Ellen Meiksins Wood

Ellen Meiksins Wood (2012)

Ellen Meiksins Wood (born 1942 in New York City) is a Marxist historian and scholar.

Wood was born Ellen Meiksins one year after her parents, Latvian Jews active in the Bund, arrived in New York from Europe as political refugees. She was raised in the United States and Europe.

Wood received a B.A. in Slavic languages from the University of California, Berkeley in 1962 and subsequently entered the graduate program in political science at the University of California, Los Angeles, from which she received the Ph.D. in 1970. From 1967 to 1996, she taught political science at Glendon College, York University in Toronto, Canada.^[1][2]

She has written many books and articles, some conjointly with her husband, Neal Wood (1922–2003). Her book The Retreat from Class received the Isaac Deutscher Memorial Prize in 1988.^[3] Her work has been translated into many languages, including Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, German, Turkish, Chinese, Korean, and Japanese.

Wood served on the editorial committee of the British journal New Left Review between 1984 and 1993. From 1997 to 2000, Wood was an editor, along with Harry Magdoff and Paul Sweezy, of Monthly Review, the independent socialist magazine.^[4]

In 1996, she was inducted into the Royal Society of Canada, a marker of distinguished scholarship.^[5] She now resides in England.

Books

Sole author

• Mind and Politics: An Approach to the Meaning of Liberal and Socialist Individualism (University of California Press, 1972).
• The Retreat from Class: A New 'True' Socialism (Schocken Books, 1986). ISBN 0-8052-7280-1, and (Verso Classics, January 1999) reprint with new introductionv. ISBN 1-85984-270-4.
• The Pristine Culture of Capitalism (Verso, 1992). ISBN 0-86091-572-7.
• Democracy Against Capitalism: Renewing Historical Materialism (Cambridge University Press, 1995). ISBN 0-521-47682-8. Excerpt available here
• Peasant-Citizen and Slave: The Foundations of Athenian Democracy (Verso, February 20, 1997). ISBN 0-86091-911-0.
• The Origin of Capitalism (Monthly Review Press, 1999), 120 pp. ISBN 1-58367-000-9, ISBN 1-58367-007-6.
• The Origin of Capitalism: A Longer View (Verso Books, 2002), 213 pp. ISBN 1-85984-392-1, ISBN 978-1-85984-392-5.
• Empire of Capital, (Verso, 2003) (ISBN 978-1-85984-502-8) & paperback (Verso, 2005). ISBN 1-84467-518-1.
• Citizens to Lords: A Social History of Western Political Thought from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Verso, 2008). ISBN 978-1-84467-243-1.
• Liberty & Property: A Social History of Western Political Thought from Renaissance to Enlightenment (Verso, 2012). ISBN 978-1-84467-752-8.

Co-authored with Neal Wood

• Class Ideology and Ancient Political Theory: Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle in Social Context (Oxford University Press, 1978).
• A Trumpet of Sedition: Political Theory and the Rise of Capitalism, 1509-1688 (New York University Press, 1997).

Co-edited collections

• In Defense of History: Marxism and the Postmodern Agenda, ed. with John Bellamy Foster (Monthly Review Press, 1997).
• Capitalism and the Information Age: The Political Economy of the Global Communication Revolution, ed. with Robert W. McChesney and John Bellamy Foster (Monthly Review Press, 1998).
• Rising from the Ashes? Labor in the Age of "Global" Capitalism, ed. with Peter Meiksins and Michael Yates (Monthly Review Press, 1998).

Publications available online

• "C.B. MacPherson: Liberalism, And The Task Of Socialist Political Theory", The Socialist Register, Vol.15 (1978), pp. 215–240. Critical evaluation of the thought of C. B. Macpherson. [ Retrieved 18 April 2010 ]
• "Liberal Democracy And Capitalist Hegemony: A Reply To Leo Panitch On The Task Of Socialist Political Theory", The Socialist Register, Vol. 18 (1981), pp. 169–189. On socialist political theory. [ Retrieved 18 April 2010 ]
• "Marxism Without Class Struggle?", The Socialist Register, Vol. 20 (1983), pp. 239–271. [ Retrieved 18 April 2010 ]
• "The Uses and Abuses of 'Civil' Society,", The Socialist Register, Vol. 26: The Retreat of the Intellectuals (1990), pp. 60–84. [ Retrieved 18 April 2010 ]
• "Ralph Milband, 1924-1994", Radical Philoshopy, issue 68 (Autumn 1994). Homage to Ralph Miliband
• "A Chronology of the New Left and its Successors, or: Who's Old-Fashioned Now?", The Socialist Register, Vol. 31: Why Not Capitalism? (1995), pp. 22–49.
• "Modernity, Postmodernity, or Capitalism?", Monthly Review (July–August 1996). [ Retrieved from http://findarticles.com/ 18 April 2010 ]
• "Issues of class and culture: an interview with Aijaz Ahmad", Monthly Review (October 1996). [ Retrieved from http://findarticles.com/ 18 April 2010 ]
• "Back to Marx,", Monthly Review, Vol. 49, No. 2 (June 1997).
• "Labor, the State, and Class Struggle,", Monthly Review, Vol. 49, No. 3 (July–August 1997).
• "A Note on Du Boff and Herman", Monthly Review, Vol. 49, No. 6 (November 1997). A note on globalization.
• "Class compacts, the welfare state, and epochal shifts: a reply to Frances Fox Piven and Richard A. Cloward - New Press, p.13, 1997" (January 1998).
• "The Communist Manifesto After 150 Years,", Monthly Review, Vol. 50, No. 1 (May 1998).
• "The Agrarian Origins of Capitalism,", Monthly Review, Vol. 50, No. 3 (July–August 1998).
• "Capitalist Change and Generational Shifts,", Monthly Review, Vol. 50, No. 5 (October 1998).
• "Kosovo and the New Imperialism", Monthly Review, Vol. 51, No. 2 (June 1999).
• "Unhappy Families: Global Capitalism in a World of Nation-States", Monthly Review, Vol. 51, No. 3 (July–August 1999).
• "The Politics of Capitalism", Monthly Review, Vol. 51, No. 4 (September 1999).
• "Eurocentric Anti-Eurocentrism", solidarity-us.org (2001). A Critique of Eurocentric Anti-Eurocentrism

References

External links

Interviews

• "Interview with Ellen Meiksins Wood - Democracy & Capitalism: Friends or Foes?", New Socialist Magazine, Vol. 1, Issue 1, January–February 1996.
• "An interview with Ellen Meiksins Wood - co-editor of 'Monthly Review'", Interview by Christopher Phelps in Monthly Review, May 1999.
• Downloadable radio interview on the origins of capitalism.

Book reviews

• "Happy Campers" book review of Why Not Socialism? by G.A. Cohen, London Review of Books, Vol. 32, No. 2 (28 January 2010) [ Retrieved 18 April 2010 ]
• "Why It Matters" book review of Hobbes and Republican Liberty by Quentin Skinner, London Review of Books, Vol. 30, No. 18 (25 September 2008) [ Retrieved 18 April 2010 ]