Mattick, Paul
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  1. The American Economy: Crisis and Policy
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1971
    Since capitalist economic policy must make no mention of the exploitation relations underlying the capitalist mode of production, economists and politicians must seek 'solutions' to economic problems in terms of market phenomena.
  2. America's War in Indochina
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1971
    There is no special reason for America's intervention in Indochina, apart from her general policy of intervening anywhere in the world in order to prevent political and social changes that would be detrimental to the so-called 'free world,' and particularly to the power which dominates it.
  3. Anti-Bolshevist Communism in Germany 
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1947
    Until the final collapse of the German labor movement, the retreat of the 'ultra-left' appeared to be a return to theoretical work. The organizations existed in the form of weekly and monthly publications, pamphlets and books. The publications secured the organizations, the organizations the publications. While mass-organizations served small capitalistic minorities, the mass of the workers were represented by individuals. The contradiction between the theories of the 'ultra-left' and the prevailing conditions became unbearable. The more one thought in collective terms the more isolated one became.
  4. Anton Pannekoek 
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1960
    Anton Pannekoek's life span coincided with what was almost the whole history of the modern labour movement; he experienced its rise as a movement of social protest, its transformation into a movement of social reform, and its eclipse as an independent class movement in the contemporary world. But Pannekoek also experienced its revolutionary potentialities in the spontaneous upheavals which, from time to time, interrupted the even flow of social evolution. He entered the labour movement a Marxist and he died a Marxist, still convinced that if there is a future, it will be a socialist future.
  5. Baran and Sweezy's Monopoly Capital
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1966
  6. Bolshevism and Stalinism 
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1947
    From any view that goes beyond the capitalist system of exploitation, Stalinism and Trotskyism are both relics of the past.
  7. Council Communism
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1939
    There is no dearth of proposals as to how to revive the labour movement; however, the serious investigator cannot help noticing that all such proposals for a 'new beginning' are in reality but the restatement and rediscovery of ideas and forms of activity developed with much greater clarity and consistency during the beginnings of the modern labour movement.
  8. Economic Crisis and Crisis Theory
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1974
  9. Economics of the War Economy
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1959
    Ever since Lord Keynes' dictum that wars - like pyramid-building and earthquakes - may serve to increase wealth, it has been increasingly recognized that war and preparation for war are necessary aspects of the prevailing economy and a condition of its proper functioning.
  10. The Economics of War and Peace
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1956
    Wars, like crises, are inherent in uncontrolled capital accumulation even though their actual occurrence in time is not predictable.
  11. Economics, Politics and The Age of Inflation
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1977
  12. Ernest Mandel's Late Capitalism
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1972
  13. Fromm's sane society
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1956
  14. The Hero' of Kronstadt Writes History
    Review of The Revolution Betrayed
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1937
    It is only necessary to reflect on the paramount role which Trotsky played in the first thundering years of Bolshevik Russia to understand why he cannot admit that the Bolshevik revolution was only able to change the form of capitalism but was not able to do away with the capitalist form of exploitation. It is the shadow of that period that lies in the way of his understanding.
  15. Humanism and Socialism
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1965
    The resumption of the struggle for socialism would also be the rebirth of socialist humanism.
  16. The Inevitability of Communism
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1936
    A reaction to Sidney Hook's Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx.
  17. Interview with J.J. Lebel 1975
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1975
    Transcript of an interview with J.J. Lebel.
  18. Interview with Lotta Continua 1977
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1977
    Revolutionary actions are directed against the system as a whole - for its overthrow. This presupposes a general disruption of society which escapes political control. Thus far, such revolutionary actions have occurred only in connection with social catastrophe, such as were released by lost wars and the associated economic dislocations. This does not mean that such situations are an absolute precondition for revolution, but it indicates the extent of social disintegration that precedes revolutionary upheavals. Revolution must involve a majority of the active population. Not ideology but necessity brings the masses into revolutionary motion. The resulting activities produce their own revolutionary ideology, namely an understanding of what has to be done to emerge victoriously out of the struggle against the system's defenders.
  19. Introduction to 'Anti-Bolshevik Communism' 
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1978
    The international socialist movement must of course be an anti-imperialist movement. But it has to actualise its anti-imperialism through the destruction of the capitalist system in the advanced countries. Were this accomplished, anti-imperialism would become meaningless and the social struggles in the underdeveloped part of the world would focus on internal class differences.
  20. Karl Kautsky: From Marx to Hitler
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1939
    What distinguished Kautsky from the general run of intellectuals who flocked to the labour movement as soon as it became more respectable and who were only too eager to foster the trend of class collaboration, was a greater love for theory, a love which refused to compare theory with actuality. Only as a theoretician could Kautsky remain a revolutionist; only too willingly he left the practical affairs of the movement to others. However, he fooled himself. In the role of a mere 'theoretician,' he ceased to be a revolutionary theoretician, or rather he could not become a revolutionist. As soon as the scene for a real battle between capitalism and socialism after the war had been laid, his theories collapsed because they had already been divorced in practice from the movement they were supposed to represent.
  21. Karl Korsch: His Contribution to Revolutionary Marxism 
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1962
    For Korsch, all the imperfections of Marx's revolutionary theory which, in retrospect, are explainable by the circumstances out of which it arose, do not alter the fact that Marxism remains superior to all other social theories even today, despite its apparent failure as a social movement. It is this failure which demands not the rejection of Marxism but a Marxian critique of Marxism, that is, the further proletarisation of the concept of social revolution. There was no doubt in Korsch's mind, that the period of counter-revolution is historically limited like everything else -- that the new social productive forces embodied in a socialist revolution would re-assert themselves and find a revolutionary theory adequate to their practical tasks.
  22. Kropokin on Mutual Aid - Review
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1956
  23. The Lenin Legend
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1935
    For Lenin, socialism was in the last instance merely a kind of state-capitalism.
  24. Luxemburg versus Lenin 
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1935
    On many essential points the conceptions of Luxemburg differ from those of Lenin as day from night, or -- the same thing -- as the problems of the bourgeois revolution from those of the proletarian.
  25. Mandel's Economics
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1969
  26. Marx and Freud
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1956
    Marcuse's book renews the endeavor to read Marx into Freud. Marcuse wants to resurrect the 'explosive' revolutionary content of Freud's theories.
  27. Marx & Keynes
    The Limits of the Mixed Economy
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1969
    According to Mattick, "Keynesianism merely reflects the transition of capitalism from its free-market to a state-aided phase and provides an ideology for those who mementarily profit by this transition. It does not touch upon the problems Marx was concerned with. As long as the capitalist mode of production prevails, Marxism will retain its relevance, since it concerns itself neither with one or another technique of capital production, nor with the social changes within the frame of capital production, but only with its final abolition".
  28. A Marxian Oddity
    A review of Marxiam and Freedom. From 1776 Unitl Today, by Raya Dunayevskaya
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1958
    Paul Mattick says although Raya Dunayevskaya’s interpretation of Marxian doctrine is occasionally true and eloquent, this book as a whole is a scatterbrained hodge-podge of philosophical, economic and political ideas that defy description and serious criticism.
  29. Marxism and Bourgeois Economics
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1983
    Just as the proletariat opposed the bourgeoisie, so Marx confronted bourgeois economic theory: not in order to develop it, or to improve it, but to destroy its apparent validity and, finally, with the abolition of capitalism, to overcome it altogether.
  30. The Marxism of Karl Korsch
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1964
  31. Marxism: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow 
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1978
    Until now the history of revolutionary Marxism has been the history of its defeats, which include the apparent successes that culminated in the emergence of state-capitalist systems. It is clear that early Marxism not only underestimated the resiliency of capitalism, but in doing so also overestimated the power of Marxian ideology to affect the consciousness of the proletariat. The process of historical change, even if speeded up by the dynamics of capitalism, is exceedingly slow, particularly when measured against the lifespan of an individual. But the history of failure is also one of illusions shed and experience gained, if not for the individual, at least for the class. There is no reason to assume that the proletariat cannot learn from experience.
  32. The Masses & The Vanguard
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1938
    The leadership principle, the idea of the vanguard that must assume responsibility for the proletarian revolution is based on the pre-war conception of the labour movement, is unsound. The tasks of the revolutionary and the communist reorganization of society cannot be realized without the widest and fullest action of the masses themselves.
  33. Monopoly Capital
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1966
    For Baran and Sweezy, capitalist problems are exclusively market problems.
  34. Nationalism and Socialism
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1959
    Nations, whether "knitted together" by ideology, by objective conditions, or by the usual combination of both, are products of social development. There is no more point in cherishing or damning nationalism in principle than in cherishing or damning tribalism or, for that matter, an ideal cosmopolitanism. The nation is a fact to be suffered or enjoyed, to be fought for or against according to historical circumstances and the implications of those circumstances for various populations and different classes within these populations.
  35. The New Capitalism and the Old Class Struggle
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1975
  36. The Nonsense of Planning
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1937
    The literature dealing with the problems of a planned economy has attained proportions comparable only with those of the depression which brought it forth. In all this welter of thought, we may distinguish three main currents: one which stands for the possibility of capitalist planning, another which denies it on principle, and a third which hovers between these extremes and finds its champions both in the bourgeois and socialist camps.
  37. Obsessions of Berlin
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1948
    The Russians are Berlin's second great obsession. The rape of the city is burned deep into the minds of its inhabitants because it is associated with their greatest disappointment. Long before the fall of the city, refugees from the East told horrible stories about the Russians' behavior. So did the radio. But wishful thinking discounted these stories as exaggerations and propaganda. At any rate, it could not get worse than it was. The same hope that welcomed Hitler in exchange for the depression welcomed now the Russians in exchange for the bombings.
  38. One Dimensional Man In Class Society
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1972
  39. Otto Rühle and the German Labour Movement
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1935
  40. Pannekoek's "The Party and the Working Class"
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1941
  41. Reform or Revolution 
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1983
    The reformists had no principles to 'betray.' They remained what they had been all along, but they were now obliged first of all to safeguard the system in which their cherished practice could continue. The revolution had to be reduced to a mere reform, so as to satisfy their deepest convictions and, incidentally, secure their political existence.
  42. Review: An Inquiry into the Poverty of Nations
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1968
    Myrdal's dilemma is his theoretical attempt to combine irreconcilable, namely, a capitalist market economy with authoritarian controls designed to subject capital production to actual social needs. This forces him to misunderstand both capitalism and socialism, and to provide them with features they do not possess. It induces him also to assume that it is actually possible to treat the development problems of South Asia in relative isolation from the problems of the capitalist world economy.
  43. Review of 'Karl Marx' by Karl Korsch
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1939
    In conspicuous distinction to many other interpretations of Marx, this book concentrates upon the essentials of Marxian theory and practice.
  44. Rosa Luxemburg in Retrospect
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1978
    Mattick reconsiders the legacy of Rosa Luxemburg, particularly her critique of Bolshevism and her economic theory.
  45. Samuelson's 'Transformation' of Marxism
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1972
    Somehow, and for reasons known only to himself, Paul A. Samuelson cannot leave Marx alone.
  46. Serfdom in a Free Society
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1946
  47. Spontaneity and Organisation 
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1949
    How revolutionaries have viewed the relationship between organized planned action and spontaneous action.
  48. Spontaneity and Organisation
    From 'Anti-Bolshevik Communism'
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1977
    Although Lenin counted on, he simultaneously feared, spontaneous movements. He justified the need for conscious interferences in spontaneously-arising revolutions by citing the backwardness of the masses and saw in spontaneity an important destructive but not constructive element. In Lenin's view, the more forceful the spontaneous movement, the greater would be the need to supplement and direct it with organised, planned party-activity. The workers had to be guarded against themselves, so to speak, or they might defeat their own cause through ignorance, and, by dissipating their powers, open the way for counter-revolution.
  49. Stalin and German Communism
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1949
  50. Stalin's Frame-Up System and the Moscow Trials (Review)
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1951
    Trotsky's own indignation over the Moscow Trials, although understandable since they were directed against his followers and fellow-oppositionists, was nevertheless inconsistent with his own political outlook and conception of dictatorship. The terroristic system he came to bewail was after all originally headed by Lenin and Trotsky, and was proudly defended by the latter in his book Terrorism and Communism.
  51. Leon Trotsky
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1940
    Trotsky's works, and most of all his History of the Russian Revolution, will immortalize his name as a writer and politician. But there is a real need to oppose the development of the Trotsky legend which will make out of this leader of the Russian state capitalist revolution a martyr of the international working class - a legend which must be rejected together with all other postulates and aspects of bolshevism.
  52. Was the Bolshevik Revolution a Failure?
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1938
    As soon as the Bolsheviks recognized that the proletariat was too weak to establish state capitalistic systems favorable to Russia in other countries, and also that the bourgeoisie was no longer willing to risk anything in a struggle against state capitalist Russia, that is, about 1920, the Bolsheviks ceased to support revolutionary movements in other countries and instead prepared for a peaceful side by side existence with the other capitalistic systems.