Contenu du sommaire : La gauche contemporaine aux États-Unis : mouvements d'hier et pensée d'aujourd'hui

Paul Buhle, Marxism in the United States The central social context of contemporary Marxism in the United States — the universities of the 70s and 80s — has made possible a hitherto unimaginable quantity of research and of specific discussions in a multitude of areas. But this same context has rendered the meaning and importance of the ideas almost incomprehensible outside of a circle of specialists. Outside the university, one of the most important phenomena has been the development of Liberation Theology, which combines the anti-capitalist religious tradition with Marxist ideas. Taking as their point of departure the pioneering works of Harry Braverman and Immanuel Wallerstein, a series of radical scholars influenced by Marxism have produced studies in the areas of political economy, sociology and history. Particularly important has been the research on the history of blacks (Genovese, Harding, Marable) and of women (Joan Kelly).

Larry Portis, Marxism in the USA : Critique of Buhle Paul Buhle confuses « marxism », a particular philosophical approach to the apprehension of social reality, with the political attitudes and practice that is generally called « radicalism ». The misconceptions revealed in his book, Marxism in the USA, illustrate contradictions inherent in social relations and political perceptions in the United States. Buhle continues a trend in American political thought to avoid theoretical speculation and to stress the practical application of received ideas. His emphasis on practical faith over critical reason is, in fact, contrary to the spirit of marxism, which is the application of science to the study of social phenomenon with the objective of acting upon it. But if Buhle tends to define marxism as the reactionaries often do, that is, as a religious system involving good works, faith in struggle, and ecstatic martyrdom, he nevertheless shows that anticapitalist sentiments and movements are deeply rooted in American history and society.

Andrew Feenberg, Paths to Failure : The Dialectics of Organization and Ideology in the New Left The American New Left developed new forms of cultural action that enabled it to challenge the socio-political consensus that had emerged in the 1950s. During an early heroic phase the New Left appeared capable of inspiring major changes in the society, but in the 1970s the movement fell victim to a variety of sectarian ills that isolated it effectively from its potential base. The analysis of the sectarian dynamic of the New Left reveals the vulnerability of a movement based on cultural action to internal disruption through the very means of struggle it applies in the society at large. In the future left movements will need to invent new means of self-organization lacking in the 1960s.

Stephen Bronner, The New Left as a Socio-cultural Experiment « Reconstituting the Experiment : Political Culture and the American New Left » explores the Zeitgeist of the sixties in the United States as well as that change in organizational style and radical purpose which separated the « New » from the « Old » Left. With the emphasis on a new sensibility, and the concerns of previously excluded groups rather than workers, the attempt to alter institutions gave way to an enterprise which sought to radical and qualitatively transform everyday life. It was this which provided the movement with its « experimental » quality and also what makes it possible to speak of a shift from the traditional notion of political revolt to a broader conception of cultural resistance. The point behind this article is to analyze the contradictions which this « experiment » engendered from a critical perspective. Thus, the present attempt to confront the limits and mistakes of the sixties no less than the relevance of the movement's unfulfilled emancipatory promise for a new radicalism appropriate to a new age.

Russell Jacoby, The Last Intellectuals In the 1930s, 40s, and even 50s, intellectuals, and more particularly Leftist intellectuals, were generaly not academics, or if they were they were marginal to the University and still defined themselves, like their journalist and free-lance writer brethern, as independant, « public » authors, that is, authors who addressed themselves to a broad, educated public. Starting in the 1960s, however, with the end of McCarthyism and following the development of the New Left, for the first time a large number of Leftists and Marxists entered the universities. While they strongly influenced their disciplines and won a definite respectability for Leftist and Marxist modes of analysis, the constraints of the Academy at the same time adulterated the Leftist perspective. Marxist academics, seeking security and recognition within the University, followed the rules of the academic game, producing works marked by the dominant discourse and accessible only to other specialists.

Paul Mattick Jr., The Last Intellectuals : A Critique of Jacoby A critique which, while it agrees with Jacoby on a number of points, claims that the latter often makes assertions that are superficial, simplistic, and insufficiently developed and justified by analysis. The picture that Jacoby paints of it does not truly correspond to the situation of the Left in the universities.

Harry Magdoff, An Interview. An interview granted to Robert Sayre and Michael Löwy at the beginning of this year, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of Monthly Review, of which Magdoff is an editor. Magdoff talks about the history of the journal, its evolution and its continuity, as well as about the influence of the journal, particularly on the New Left, and finally about what the future may hold. Magdoff also gives us his thoughts on the work of the present academic Left.

Johanna Brenner and Nancy Holmstrom, Feminism and the left in the United States Feminism has had a profound impact on the US left. That women ought to be included in leadership at all organizational levels, that « women's issues » must be part of the programmatic agenda and that feminist organizations must be part of any effort at coalition, is widely accepted. On the other hand, feminist modes of organization are reflected in the left wing of the ecology, peace and anti-nuclear movements but not elsewhere. Most men on the left regard feminist theory as appropriate to women's issues but not to the « central » questions : political economy, theory of the state, etc. Despite general agreement that women ought to be included in the discussion of any issue, in practice men's experience tends to predominate. Still, while feminist demands for change might be quietly ignored or overwhelmed by inertia, they have gained a certain legitimacy and can no longer be explicitly dismissed.

PhUippe Despoix, Production or « Communication ? » While the anthropology of schools of marxian thought (and weberian to an extent) are interested in man essentially as a producer, Jünger Habermas and the ex-school of Budapest consider man also in terms of language. The latest attempts to reconstruct critical theory involve this « change of paradigm ». Three positions have emerged. For Habermas, a communicational reason inherent in language is becoming the real abstraction of a modernity for which the relation between reason and history can be fundamental. For Agnes Heller, this rationality contained in communication is only the starting point for discussions about values, discussions which consider a « rational Utopia » from an ethical point of view. G. Márkus, however, is sceptical about the possibility of radicalizing the production-centered paradigm by that centered on language, because the choice between material and communicational rationalities implies different relations to history. Reference to Theodor Adorno' s position shows how the heterogeneity between production and symbolic exchange was thought-out in the 1930s in relation to the idea of history-nature without positing the necessity of paradigmatic choice.