Monthly Review - Definition and Overview

The Monthly Review is a socialist magazine published in New York City. It appears eleven times per year.

The first issue of the Monthly Review appeared in May 1949 as Cold War hysteria was gathering force in the United States. It featured the lead article Why Socialism? by Albert Einstein. During the 1950s, the McCarthy era inquisition targeted its original editors Paul Sweezy and Leo Huberman, who resisted successfully.

Since its inception, the Monthly Review has been a consistent and outspoken voice for socialism and against US imperialism. The editors of Monthly Review are unashamed Marxists, but are independent, not aligned with a particular existing revolutionary movement (although they were early admirers of the Cuban Revolution). In the pages of the Monthly Review, Marxism is not a political party but a looking-glass with which to view society. Its articles tend to be written mostly by academics — and researched and referenced as such — but are free of academic jargon.

Founding editor Paul Sweezy has said the mission of the Review "is to see the present as history." The magazine enjoys a steady readership and is more influential outside the US than inside it.

The Monthy Review Press, an allied endeavor, has published many important books, such as the English translation of The Open Veins of Latin America, by Eduardo Galeano.

Editors

Monthly Review has had just six editors, three currently still involved:

• Paul Sweezy, from 1949 to his death in 2004
• Leo Huberman from 1949 to his death in 1968
• Harry Magdoff from 1969 to the present
• Ellen Meiksins Wood, 1997-2000
• John Bellamy Foster and
• Robert W. McChesney, from May 2000 to the present

External link

• Monthly Review website (http://www.monthlyreview.org/)