Victor Wallis | |
---|---|
Citizenship | US |
Occupation(s) | Political scientist, author, academic, and activist |
Academic background | |
Education | AB., History (1960) MA., History of Ideas (1963) PhD., Political Science (1970) |
Alma mater | Harvard University Brandeis University Columbia University |
Academic work | |
Institutions | Berklee College of Music,Boston |
Website | http://www.victorwallis.com/ |
Victor Wallis is an American political scientist,author,academic,and activist most known for his work on the relationship between capitalism,ecologies,and socialism. He serves as a professor in the Department of Liberal Arts &Sciences at the Berklee College of Music. [1]
Among Wallis's authored publications are articles,book chapters,and books,including Red-Green Revolution:The Politics and Technology of Ecosocialism (2018) and Socialist Practice:Histories and Theories (2020).
Wallis was the Managing Editor of Socialism and Democracy from 1997 to 2017, [2] and has been Editor-at-Large since then. [3] In 1977,he was elected Chair of the Caucus for a New Political Science (CNPS) for a one-year term, [4] during which he helped in founding the Caucus's flagship journal,New Political Science (NPS),and has remained on the journal's editorial board. [5]
Wallis earned an A.B. in history from Harvard in 1960 and an M.A. in the history of ideas from Brandeis University in 1963. He then completed his Ph.D. in political science at Columbia in 1970,specializing in comparative and Latin American politics. [1] As part of his doctoral research,he spent a year in Chile from 1966 to 1967 as a Fulbright scholar,affiliated with the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales,writing his dissertation on "Foreign Investment and Chilean Politics." [6]
Within academia,Wallis held teaching positions in political science at St. Lawrence University (1968–70),Indiana University-Purdue University at Indianapolis (1970–94),and the Berklee College of Music in Boston (from 1996 onward). He served as the Resident Director of the Indiana/California Program in Lima,from 1982 until 1983,and in the fall of 1987,he directed the International Honors Program in Europe. During the spring of 1988,he was a Resident Scholar at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington. [1]
Wallis's report,titled "Putting ‘New Political Science’Back into the Caucus," was published in the Autumn 1975 issue of CNPS's Newsletter,A New Political Science;it recommended that the Caucus adopt a more explicitly anti-capitalist position,arguing that such a stance could enhance its effectiveness within the APSA. In 1977,he was elected Chairperson of the Caucus,where he edited two of its newsletter issues,and helped launch the journal New Political Science in 1979,continuing as an editorial board member since. [5]
In 1978,Wallis joined the New American Movement,remaining an at-large member until its dissolution in 1981. [7] Throughout the 1980s,he supported the New York-based Wellspring Fund,which backed initiatives that combined working-class organizing with environmental and cultural efforts. [8] Since 2011,he has been part of the online multi-issue activist organization RootsAction. [9]
Wallis's research and publications span topics such as Marxism,environmental concerns,ecology and technology,workers' self-management,U.S. society and politics,Latin American politics and relations,and Latin American cinema. In 1974,he applied major findings from his dissertation in his work "Imperialism and the 'Via Chilena'",which analyzed the factors that led to the undermining of the Allende government. [10] His interest in Latin American issues extended to writing several film reviews for the media journal Jump Cut over the decades. [11] Additionally,his exploration of worker control in Chile prompted a broader study on the topic,originally published in 1978, [12] [13] and later expanded and revised into a book chapter in 2011. [14]
Beginning with his 1990 essay on the collapse of the Soviet bloc,Wallis initiated his collaboration with Socialism and Democracy,where he served as managing editor for twenty years from 1997. [15] [16] His writing increasingly focused on the environmental crisis,starting with his 1992 article in Monthly Review . [17] Over the years,he contributed numerous articles to Capitalism Nature Socialism ,including "Toward Ecological Socialism”(2001). [18] This body of work culminated in his 2018 book,Red-Green Revolution,which particularly argued that addressing the ecological crisis required a socialist framework rooted in democratic participation,informed by past efforts. [19] This book included a revised version of his 2015 article on intersectionality,which sought to bridge the divide between Marxism and 'new social movement' theorizing, [20] and has been translated into German and French. [21]
Furthermore,Wallis authored articles for both Monthly Review [22] and New Political Science [23] that address the history and prospects of the U.S. Left,which,along with other writings,were incorporated into his 2020 book Socialist Practice. Prior to that,his 2018 lecture series in China provided a concise overview of U.S. society and politics,forming the foundation for his book Democracy Denied. [24] [25]
Among other works,Wallis critiqued the U.S. response to COVID-19 in an April 2020 interview,contrasting it with the effective approaches of socialist countries like China and Cuba,which integrated government action with public participation. [26] Moreover,he highlighted the censorship faced by dissenting doctors,such as Peter A. McCullough,whose alternative views on COVID-19 treatment were labeled as "misinformation." He argued that this suppression of dissent not only influenced policy formation but also prioritized pharmaceutical interests over effective public health measures,ultimately undermining the pandemic response. [27]
Wallis's works have been reviewed,receiving attention from scholars and activists. Joseph G. Ramsey praised him for challenging readers "to grasp this world by its roots,so that we can make another world possible," [28] while Michael Löwy,the Marxist sociologist,described Red-Green Revolution as "outstanding." [29] Similarly,Ian Angus commented,"Victor Wallis' new book is an important contribution to the growing ecosocialist movement,a passionate call to organize and act against capitalist ecocide," [30] and Christian Stache,writing in International Critical Thought,noted that Wallis is "one of the leading political thinkers of the ecosocialist movement in the English-speaking world ..." [31]
Carl Boggs,commenting on Democracy Denied,commended Wallis for a "masterful,critical overview of United States history with a focus on democratic politics,or the lack of such politics." [32] Additionally,a Virginia prisoner wrote for San Francisco Bay View,observing that even apolitical readers found the book "reader-friendly and well-articulated." [33] Mat Callahan acknowledged Socialist Practice for offering "thought-provoking interventions," [34] while Steve Ellner highlighted that the book is a "fascinating study of leftist theory and practice from Marx to the present." [35]
Libertarian socialism is an anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist political current that emphasises self-governance and workers' self-management. It is contrasted from other forms of socialism by its rejection of state ownership and from other forms of libertarianism by its rejection of private property. Broadly defined,it includes schools of both anarchism and Marxism,as well as other tendencies that oppose the state and capitalism.
Leninism is a political ideology developed by Russian Marxist revolutionary Vladimir Lenin that proposes the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat led by a revolutionary vanguard party as the political prelude to the establishment of communism. Lenin's ideological contributions to the Marxist ideology relate to his theories on the party,imperialism,the state,and revolution. The function of the Leninist vanguard party is to provide the working classes with the political consciousness and revolutionary leadership necessary to depose capitalism.
Socialism is an economic and political philosophy encompassing diverse economic and social systems characterised by social ownership of the means of production,as opposed to private ownership. It describes the economic,political,and social theories and movements associated with the implementation of such systems. Social ownership can take various forms,including public,community,collective,cooperative,or employee. As one of the main ideologies on the political spectrum,socialism is considered the standard left wing ideology in most countries of the world. Types of socialism vary based on the role of markets and planning in resource allocation,and the structure of management in organizations.
Eduard Bernstein was a German social democratic Marxist theorist and politician. A member of the Social Democratic Party of Germany (SPD),Bernstein had held close association to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels,but he began to identify what he believed to be errors in Marxist thinking and began to criticize views held by Marxism when he investigated and challenged the Marxist materialist theory of history. He rejected significant parts of Marxist theory that were based upon Hegelian metaphysics and rejected the Hegelian perspective of an immanent economic necessity to socialism.
John Molyneux was a British Trotskyist,academic and author. He was a leading member of the Socialist Workers Party before retiring to Ireland,where he became active in the Irish SWP and was editor of Irish Marxist Review.
Joel Stephen Kovel was an American psychiatrist,scholar,human rights activist,and author known as a founder of eco-socialism. Kovel became a psychoanalyst,but he abandoned psychoanalysis in 1985.
In Marxist theory,a new democratic society will arise through the organised actions of an international working class,enfranchising the entire population and freeing up humans to act without being bound by the labour market. There would be little,if any,need for a state,the goal of which was to enforce the alienation of labor;as such,the state would eventually wither away as its conditions of existence disappear. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels stated in The Communist Manifesto and later works that "the first step in the revolution by the working class,is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class,to win the battle of democracy" and universal suffrage,being "one of the first and most important tasks of the militant proletariat". As Marx wrote in his Critique of the Gotha Program,"between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other. Corresponding to this is also a political transition period in which the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat". He allowed for the possibility of peaceful transition in some countries with strong democratic institutional structures,but suggested that in other countries in which workers can not "attain their goal by peaceful means" the "lever of our revolution must be force",stating that the working people had the right to revolt if they were denied political expression. In response to the question "What will be the course of this revolution?" in Principles of Communism,Friedrich Engels wrote:
Above all,it will establish a democratic constitution,and through this,the direct or indirect dominance of the proletariat.
Communism is a sociopolitical,philosophical,and economic ideology within the socialist movement,whose goal is the creation of a communist society,a socioeconomic order centered around common ownership of the means of production,distribution,and exchange that allocates products to everyone in the society based on need. A communist society would entail the absence of private property and social classes,and ultimately money and the state.
State socialism is a political and economic ideology within the socialist movement that advocates state ownership of the means of production. This is intended either as a temporary measure,or as a characteristic of socialism in the transition from the capitalist to the socialist mode of production or to a communist society. State socialism was first theorised by Ferdinand Lassalle. It advocates a planned economy controlled by the state in which all industries and natural resources are state-owned.
Types of socialism include a range of economic and social systems characterised by social ownership and democratic control of the means of production and organizational self-management of enterprises as well as the political theories and movements associated with socialism. Social ownership may refer to forms of public,collective or cooperative ownership,or to citizen ownership of equity in which surplus value goes to the working class and hence society as a whole. There are many varieties of socialism and no single definition encapsulates all of them,but social ownership is a common element shared by its various forms. Socialists disagree about the degree to which social control or regulation of the economy is necessary,how far society should intervene,and whether government,particularly existing government,is the correct vehicle for change.
Eco-socialism is an ideology merging aspects of socialism with that of green politics,ecology and alter-globalization or anti-globalization. Eco-socialists generally believe that the expansion of the capitalist system is the cause of social exclusion,poverty,war and environmental degradation through globalization and imperialism,under the supervision of repressive states and transnational structures.
Christopher John Harman was a British journalist and political activist,and a member of the Central Committee of the Socialist Workers Party. He was an editor of International Socialism and Socialist Worker.
Impossibilism is a Marxist theory that stresses the limited value of political,economic,and social reforms under capitalism. As a doctrine,impossibilism views the pursuit of such reforms as counterproductive to the goal of achieving socialism as they stabilize,and therefore strengthen,support for capitalism. Impossibilism holds that reforms to capitalism are irrelevant or outright counter-productive to the goal of achieving socialism and should not be a major focus of socialist politics.
The Communist Party of China (CPC) frames its ideology as Marxism–Leninism adapted to the historical context of China,often expressing it as socialism with Chinese characteristics. Major ideological contributions of the CPC's leadership are viewed as "Thought" or "Theory," with "Thought" carrying greater weight. Influential concepts include Mao Zedong Thought,Deng Xiaoping Theory,and Xi Jinping Thought. Other important concepts include the socialist market economy,Jiang Zemin's idea of the Three Represents,and Hu Jintao's Scientific Outlook on Development.
Orthodox Marxism is the body of Marxist thought which emerged after the deaths of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the late 19th century,expressed in its primary form by Karl Kautsky. Kautsky's views of Marxism dominated the European Marxist movement for two decades,and orthodox Marxism was the official philosophy of the majority of the socialist movement as represented in the Second International until the First World War in 1914,whose outbreak caused Kautsky's influence to wane and brought to prominence the orthodoxy of Vladimir Lenin. Orthodox Marxism aimed to simplify,codify and systematize Marxist method and theory by clarifying perceived ambiguities and contradictions in classical Marxism. It overlaps significantly with Instrumental Marxism.
A socialist state,socialist republic,or socialist country,sometimes referred to as a workers' state or workers' republic,is a sovereign state constitutionally dedicated to the establishment of socialism. The term communist state is often used synonymously in the West,specifically when referring to one-party socialist states governed by Marxist–Leninist communist parties,despite these countries being officially socialist states in the process of building socialism and progressing toward a communist society. These countries never describe themselves as communist nor as having implemented a communist society. Additionally,a number of countries that are multi-party capitalist states make references to socialism in their constitutions,in most cases alluding to the building of a socialist society,naming socialism,claiming to be a socialist state,or including the term people's republic or socialist republic in their country's full name,although this does not necessarily reflect the structure and development paths of these countries' political and economic systems. Currently,these countries include Algeria,Bangladesh,Guyana,India,Nepal,Nicaragua,Sri Lanka and Tanzania.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to socialism:
Environmentalism in China consists of philosophical concepts and the movement within China with the goals of preserving its environment and addressing environmental issues.