. Roosevelt 's vice-president. In February 1956, to the 20th congress of the C.P.S.U., Nikita Khrushchev delivered
8528-690: The political, social, and economic goals of the Russian Revolution of 1917, but who did not join the Communist Party of the Soviet Union . The usage of the term poputchik disappeared from political discourse in the Soviet Union during the Stalinist era, but the Western world adopted the English term fellow traveller to identify people who sympathised with the Soviets and with Communism . In U.S. politics , during
8632-434: The population's living standards due to its need to compensate for the falling rate of profit by cutting employees' wages and social benefits while pursuing military aggression. The socialist mode of production would succeed capitalism as humanity's mode of production through revolution by workers. According to Marxian crisis theory , socialism is not an inevitability but an economic necessity. The term Marxism
8736-500: The product enslaves first the producer, and then the appropriator, is replaced by the mode of appropriation of the products that is based upon the nature of the modern means of production; upon the one hand, direct social appropriation, as means to the maintenance and extension of production—on the other, direct individual appropriation, as means of subsistence and of enjoyment." Marxian economics and its proponents view capitalism as economically unsustainable and incapable of improving
8840-609: The proper editorial balance. The 1940s brought significant philosophical and practical troubles to the publication. It struggled with the ideological upheavals caused by blowback from the Moscow Trials and Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact of 1939 , while at the same time facing virulent anti-communism and censorship at home during the war. With its readership declining, New Masses published its final issue on 13 January 1948. The magazine soon merged with another Communist quarterly to form Masses & Mainstream (1948–1963). In 2016,
8944-504: The revolution, but who were not active revolutionaries. In the book Literature and Revolution (1923), Leon Trotsky popularized the usage of Poputchik as a political descriptor attributed to the pre-Revolutionary Russian Social Democratic Labour Party (the Social Democrats) to identify a vacillating political sympathizer. In Chapter 2, "The Literary 'Fellow-Travellers' of the Revolution", Trotsky said: Between bourgeois Art, which
9048-556: The secret speech, On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences , denouncing Stalinism and the cult of personality for Josef Stalin; those political revelations ended the ideological relationship between many fellow-travelers in the West and the Soviet version of Communism . In 1945, the anti-Communist congressional House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) became a permanent committee of
9152-415: The social classes. The power of one social class to control the means of production enables its exploitation of other classes. Under capitalism, the labour theory of value is the operative concern, whereby the value of a commodity equals the socially necessary labour time required to produce it. Under such conditions, surplus value —the difference between the value produced and the value received by
9256-603: The society) would abolish the exploitative working conditions experienced under capitalism. Through working class revolution, the state (which Marxists saw as a weapon for the subjugation of one class by another) is seized and used to suppress the hitherto ruling class of capitalists and (by implementing a commonly owned, democratically controlled workplace) create the society of communism which Marxists see as true democracy. An economy based on cooperation on human need and social betterment, rather than competition for profit of many independently acting profit seekers, would also be
9360-474: The study of sociology from a Marxist perspective, is "a form of conflict theory associated with ... Marxism's objective of developing a positive ( empirical ) science of capitalist society as part of the mobilisation of a revolutionary working class ." The American Sociological Association has a section dedicated to the issues of Marxist sociology that is "interested in examining how insights from Marxist methodology and Marxist analysis can help explain
9464-412: The sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand. Marxism uses a materialist methodology, referred to by Marx and Engels as the materialist conception of history and later better known as historical materialism, to analyse the underlying causes of societal development and change from the perspective of the collective ways in which humans make their living. Marx's account of
9568-464: The term fellow traveler was applied as a political pejorative against many American citizens who did not outright condemn Communism. Modern critics of HUAC claim that any citizen who did not fit or abide the HUAC's ideologically narrow definition of "American" was so labeled – which, they claimed, contradicted, flouted, and voided the political rights provided for every citizen in the U.S. Constitution . In
9672-691: The term in the title of his political biography Odyssey of a Fellow Traveler (1938); later, J. B. Matthews was the chief investigator for the anti-Communist activities of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Robert E. Stripling also credited Matthews: "J.B. Matthews, a former Communist fellow traveler (and, incidentally, the originator of that apt tag)..." Among the writers and intellectuals known as fellow travelers were Ernest Hemingway and Theodore Dreiser novelists whose works of fiction occasionally were critical of capitalism and its excesses, whilst John Dos Passos ,
9776-599: The theory is in The German Ideology (1845) and the preface A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859). All constituent features of a society ( social classes , political pyramid and ideologies ) are assumed to stem from economic activity, forming what is considered the base and superstructure . The base and superstructure metaphor describes the totality of social relations by which humans produce and re-produce their social existence. According to Marx,
9880-655: The time when Jim Crow laws established and maintained racial segregation throughout the United States. Moreover, the American League for Peace and Democracy (ALPD) was the principal socio-political group who actively worked by anti-fascism rather than by pacifism ; as such, the ALPD was the most important organization within the Popular Front , a pro-Soviet coalition of anti-fascist political organizations. As in Europe, in
9984-484: The value of reformist struggle. From Marx's letter derives Marx's famous remark that, if their politics represented Marxism, ' ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste ' ('what is certain is that I myself am not a Marxist')." Libertarian Marxism emphasises the anti-authoritarian and libertarian aspects of Marxism. Early currents of libertarian Marxism, such as left communism , emerged in opposition to Marxism–Leninism . Libertarian Marxism
10088-538: The various schools of thought , which emphasise or modify elements of classical Marxism , several Marxian concepts have been incorporated into an array of social theories . This has led to widely varying conclusions. Alongside Marx's critique of political economy , the defining characteristics of Marxism have often been described using the terms " dialectical materialism " and "historical materialism", though these terms were coined after Marx's death and their tenets have been challenged by some self-described Marxists. As
10192-1431: The work of an array of independent writers and artists. The magazine was established to fill a void caused by the gradual transition of The Workers Monthly (successor to The Liberator ) into a more theoretically-oriented publication. The name of the new magazine was a tip of the hat to The Masses (1911–1917), forerunner of both publications. The New Masses' editorial staff included The Masses alumni Hugo Gellert , John F. Sloan , Max Eastman , Mike Gold , as well as Joseph Freeman , Granville Hicks (starting in 1934), Walt Carmon , and James Rorty . Many contributors are now considered distinguished, even canonical authors/writers, artists, and musical composers: William Carlos Williams , Theodore Dreiser , John Dos Passos , Upton Sinclair , Richard Wright , Ralph Ellison , Dorothy Parker , Dorothy Day , John Breecher, Langston Hughes , Eugene O'Neill , Rex Stout and Ernest Hemingway . More importantly, it also circulated works by avowedly leftist, even “ proletarian ” (working-class) artists: Kenneth Fearing , H.H. Lewis , Jack Conroy , Grace Lumpkin , Jan Matulka , Ruth McKenney , Maxwell Bodenheim , Meridel LeSueur , Josephine Herbst , Jacob Burck , Tillie Olsen , Stanley Burnshaw , Louis Zukofsky , George Oppen , Crockett Johnson , Wanda Gág , Albert Halper , Hyman Warsager , and Aaron Copland . The vast production of left-wing popular art from
10296-432: The worker. Alienation ( German : Entfremdung ) is the estrangement of people from their humanity and a systematic result of capitalism. Under capitalism, the fruits of production belong to employers, who expropriate the surplus created by others and generate alienated labourers. In Marx's view, alienation is an objective characterisation of the worker's situation in capitalism—his or her self-awareness of this condition
10400-428: The works of 19th-century German philosophers Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels . Marxism has developed over time into various branches and schools of thought , and as a result, there is no single, definitive " Marxist theory ". Marxism has had a profound effect in shaping the modern world, with various left-wing and far-left political movements taking inspiration from it in varying local contexts. In addition to
10504-519: Was New Masses . At the outset, New Masses adopted a loosely leftist position: "Among the fifty-six writers and artists connected in some way with the early issues of the New Masses , [Joseph] Freeman reports, only two were members of the Communist Party , and less than a dozen were fellow travelers ." There was, however, an eventual transformation in which this magazine of the “generic left”, with its numerous competing points of view, gradually became
10608-589: Was a fellow traveler during the mid-1930s, and was the chairman of the League of American Writers, in 1935, but was ousted as such, in 1937, when he called for an enquiry to the reasons for Joseph Stalin 's purges (1936–38) of Russian society. From 1934 to 1939, the historian Richard Hofstadter briefly was a member of the Young Communist League USA . Despite disillusionment because of the non-aggression pact between Nazi Germany and Communist Russia and
10712-401: Was first developed in the Soviet Union in 1929, when a young archaeologist named Vladislav I. Ravdonikas published a report entitled "For a Soviet history of material culture"; within this work, the very discipline of archaeology as it then stood was criticised as being inherently bourgeois, therefore anti-socialist and so, as a part of the academic reforms instituted in the Soviet Union under
10816-693: Was popularised by Karl Kautsky , who considered himself an orthodox Marxist during the dispute between Marx's orthodox and revisionist followers. Kautsky's revisionist rival Eduard Bernstein also later adopted the term. Engels did not support using Marxism to describe either Marx's or his views. He claimed that the term was being abusively used as a rhetorical qualifier by those attempting to cast themselves as genuine followers of Marx while casting others in different terms, such as Lassallians . In 1882, Engels claimed that Marx had criticised self-proclaimed Marxist Paul Lafargue by saying that if Lafargue's views were considered Marxist, then "one thing
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