new issue of Monthly Review

[Michael Yates]

I am reading the summer double issue of Monthly Review, titled
"Capitalism at the End of the Millenium: A Global Survey."  It looks
like another excellent issue.  So far I have read two very interesting
articles.  The first is by Ellen Meiksins Wood, "Unhappy Families:
Global Capitalism in a World of Nation States," which makes the point
that the nation state has throughout the history of capitalism been the
handmaiden of capital accumulation and is not about to disappear from
the scene, transcended somehow by globalization.

The second is by Doug Henwood, "Booming, Borrowing, and Consuming: The
US Economy in 1999."  This article is filled with illuminating
statistics of great use to those interested in the long US boom and in
dismantling the silly notions of mainstream commentators that this boom
is without precedent (in terms of real growth, though it is unique in
speculative mania) and spells the beginning of permanent prosperity.  I
am going to be teaching in a union summer school in two weeks, and I
will certainly copy some of the tables and use Doug's analysis of them
in the class.  I'll try to report back on what the students thought
about them.

I encourage list members to get a copy of this issue.  Other articles
cover Sub Saharan Africa, Japan, Western Europe, Russia, Latin America,
and Asia.

michael yates