By EDITORIAL COMMITTEE OF THE MARXIST CRITIQUE
Read the presentation and summary of the commemorative issue of the magazine
Presentation
This is a commemorative issue in the history of our magazine.
It is not often that a predominantly theoretical journal, especially of Marxist theory, reaches fifty issues, surpassing a quarter of a century of regular publication – Marxist Criticism never failed to publish or delayed a single issue. More than the success of an editorial project, this long perseverance proves the strong, perhaps growing perception of Marxism: it remains indispensable to the critical analysis of the economy, society, politics and culture submitted to the logic of capital.
In 1994, when we launched Marxist Criticism, the international situation was discouraging. The then recent extinction of the Soviet Union, the activation by US imperialism and its subaltern European allies of the NATO war machine against countries that challenged its hegemony, the advance of the neoliberal dismantling of the workers' conquests overshadowed the horizon. In a good part of Latin America, in Brazil in particular, neoliberal governments were installed. In the political and intellectual milieu, the thesis according to which capitalism would be the end of history was gaining a wide audience and it was proclaimed, once again, the obituary of Marxism. In Brazilian universities, Marxist theory had lost space. The urban popular and trade union movement entered a phase of decline and defensiveness. Only the Landless Movement showed signs of more vigour.
Another is the world situation in which we celebrate the fifty issues of our magazine, in twenty-five years of uninterrupted publication. Despite the ongoing wars of recolonization promoted by US imperialism and NATO, China's political rapprochement with Russia has rebalanced the military relationship of forces on an international scale. The enduring strength of the Chinese economy, in contrast to the financial bankruptcy of neoliberal capitalism that erupted in 2008, has shaken the bluster of imperialism and free market ideologues. In Latin America in the 2000s, neoliberal capitalism was contested in the streets and at the ballot box. Left and center-left reformist governments were formed in several countries on the continent. The setback we are witnessing in the 2010s is serious, but it has not taken us back to the “neoliberal consensus” of the 1990s. The situation is one of instability and danger, increasing the political and intellectual responsibility of a publication like ours. . Our magazine is making an effort to analyze and discuss, at the proper pace of theoretical elaboration and grounded research, the questions posed in these turbulent times, where, however, discouragement and capitulation no longer predominate. The most serious of these issues is the connection between neoliberalism and neofascism, to which we dedicate a block of studies to this issue.
A synthetic retrospective of the already long trajectory of Marxist Criticism shows that it has made a not insignificant contribution to the development of the Marxist theory produced in Brazil, in its diverse traditions and areas of knowledge. Old and new generation Marxist intellectuals produced a total of about a thousand texts, including articles, comments, reviews, interviews and notes, to which are added translations of unpublished texts in our country, originally published in English, French, Italian, German and Spanish. We publish theoretical and analytical studies on economics, politics, culture, philosophy, history, education, as well as on the problems of the socialist movement and communism at an international and national level. We have also publicized the international debate raised by the resumption of publishing the complete works of Marx and Engels (the so-called MEGA 2 publishing project). We also publish critical analyzes of the ideas in vogue in the academic environment. We attach special importance to our review section, which has discussed and publicized national and foreign publications of interest to Marxists.
Faced with the sometimes difficult choice of authors and articles to be published, we try to combine open-mindedness with objective decision-making criteria: recourse to opinions external to the Editorial Committee, discussion of opinions, contact with authors. The suggestions and proposals of members of the Editorial Board weigh heavily in our choices. Of course, we are also concerned with the difficult balance between the themes that make up the magazine's agenda. Obviously, however, what we publish reflects the intellectual activity of the most active contributors, indispensable to keep each new issue alive and innovative. As each one writes about the subjects he dominates, it is normal that in the vast field of Marxism, there are important gaps in the theoretical production of Marxist Criticism. This is notably the case of Antonio Gramsci, whose work has only recently begun to be given greater prominence. We are aware of the need to overcome this and other shortcomings in our editorial line.
Since 2013, we have a new website of the magazine with clear organization and permanently updated. That website makes available to the public, with free access, the collection of Marxist Criticism from your first to the penultimate number. Anyone interested can, through the efficient search engine of the website, access and download articles, comments, reviews and interviews that have been published in Marxist Criticism since 1994. Access to texts in our journal is of the same order of magnitude as access to texts published in Scielo in the area of Human Sciences, the most important bank of texts in Brazilian university production. Visitors to the magazine's website downloaded 673.360 material published by Marxist Criticism. Today, we have more than one hundred supporters who carry out militant sales of the magazine in dozens of cities in almost every state in Brazil. All the more reason to move forward in our endeavor.
PS: Thanks to Carmela Gross for providing the photo on the cover: Bleujaunerougerouge (2004). Permanent architectural intervention on the facade and surroundings of the building of the René Binet School, in the city of Paris, France.
Summary
Articles
Capital as a subject and the class struggle – Rodrigo Steimberg
Restoration and postmodern passive revolution in the neoliberal cycle: an intellectual mass transformism - Stefano G. Azzarà
Marx, the International and the Trade Unions – Marco Vanzulli
Marx and China: the problem of the expansion of capitalism – Gustavo Machado
Dossier: Far right and fascism today
Presentation – Armando Boito
Historical configurations of the dictatorship – Joao Quartim de Moraes
How many sticks to make a canoe? Notes on the Authoritarian Personality – Bruna Della Torre
Why characterize Bolsonarism as neo-fascism – Armando Boito Jr.
Middle class and neo-fascist threat in Bolsonaro's Brazil – Savio Cavalcante
Trump in historical perspective – Dylan Riley
Neofascism, extreme right and racism today in Italy – Saverio Ferrari
Dossier: Marxism and ecology
Apocalyptic Cartesian dualism or anti-ecological social monism? The disputes between the metabolic rupture school and world-ecology – Laura Luedy and Murillo van der Laan
Marxism and the Dialectic of Ecology – John Bellamy Foster and Brett Clark
Marx's ecological notebooks – Kohei Saito
Comment
Marx, Spinoza and Darwin: thinkers of immanence – Diego Lanciote
Documents
Letter to Macciocchi about May 1968 – Louis Althusser
Karl Marx in New York Daily Tribune: Introduction – Muniz Ferreira
Parliamentary Debates—The Clergy and the Struggle for the Ten Hour Day—Famine - Karl Marx
forced emigration - Karl Marx
Translation
Reflections on class theory – Theodor W. Adorno
Interview
Marx's labyrinths: Interview with Michael Heinrich – Bruna Della Torre
Reviews
- Western Marxism: how it was born, how it died, how it can be reborn [Domenico Losurdo] – Diego Pautasso and Tiago Soares Nogara
- Marx and the commodity fetish: contribution to the critique of metaphysics [Jadir Antunes] – Cristian Arão Silva de Jesus
- The Long Roots of Formalism in Brazil [Luiz Renato Martins] – Ana Paula Pacheco
- Rosa Luxemburg – crisis and revolution [Rosa Rosa de Souza Gomes] – Isabel Loureiro
- The Old Marx: A Biography of His Last Years (1881-1883) [Marcello Musto] – Mauro Castelo Branco de Moura
- Rosa Luxemburgo: thought and action [Paul Frölich] – Rosa Rosa Gomes