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Table of Contents
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46 (Volume 22, No. 1)

Ingar Solty
The Historic Significance of the New German Left Party

Sriram Ananthanarayanan
New Mechanisms of Imperialism in India: The Special Economic Zones

Mitchel Cohen
The Capitalist INFESTO and How to Fight It

Ravi Malhotra
Expanding the Frontiers of Justice: Reflections on the Theory of Capabilities, Disability Rights, and the Politics of Global Inequality

Thomas Seibert
The Global Justice Movement after Heiligendamm

Peter Seybold
The Struggle against Corporate Takeover of the University

Book Reviews

Anatole Anton & Richard Schmitt, eds.
Toward a New Socialism reviewed by Paul Buhle

Rosemary Feurer
Radical Unionism in the Midwest, 1900-1950
reviewed by Steve Early

Sebastian Budgen,
Stathis Kouvelakis
& Slavoj Žižek, eds.
Lenin Reloaded: Toward a Politics of Truth reviewed by Ronald Paul

Stan Goff
War and Sex reviewed by Pramila Venkateswaran

Gideon Polya
Body Count: Global Avoidable Mortality Since 1950
reviewed by Jacqueline Carrigan

Robert Roth
Health Proxy reviewed by Walter A. Davis

H. Bruce Franklin
The Most Important Fish in the Sea: Menhaden and America reviewed by Scott Carlin

Walter A. Davis
Art & Politics:
Psychoanalysis, Ideology, Theater reviewed by Eugene W. Holland

Marc Falkoff, ed.
Poems from Guantánamo: The Detainees Speak
reviewed by D.H. Melhem

Joel Shatzky
Intelligent Design: A Fable reviewed by Victor Cohen

Alexander Saxton
Religion and the Human Prospect reviewed by Richard Curtis

Peter McLaren & Nathalia Jaramillo
Pedagogy and Praxis in the Age of Empire: Towards a New Humanism reviewed by Andrew Michael Lee

Helen Caldicott
Nuclear Power is Not the Answer;
Helen Caldicott
If You Love This Planet: A Plan to Heal the Earth reviewed by Ronald F. Price

Andrew Kliman
Reclaiming Marx's Capital: A Refutation of the Myth of Inconsistency reviewed by Michael Roberts

Henry Heller
The Cold War and the New Imperialism reviewed by Daniel Egan

Alexander Cockburn & Jeffrey St. Clair
End Times: The Death of the Fourth Estate reviewed by George Fish

Paul Zarembka, ed.
The Hidden History of 9-11-2001 reviewed by Seth Sandronsky

Steve Ellner & Miguel Tinker Salas, eds.
Venezuela: Hugo Chávez and the Decline of an “Exceptional Democracy” reviewed by Nikolas Kozloff

Michael González Cruz
Nacionalismo revolucionario puertorriqueño: la lucha armada, intelectuales, y prisioneros políticos y de guerra reviewed by Juan Antonio Ocasio Rivera

Lynn Hunt
Inventing Human Rights: A History reviewed by Judith F. Stone

Michael Hardt
Presents the Declaration of Independence reviewed by Carl Mirra

Notes on Contributors

Preface

By Yusuf Nuruddin, Alcena Madeline Davis Rogan and Victor Wallis

Socialism and Democracy has long embodied a paradox endemic to the US Left. We are a journal strongly committed to helping build a vast popular movement, yet there is a painful barrier between our analyses and many of the people for whom these analyses, if appropriately developed, could have some relevance. In other words, despite the manifest bankruptcy of the capitalist order (expressed in war, global poverty, and environmental degradation), only a relatively minuscule portion of the population is systematically discussing alternatives to it.

Science fiction is one of the few domains in which reflection on such possibilities seems to extend outside our narrow circles. The time for us to pay attention to this genre is therefore long overdue.

This project owes its origins to the initiative of S&D board-member Yusuf Nuruddin, who recognized both the general importance of the topic and also the need for radicals to be aware of the popular culture that has conditioned science fiction's appeal. In addition, he played a vital role in giving this volume its multicultural contours. Because our initial team, however, lacked anyone conversant in the larger field of Science Fiction Studies, we were most fortunate to engage the collaboration, as co-editor for this project, of science fiction scholar Alcena Madeline Davis Rogan.

Thanks for calling our attention to Rogan's achievements in this field and her potential for contributing to this issue go to Darko Suvin, a leading SF critic and also a valued contributor to our pages (see his translation of and commentary on Brecht's "Manifesto" in S&D no. 31 [2002]). Victor Wallis, S&D 's managing editor, in turn wishes to call attention to the intellectual project which provided the setting for his conversations with Suvin - the multi-volume Historisch-Kritisches Wörterbuch des Marxismus (Historical-Critical Dictionary of Marxism) - and to express his gratitude to Wolfgang Fritz Haug and Frigga Haug, who have been at the core of that project since its inception in the mid-1980s.

Finally, all three of us want to thank the contributors to this volume for their faith in our project, for the quality of their work, and for their willingness to accommodate our sometimes far-reaching requests for revision.

 

A MARTIAL EPIGRAM ON MARTIANS
Qui Legis Oedipoden Caligantemque Thyesten

Martial X.4

Why are you staring so raptly into Orcs and Elves
Why gulping down Conan, Potter & th'insufferable Lewis
What are to you rebelling robots, or what help
To your wasting lives the circenses of media clerics
Brainwashing the new imperial plebeians?
Imbibe
What life shall recognize & call out "This is mine!"
Even if Aliens or dragons, such story shall taste of us humans,
The ways we oppress & love each other, in what cave
Are we ourselves & how may we get out into the light
Of the blue Sun?
But no, Mr. Jones, you don't want to See yourself, cognize your killing cruelties: so at least Read your Tolkien!
You may shut the book & think
Why he loved cleansing wars.

-- Darko R. Suvin
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