Response to Victor Wallis; Reply to Ronald Aronson

Abstract

Normally I do not respond to reviews, but since I respect Monthly Review so highly—indeed I have published in it—I must say a few words in reply to Victor Wallis's strange and uncomradely discussion of my book After Marxism. (MR January 1996) All those of us on the Left who have ever set pen to paper accept the possibility of hostile and uncomprehending readers: it goes with the territory when you attack the dominant ideological conventions and threaten long-established interests. But I find it striking to meet with this treatment in a journal of the Left. While Wallis's hostility and refusal to address what I've written trouble me, I am even more disturbed by his obvious contempt for the intelligence of Monthly Review readers and by the enormous disservice he is doing to Marxism. His dogmatic "defense" of Marxism only increases the possibility that the next Left will develop without the anti-capitalist direction he wants for it.

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