Interview with a Canadian Marxist

Canada has a quite a strong home grown left and even an emigre community of Marxists who view themselves as Canadian, because of our unique situation of having an actually existing socialist party in this country, that is the NDP.

We can argue later about how left wing or socialist it is, however since most of the Marxist Left cut their teeth in or around the NDP, suffice it to say it is the party of the Left in Canada despite all the Trot and ML sect wannabes. Even the old CP cuddled up to and was formitive in the development of the NDP out of the CCF.

An interesting interview in the Monthly Review online is with the American emigre Canadian Marxist academic Michael Lebowitz who is now living in Venezeula. With his wife they are active in the Bolivarian movement there, as well as building international solidarity links to support the Chavez government.

Michael is one of the more accessible Marxists, who I have had the pleasure of cooresponding with by email, and far from being just an academic he has remained an activist.

Completing Marx's Project: An Interview with Michael A. Lebowitz
by Mark Fischer

Michael A. Lebowitz, the author of Beyond Capital: Marx's Political Economy of the Working Class, argues that Capital, taken alone, is one-sided, given Marx's intention to also write a book on wage-labor. The incompleteness of Marx's work has helped produce a left whose theory is distorted and characterized by economism and programmatic narrowness. I spoke to the comrade in Venezuela, where he currently lives. He began with a description of his personal evolution as a communist.

Tags
Marxism
Michael Lebowitz
Monthly Review
Venezeula
Canada
Capital