Harry Magdoff
Encyclopedia
Henry Samuel Magdoff was a prominent American socialist
commentator. He held several administrative positions in government during the presidency
of Franklin D. Roosevelt
and later became co-editor of the Marxist
publication, Monthly Review
.
n-Jewish immigrants, Magdoff grew up in the Bronx
. In 1929, at age 15, Magdoff first started reading Karl Marx
when he picked up a copy of The Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy in a used-book store. "It blew my mind," recalled Magdoff in 2003. "His view of history was a revelation....that got me started reading about economics. We were going into the Depression then and I wanted to figure out what it all meant." His interest in Marx led him to embrace socialism.
Magdoff studied mathematics
and physics
from 1930 to 1933 at the City College of New York
taking engineering
, math and physics courses; he was active in the Social Problems Club with many schoolmates who later joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
, a Comintern
organization that fought in the Spanish Civil War
, many also joined the US Armed Forces. Magdoff attended New York University
after 1933, where he studied economics
and statistics
, receiving a B.Sc
in Economics in 1935. He was suspended and later expelled from City College for activities related to editing Frontiers (a radical student magazine not sanctioned by the school), including participation in a mock trial of the school's President and its Director.
Head of the WPA's National Research Project assisted him to get a job with the Works Progress Administration
measuring the productivity
of various manufacturing industries. By 1940 Magdoff was the WPA's Principal Statistician. During World War II
Magdoff worked on the National Defense and Advisory Board and the War Production Board
, in the Statistical and Tools Divisions. He left the Commerce Department at the end of 1946.
, on December 30, 1946, and went to work for the New Council on American Business in New York until 1948, at which time he began employment with Trubeck Laboratories in New Jersey
.
He was an economic adviser and speechwriter to former Vice-President and then unsuccessful Presidential candidate Henry Wallace
, who ran as the Progressive Party candidate in 1948. Unable to be reemployed in government because of security concerns, he found a career in academia beginning in the 1950s.
After the Cuban Revolution
, Magdoff had an opportunity to travel to Cuba and have an all night meeting with Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara
, whom he later described as a “sweet and polite man”. This long brainstorming session on the potential obstacles the new revolution would face, sparked a mutual camaraderie that led to Magdoff also meeting with Guevara during his 1964 visit to the United Nations in New York City.
One of his most famous works, The Age of Imperialism, his first and arguably most influential book, came out in 1969. The book sold over 100,000 copies and was translated into fifteen languages. Two years later after the death of Leo Huberman
, Magdoff began co-editing the Monthly Review with Paul Sweezy
, and has continued to edit the magazine into his 90th year. Magdoff and Sweezy together produced five books, as well as many years of Monthly Review. Magdoff's most recent book is Imperialism without Colonies, published at age 89. Monthly Review is one of the preeminent socialist journals in the world, a journal characterized by its independent, nonsectarian Marxist approach.
Under Magdoff's direction, the Monthly Review focused more and more upon imperialism
as the key unit of analysis for global development and the forces challenging neocolonialism
in the Third World
. This perspective put the magazine and its press squarely on the New Left
intellectual agenda since the late 1960s. His work also kept him in the forefront of socialist thought in the U.S. from the 1930s to this day. The Great Depression
left a strong impact on Magdoff's perspective on capitalism
, as Magdoff recalls a sense of doom felt in the mid-century by pro-capitalists, holding that nothing since 1929 led him to believe that the economy has become immune to cycles of severe crisis. Until his death, Magdoff co-edited the Monthly Review with John Bellamy Foster.
espionage
activity during his time in US government. He was accused of passing information to Soviet intelligence networks in the United States, primarily through what the FBI called the "Perlo Group
." Magdoff was never indicted, but after the end of the Cold War
, a number of scholars have inspected declassified documents (including those of the Venona project
) from U.S. and Soviet archives. They cite these documents to support the claim that Magdoff was involved in espionage. Other authors have taken issue with some of the broader interpretations of such materials which implicate many Americans in espionage for the Soviet Union.
Socialism
Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and cooperative management of the economy; or a political philosophy advocating such a system. "Social ownership" may refer to any one of, or a combination of, the following: cooperative enterprises,...
commentator. He held several administrative positions in government during the presidency
President of the United States
The President of the United States of America is the head of state and head of government of the United States. The president leads the executive branch of the federal government and is the commander-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces....
of Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin D. Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...
and later became co-editor of the Marxist
Marxism
Marxism is an economic and sociopolitical worldview and method of socioeconomic inquiry that centers upon a materialist interpretation of history, a dialectical view of social change, and an analysis and critique of the development of capitalism. Marxism was pioneered in the early to mid 19th...
publication, Monthly Review
Monthly Review
Monthly Review is an independent Marxist journal published 11 times per year in New York City.-History:The publication was founded by Harvard University economics instructor Paul Sweezy, who became the first editor...
.
Early years
A child of poor RussiaRussia
Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...
n-Jewish immigrants, Magdoff grew up in the Bronx
The Bronx
The Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City. It is also known as Bronx County, the last of the 62 counties of New York State to be incorporated...
. In 1929, at age 15, Magdoff first started reading Karl Marx
Karl Marx
Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher, economist, sociologist, historian, journalist, and revolutionary socialist. His ideas played a significant role in the development of social science and the socialist political movement...
when he picked up a copy of The Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy in a used-book store. "It blew my mind," recalled Magdoff in 2003. "His view of history was a revelation....that got me started reading about economics. We were going into the Depression then and I wanted to figure out what it all meant." His interest in Marx led him to embrace socialism.
Magdoff studied mathematics
Mathematics
Mathematics is the study of quantity, space, structure, and change. Mathematicians seek out patterns and formulate new conjectures. Mathematicians resolve the truth or falsity of conjectures by mathematical proofs, which are arguments sufficient to convince other mathematicians of their validity...
and physics
Physics
Physics is a natural science that involves the study of matter and its motion through spacetime, along with related concepts such as energy and force. More broadly, it is the general analysis of nature, conducted in order to understand how the universe behaves.Physics is one of the oldest academic...
from 1930 to 1933 at the City College of New York
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
taking engineering
Engineering
Engineering is the discipline, art, skill and profession of acquiring and applying scientific, mathematical, economic, social, and practical knowledge, in order to design and build structures, machines, devices, systems, materials and processes that safely realize improvements to the lives of...
, math and physics courses; he was active in the Social Problems Club with many schoolmates who later joined the Abraham Lincoln Brigade
Abraham Lincoln Brigade
The Abraham Lincoln Brigade refers to volunteers from the United States who served in the Spanish Civil War in the International Brigades. They fought for Spanish Republican forces against Franco and the Spanish Nationalists....
, a Comintern
Comintern
The Communist International, abbreviated as Comintern, also known as the Third International, was an international communist organization initiated in Moscow during March 1919...
organization that fought in the Spanish Civil War
Spanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
, many also joined the US Armed Forces. Magdoff attended New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
after 1933, where he studied economics
Economics
Economics is the social science that analyzes the production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. The term economics comes from the Ancient Greek from + , hence "rules of the house"...
and statistics
Statistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....
, receiving a B.Sc
Bachelor of Science
A Bachelor of Science is an undergraduate academic degree awarded for completed courses that generally last three to five years .-Australia:In Australia, the BSc is a 3 year degree, offered from 1st year on...
in Economics in 1935. He was suspended and later expelled from City College for activities related to editing Frontiers (a radical student magazine not sanctioned by the school), including participation in a mock trial of the school's President and its Director.
Government service
After college, David WeintraubDavid Weintraub
David Weintraub was an official of the government of the United States. In the mid-1930s he headed the New Deal Works Project Administration's National Research Project. In the 1940s Weintraub moved to the United States Department of State, becoming head of the Office of Foreign Relief and...
Head of the WPA's National Research Project assisted him to get a job with the Works Progress Administration
Works Progress Administration
The Works Progress Administration was the largest and most ambitious New Deal agency, employing millions of unskilled workers to carry out public works projects, including the construction of public buildings and roads, and operated large arts, drama, media, and literacy projects...
measuring the productivity
Productivity
Productivity is a measure of the efficiency of production. Productivity is a ratio of what is produced to what is required to produce it. Usually this ratio is in the form of an average, expressing the total output divided by the total input...
of various manufacturing industries. By 1940 Magdoff was the WPA's Principal Statistician. During World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
Magdoff worked on the National Defense and Advisory Board and the War Production Board
War Production Board
The War Production Board was established as a government agency on January 16, 1942 by executive order of Franklin D. Roosevelt.The purpose of the board was to regulate the production and allocation of materials and fuel during World War II in the United States...
, in the Statistical and Tools Divisions. He left the Commerce Department at the end of 1946.
Post-government career
Magdoff was happy to leave his position with the United States Department of CommerceUnited States Department of Commerce
The United States Department of Commerce is the Cabinet department of the United States government concerned with promoting economic growth. It was originally created as the United States Department of Commerce and Labor on February 14, 1903...
, on December 30, 1946, and went to work for the New Council on American Business in New York until 1948, at which time he began employment with Trubeck Laboratories in New Jersey
New Jersey
New Jersey is a state in the Northeastern and Middle Atlantic regions of the United States. , its population was 8,791,894. It is bordered on the north and east by the state of New York, on the southeast and south by the Atlantic Ocean, on the west by Pennsylvania and on the southwest by Delaware...
.
He was an economic adviser and speechwriter to former Vice-President and then unsuccessful Presidential candidate Henry Wallace
Henry A. Wallace
Henry Agard Wallace was the 33rd Vice President of the United States , the Secretary of Agriculture , and the Secretary of Commerce . In the 1948 presidential election, Wallace was the nominee of the Progressive Party.-Early life:Henry A...
, who ran as the Progressive Party candidate in 1948. Unable to be reemployed in government because of security concerns, he found a career in academia beginning in the 1950s.
After the Cuban Revolution
Cuban Revolution
The Cuban Revolution was an armed revolt by Fidel Castro's 26th of July Movement against the regime of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista between 1953 and 1959. Batista was finally ousted on 1 January 1959, and was replaced by a revolutionary government led by Castro...
, Magdoff had an opportunity to travel to Cuba and have an all night meeting with Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara
Che Guevara
Ernesto "Che" Guevara , commonly known as el Che or simply Che, was an Argentine Marxist revolutionary, physician, author, intellectual, guerrilla leader, diplomat and military theorist...
, whom he later described as a “sweet and polite man”. This long brainstorming session on the potential obstacles the new revolution would face, sparked a mutual camaraderie that led to Magdoff also meeting with Guevara during his 1964 visit to the United Nations in New York City.
One of his most famous works, The Age of Imperialism, his first and arguably most influential book, came out in 1969. The book sold over 100,000 copies and was translated into fifteen languages. Two years later after the death of Leo Huberman
Leo Huberman
Leo Huberman was an American socialist writer. In 1949 he founded and co-edited Monthly Review with Paul Sweezy.-Works:* Cuba: A revolution revisited* Vietnam: The Endless War* Socialism in Cuba...
, Magdoff began co-editing the Monthly Review with Paul Sweezy
Paul Sweezy
Paul Marlor Sweezy was a Marxist economist, political activist, publisher, and founding editor of the long-running magazine Monthly Review...
, and has continued to edit the magazine into his 90th year. Magdoff and Sweezy together produced five books, as well as many years of Monthly Review. Magdoff's most recent book is Imperialism without Colonies, published at age 89. Monthly Review is one of the preeminent socialist journals in the world, a journal characterized by its independent, nonsectarian Marxist approach.
Under Magdoff's direction, the Monthly Review focused more and more upon imperialism
Imperialism
Imperialism, as defined by Dictionary of Human Geography, is "the creation and/or maintenance of an unequal economic, cultural, and territorial relationships, usually between states and often in the form of an empire, based on domination and subordination." The imperialism of the last 500 years,...
as the key unit of analysis for global development and the forces challenging neocolonialism
Neocolonialism
Neocolonialism is the practice of using capitalism, globalization, and cultural forces to control a country in lieu of direct military or political control...
in the Third World
Third World
The term Third World arose during the Cold War to define countries that remained non-aligned with either capitalism and NATO , or communism and the Soviet Union...
. This perspective put the magazine and its press squarely on the New Left
New Left
The New Left was a term used mainly in the United Kingdom and United States in reference to activists, educators, agitators and others in the 1960s and 1970s who sought to implement a broad range of reforms, in contrast to earlier leftist or Marxist movements that had taken a more vanguardist...
intellectual agenda since the late 1960s. His work also kept him in the forefront of socialist thought in the U.S. from the 1930s to this day. The Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
left a strong impact on Magdoff's perspective on capitalism
Capitalism
Capitalism is an economic system that became dominant in the Western world following the demise of feudalism. There is no consensus on the precise definition nor on how the term should be used as a historical category...
, as Magdoff recalls a sense of doom felt in the mid-century by pro-capitalists, holding that nothing since 1929 led him to believe that the economy has become immune to cycles of severe crisis. Until his death, Magdoff co-edited the Monthly Review with John Bellamy Foster.
Death
Magdoff died on New Year's Day, 2006 at age 92. He had two sons, one of whom, Fred Magdoff, is an expert in plant and soil science. His wife of almost 70 years, Beatrice, died in 2002.Accusations of espionage
Magdoff has been accused by a number of authors as having been complicit in SovietSoviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
espionage
Espionage
Espionage or spying involves an individual obtaining information that is considered secret or confidential without the permission of the holder of the information. Espionage is inherently clandestine, lest the legitimate holder of the information change plans or take other countermeasures once it...
activity during his time in US government. He was accused of passing information to Soviet intelligence networks in the United States, primarily through what the FBI called the "Perlo Group
Perlo group
Headed by Victor Perlo, the Perlo group is the name given to a group of Americans who provided information which was given to Soviet intelligence agencies; it was active during the World War II period, until the entire group was exposed to the FBI by the defection of Elizabeth Bentley...
." Magdoff was never indicted, but after the end of the Cold War
Cold War
The Cold War was the continuing state from roughly 1946 to 1991 of political conflict, military tension, proxy wars, and economic competition between the Communist World—primarily the Soviet Union and its satellite states and allies—and the powers of the Western world, primarily the United States...
, a number of scholars have inspected declassified documents (including those of the Venona project
Venona project
The VENONA project was a long-running secret collaboration of the United States and United Kingdom intelligence agencies involving cryptanalysis of messages sent by intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union, the majority during World War II...
) from U.S. and Soviet archives. They cite these documents to support the claim that Magdoff was involved in espionage. Other authors have taken issue with some of the broader interpretations of such materials which implicate many Americans in espionage for the Soviet Union.
Harry Magdoff
- Imperialism Without Colonies (2003)
- The Age of Imperialism (1969)
- Imperialism from the Colonial Age to the Present (1977)
Harry Magdoff and Paul M. Sweezy
- The Irreversible Crisis (1988)
- Stagnation and the Financial Explosion (1987)
- The Deepening Crisis of U.S. Capitalism (1980)
- The End of Prosperity (1977)
- The Dynamics of U.S. Capitalism (1970)
Further reading
- Rafalko, Frank J., ed., A Counterintelligence Reader. United States. National Counterintelligence Center, no date.
- John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America, Yale University Press (1999)
- Wikisource:Venona 687 KGB New York to Moscow, 13 May 1944, Perlo group
- Vladimir Pozniakov, A NKVD/NKGB Report to Stalin: A Glimpse into Soviet Intelligence in the United States in the 1940's
- Ellen Schrecker, Many are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (Boston: Little Brown, 1998)
External links
- Visit the Cold War International History Project (CWIHP) for the full text of Alexander Vassiliev's Notebooks containing more information on Magdoff's involvement in Soviet espionage
- List of online articles, books, and interviews with Harry Magdoff (Monthly Review)
- John Bellamy Foster, "The Optimism of the Heart: Harry Magdoff (1913-2006)" (Monthly Review)
- Robert Pollin, "Remembering Harry Magdoff" (Counterpunch website)