Monthly Review

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Monthly Review is a socialist magazine published in New York City. It appears 11 times per year. Image:Monthly review Dec 1988.jpg

Founded from a money tranche from Skull and Bones member F. O. Matthiessen to his good friend Paul Sweezy who became the first editor, the first issue of Monthly Review appeared in May 1949 as the United States was beginning its drive toward the Cold War. It featured the lead article Why Socialism? by Albert Einstein. During the McCarthy era of the early 1950s, its original editors Paul Sweezy and Leo Huberman were targeted as Communist agents. Sweezy's case, tried by New Hampshire Attorney General, went all the way to the Supreme Court and became a seminal case on free speech when they ruled in his favor. The magazine survived McCarthyism and continued to grow into the 1970s.

Since its inception, Monthly Review has been a consistent and outspoken voice for socialism and against American Imperialism. The editors of Monthly Review are prominent 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 philosophy; 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 Review "is to see the present as history." The magazine enjoys a steady readership and is more influential outside the U.S. than inside it.

Monthly Review Press, an allied endeavor, has published many political books, such as Fanshen by William Hinton, Labour and Monopoly Capital by Harry Braverman, The Development of Underdevelopment by Andre Gunder Frank, Unequal Development by Samir Amin and the English translation of The Open Veins of Latin America, by Eduardo Galeano.