[Michael A. Lebowitz was Professor Emeritus of Economics at Simon
Fraser University in Canada and the author of many books on marxism.]
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MICHAEL A. LEBOWITZ (NOV 27, 1937 – APRIL 19, 2023)  
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April 20, 2023
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_ Michael A. Lebowitz was Professor Emeritus of Economics at Simon
Fraser University in Canada and the author of many books on marxism. _


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For his writing on Marxist economic theory and politics go to
the pages for books
[[link removed]] or for articles. 
[[link removed]]There is a separate page for
those in Spanish.  [[link removed]]Some of
the linked texts are pre-publication versions.

The Bio [[link removed]] page includes materials
about Michael A. Lebowitz.

Another page features selected unpublished work and videos of public
presentations. [[link removed]]

Some other sites providing writings by Michael A. Lebowitz:

_Monthly Review_ [[link removed]]

_Socialist Project
[[link removed]]_

_Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal
[[link removed]]_

_Venezuela Analysis
[[link removed]]_

Michael A. Lebowitz
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He was born in Newark, New Jersey
[[link removed]], on 27 November
1937 to Louis Lebowitz (machinist) and Dora Lebowitz (bookkeeper). Ten
years later, his family moved to Passaic, New Jersey
[[link removed]], where he
completed public school in 1955. He studied economics and marketing at
the New York University School of Commerce
[[link removed]]
at night while working days at Federal Pioneer Electric (FPE) as a
statistical clerk and then market research analyst. Graduating cum
laude with a BS in 1960, he went on to do graduate work in economics
(with an emphasis upon economic history) at the University of
Wisconsin–Madison
[[link removed]],
earning a Masters degree in 1964.

Career

In 1965, without completing his doctoral thesis, he took a job to
teach economics and economic history at the new university in British
Columbia, Canada, Simon Fraser University, where he specialized in
teaching Marxist Economics and Comparative Economic Systems until his
retirement in 2000 as Professor Emeritus.[1]
[[link removed]]

Work

Lebowitz worked at FPE during the day at a time when the electrical
products industry was engaged in price fixing and allocation of market
shares while at night at NYU he was taught all about how prices were
determined by competition in the free market.[2]
[[link removed]]
As a result of this disparity, he began to study Thorsten Veblen and
Karl Marx, critics of mainstream theory, and to collaborate with Labor
Research Associates, contributing several articles (as "an economist
friend") in _Economic Notes_.

In order to study economic institutions such as the corporation,
Lebowitz applied to the University of Wisconsin, which had a
reputation for Institutional Economics. Finding that description no
longer accurate, he focused upon economic history. While in Madison
(1960-5), he was active in the Wisconsin Socialist Club, Fair Play for
Cuba, Friends of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)
and joined the editorial board of _Studies on the Left
[[link removed]]_, a journal of the
New Left.[3]
[[link removed]]
He was invited to co-chair the economics workshop for the 1962 Port
Huron meeting of the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), which
produced the Port Huron Statement
[[link removed]] of SDS.
Subsequently, he was active in the Madison chapter of SDS and in
antiwar activity.

Upon arriving at Simon Fraser in its first year of operation, he
taught introductory economics and economic history but went on to
teach the history of economic thought and comparative economic
systems. He added a new course, Introduction to Marxist Economics plus
periodic Selected Topics in Marxian Economics. Active in university
politics, he was President of the Faculty Union (including many junior
faculty) and on the University Senate, where he supported the
Political Science, Sociology and Anthropology (PSA) department, which
the university was determined to purge. After a failed strike of PSA
faculty, he served as defense counsel for one of the suspended PSA
faculty, who was acquitted.[4]
[[link removed]]

Outside of the university, he was active in local community organizing
and in the "Waffle Caucus'" of the New Democratic Party (NDP), was
elected to the party executive in British Columbia and served as Party
Policy Chair during the NDP government, 1972-5. Influenced by the
Institute for Workers Control in the UK, he introduced party policies
focused upon workers' control.

In 1978, he was invited to participate in the Socialism in the World
Conference in Cavtat, Yugoslavia and was a regular participant until
1986 and used this opportunity to study self-management. Also, he
joined the editorial board in 1980 of _Studies in Political Economy
[[link removed]]_. During
this period, he used a sabbatical year to study Marx's newly
translated _Grundrisse_ and Hegel; this was followed by articles on
Marx's theory of needs, the falling rate of profits, crisis theory,
one-sided _Capital_ and the first edition (1992) of _Beyond Capital:
Marx's Political Economy of the Working Class_. In this book, Lebowitz
introduced what would become a continuing theme in his work--- the
focus upon the simultaneous changing of circumstances and self-change
("revolutionary practice").

In 1994, he participated in the World Solidarity Conference on Cuba in
Havana (during the Special Period) and came several years after for
the annual North American and Cuban Philosophers and Other Social
Scientists meetings. In 1997 he came to Cuba to research the effect of
the Special Period on solidaristic institutions, gave several talks at
the Faculty of Economics, and met Marta Harnecker
[[link removed]]. He became a regular
participant in the annual Globalization Conferences in Havana and
organized international Marx Conferences in Havana in 2003, 2004 and
2006.[5]
[[link removed]]

The revised edition of _Beyond Capital_ was published in 2003, and it
received the Deutscher Memorial Prize
[[link removed]] in 2004 for
the best and most innovative writing in the Marxist tradition.[6]
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2003 was also the year Lebowitz and Harnecker (who had been invited by
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to be an assistant) arranged to move
to Venezuela; in 2004, Lebowitz became an assistant to Nelson
Merentes, at that time Minister of the Social Economy of Venezuela. He
gave talks there on Yugoslav self-management in 2004 and 2005 at the
Workers Table of the International Solidarity Conferences, and one
talk from 2005, "El Socialismo no Cae del Cielo", was widely read and
published in several editions after President Chavez praised it on his
weekly tv show, "_Alo Presidente"._ Several of these essays were
incorporated in _Build it Now: Socialism for the 21st Century_,
published in 2006.

In 2004, Harnecker and Lebowitz urged Chavez to create a thinktank
which could be a home for foreign intellectuals who wanted to come to
support the Bolivarian Revolution, and in 2006, Centro Internacional
Miranda (CIM) was officially founded with offices and meeting rooms
located at the Hotel Anauco, where they lived.[7]
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At CIM, Lebowitz directed a program on Transformative Practice and
Human Development and, with the help of several assistants, organized
several conferences and invited speakers on this theme. During this
period, he responded to several requests for papers from President
Chavez, became an advisor to the Minister of Economic Development and
Planning in 2008 and published several books in English (e.g., _The
Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development_) and in Spanish in Cuba
and Venezuela.

In 2011 Harnecker and Lebowitz returned to Vancouver and proceeded to
produce several books, one of which won her the Libertador Prize in
2013 for _A World to Build: New Paths Toward Twenty-First Socialism_
(as published in English in 2015). When the substantial funds
associated with this prize became available, they established a
program in Cuba on Socialism for the 21st Century. Working with
several Cuban intellectuals and with the support of the Venezuelan
Embassy, beginning in 2016 the program organized several talks and
panels and published a series of short books (including Lebowitz's
"What is Socialism for the 21st Century?", later published in
English). This venture was cut short when they returned to Vancouver
for medical care for her cancer.

Awards

* Received the Deutscher Memorial Prize
[[link removed]] in 2004 for
the best and most innovative writing in the Marxist tradition.[8]
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Books

* Lebowitz, Michael A. (2003). Beyond capital: Marx's political
economy of the working class (2nd ed.). New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
ISBN [[link removed](identifier)] 978-0333964309
[[link removed]][9]
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* Lebowitz, Michael A. (2006). Build it now: socialism for the
twenty-first century. New York: Monthly Review Press. ISBN
[[link removed](identifier)] 978-1583671450
[[link removed]][10]
[[link removed]][11]
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* Lebowitz, Michael A. (2009). The Path to Human Development:
Capitalism Or Socialism?. Bangalore: Books for Change. ISBN
[[link removed](identifier)] 978-81-8291-073-7
[[link removed]][12]
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* Lebowitz, Michael A. (2009). Following Marx: method, critique, and
crisis. Chicago, IL: Haymarket Books. ISBN
[[link removed](identifier)] 978-1608460335
[[link removed]][13]
[[link removed]][14]
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* Lebowitz, Michael A. (2010). The socialist alternative: real human
development. New York. ISBN
[[link removed](identifier)] 978-1583672143
[[link removed]][15]
[[link removed]][16]
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* Lebowitz, Michael A. (2012). The contradictions of "real
socialism": the conductor and the conducted. New York: Monthly Review
Press. ISBN
[[link removed](identifier)] 978-1583672563
[[link removed]][17]
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* Lebowitz, Michael A. (2015). The socialist imperative: from Gotha
to now. New York. ISBN
[[link removed](identifier)] 978-1583675465
[[link removed]][18]
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* Lebowitz, Michael A. (2020). Between capitalism and community. New
York. ISBN
[[link removed](identifier)] 9781583678862
[[link removed]][19]
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Reference

* "Emeritus & Retired Faculty"
[[link removed]].
_Simon Fraser University_
* Fuller, John (1962). _The Gentlemen Conspirators: The Story of the
Price-Fixers in the Electrical Industry_. Grove Press, Inc.
* "Review Essay: the "New Left" Still Green in Old Age"
[[link removed]].
Marxism-Leninism Today.
* "Michael Lebowitz fonds - SFU AtoM"
[[link removed]]. _Simon Fraser University_.
* "ope-l-0405: Marx Conference in Havana just completed"
[[link removed]].
_Wfu.edu_.
* "Past Recipients"
[[link removed]]. Deutscher
Memorial Prize. June 10, 2014.
* "Centro Internacional Miranda | MR Online"
[[link removed]].
_Monthly Review_. September 15, 2006.
* "Past Recipients"
[[link removed]]. Deutscher
Memorial Prize. June 10, 2014.
* Albritton, Robert (2003). "Returning to Marx's "Capital": A
Critique of Lebowitz's "Beyond Capital""
[[link removed]]. _History of Economic Ideas_.
11 (3): 95–107. ISSN
[[link removed](identifier)] 1122-8792
[[link removed]]. JSTOR
[[link removed](identifier)] 23723222
[[link removed]].
* "Monthly Review | Build It Now: Socialism for the 21st Century"
[[link removed]]. _Monthly Review_.
* Angotti, Tom (June 2009). "Book Review: Build It Now: Socialism
for the Twenty-first Century Michael A. Lebowitz, NY: Monthly Review
Press, 2006. 122 pp, ISBN 1-58367-145-5, paper, $14.95. The Chávez
Code: Cracking US Intervention in Venezuela Eva Golinger, Northampton,
MA: Interlink, 2006. 224 pp, ISBN 13: 978-1-56656-647-6, $17.95"
[[link removed]].
_Review of Radical Political Economics_. 41 (2): 261–265. doi
[[link removed](identifier)]:10.1177/0486613409331464
[[link removed]].
* "Monthly Review | The Path to Human Development: Capitalism or
Socialism?"
[[link removed]].
_Monthly Review_. 1 February 2009.
* Fayazmanesh, Sasan (2010). "A Sentimental Journey Through Marxian
Economics" [[link removed]]. _History of
Economic Ideas_. 18 (3): 209–216. ISSN
[[link removed](identifier)] 1122-8792
[[link removed]]. JSTOR
[[link removed](identifier)] 23724559
[[link removed]].
* Mathoor, Vineeth (October 2011). "Book Review: Following Marx:
Method, Critique and Crisis, by Michael A. Lebowitz"
[[link removed]].
_Capital & Class_. 35 (3): 509–511. doi
[[link removed](identifier)]:10.1177/0309816811420273m
[[link removed]]. S2CID
[[link removed](identifier)] 144873209
[[link removed]].
* Schmidt, Ingo (2012). "Review of The Socialist Alternative: Real
Human Development" [[link removed]]. _Labour /
Le Travail_. 70: 357–359. ISSN
[[link removed](identifier)] 0700-3862
[[link removed]]. JSTOR
[[link removed](identifier)] 24244101
[[link removed]].
* Laibman, David (2011). "Review of The Socialist Alternative: Real
Human Development" [[link removed]]. _Science &
Society_. 75 (3): 432–434. ISSN
[[link removed](identifier)] 0036-8237
[[link removed]]. JSTOR
[[link removed](identifier)] 41290179
[[link removed]].
* Adair-Toteff, Christopher (1 March 2013). "Review of The
Contradictions of Real Socialism: The Conductor and The Conducted by
Michael A. Lebowitz"
[[link removed]].
_International Critical Thought_. 3 (1): 121–124. doi
[[link removed](identifier)]:10.1080/21598282.2013.761452
[[link removed]]. ISSN
[[link removed](identifier)] 2159-8282
[[link removed]]. S2CID
[[link removed](identifier)] 143550222
[[link removed]].
* "Monthly Review | The Socialist Imperative: From Gotha to Now"
[[link removed]]. _Monthly
Review_.

* "Monthly Review | Between Capitalism and Community"
[[link removed]].
_Monthly Review_.

* Marxism
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* Venezuela
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* 21st Century Socialism
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