Louis Proyect

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"A revolutionary career does not lead to banquets and honorary titles, interesting research and professorial wages. It leads to misery, disgrace, ingratitude, prison and a voyage into the unknown, illuminated by only an almost superhuman belief."
--Max Horkheimer

Louis Proyect received his formal education at Bard College (BA, 1965) and The New School University in New York City (MA, 1967). On or about that time he joined the US Socialist Workers Party (SWP) where he organized sales of the party press, public meetings and gave classes on Marxist theory. He parted with the SWP in 1978. Instead of completing his Ph.D. in Philosophy (57/60 credits), he spent most of the 1980s in the Central American solidarity movement, first with the Committee in Solidarity with the People of El Salvador, and then with Tecnica, an organization that sent skilled professionals to Nicaragua. In the early 1990s he joined the staff of Columbia University where he currently works as a computer programmer.

Proyect is the moderator of the Marxism List and maintains a scholarly site, marxmail.org, in the non-sectarian tradition of The Socialist Union, a group led by Bert Cochran and Harry Braverman in the '50s. His work has been published in many journals and magazines such as New Politics, Journal of the History of Economic Thought, Organization and Environment, Cultural Logic, Dark Night Field Notes, Green Left Weekly and Canadian Dimension. He is also present in the blogosphere: his blog, Unrepentant Marxist, is worthy of one's attention.

Proyect has been contributing to Swans since February 2003. His book reviews, political columns and essays include:

2003 || 2004 || 2005 || 2006 || 2007 || 2008

A couple of examples...

•  Behind The Anti-Nader Attacks (May 2004):  A lucid analysis of the persistent attacks against Ralph Nader from the so-called American left, the Cruise Missile Left, et al.

•  Chinua Achebe's Anthills of the Savannah (Dec. 2003):  Review of a non-Eurocentric vision of Sub-Saharan Africa through the deeply complex and multileveled work of Nigerian Chinua Achebe.

•  Nikolai Bukharin, How it All Began (Feb. 2003):  A review of Bukharin's extraordinary fictional work written in the Lubyanka Prison in 1937-38, before his execution in March 1938.