Marxism and the American Worker

A special issue of Historical Materialism

Call for Papers

"America never stood still for Marx and Engels" (Irving Howe).

In 2003 Historical Materialism will publish a special issue, Marxism and
the American Worker. The centrepiece will be the first English translation,
by Daniel Gaido of Haifa University, of the long essay "The American Worker"
by Karl Kautsky. First published in 1906, in Die Neue Zeit, Kautsky was
responding to Sombart's famous book Why Is There No Socialism in the United
States? The special issue will also include critical analyses of ongoing
efforts within the Marxist tradition throughout the 20th century to come to
terms with this question, a debate reignited by the publication in 2000 of
It Didn't Happen Here: Why Socialism Failed in the United States, by Seymour
Martin Lipset and Gary Marks. In essays and reviews which range across
questions of the development of US capitalism, processes of class formation
and struggle, cultural politics, race and racism, gender relations, and
aspects of intellectual history, contributors to the special issue include
Johanna Brenner, Malik Miah, Kim Moody, Alan Wald, Paul Le Blanc, Michael
Goldfield, Robbie Lieberman, Charles Post, Dean Robinson, Boy Luethje,
Gerald Friedman, Loren Goldner and Bryan Palmer.

We invite submissions, of between 4000 and 7000 words, on any of these
themes. We are especially interested in receiving empirically grounded
Marxist analyses of the contemporary US working class and the contemporary
forms of its class struggle. We also would like to receive submissions
assessing the work of CLR James which sought to come to terms with American
civilisation.

Enquiries and submissions should be sent to the issue editor, Alan Johnson,
at johnson

Historical Materialism is a journal of critical research in Marxist theory
published quarterly by Brill Academic Press.