Draper, Hal
Recommended Author Index

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  1. The ABC of National Liberation Movements
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1969
    A war is politics continued by other, that is forcible, means. Our attitude toward a war must be congruent with our attitude toward the politics of which it is the continuation. This determines our principled position on the question of whether to support or oppose a given war - not primarily our opinion of the men, the government or the class leading the war, not our opinion of their past or present crimes. The latter considerations will be very relevant to how we support or oppose a war, but not to whether we do.
  2. Adventures of the Communist Manifesto
    Resource Type: Book
    Draper offers a comprehensive overview of the whole intellectual history of the Manifesto, combined with a new, strictly literal English-language translation. This translation is a major contribution, and the book as a whole is a gem.
  3. Anatomy of the Micro-Sect
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1973
    Is there an alternative to the sect mode of organization which dominates the whole history of American socialism, past and present?
  4. Berkeley: The New Student Revolt
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1965
    This story of the “free speech” uprising on the Berkeley campus of the University of California was begun in the conviction that an extraordinary event, in an historical sense, had taken place before our startled citizenry; and that it should be described for history as it was.
  5. Civil Liberties in the Fight Against Fascism
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1945
    Fighting against an evil, like anti-Semitism or racial hatred, does not mean calling on the state to suppress the evil.
  6. The Death of the State in Marx and Engels 
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1970
    Surveys the thinking of Marx and Engels on the 'dying-away' of the state in socialist (communist) society.
  7. The 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' in Marx and Engels
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1987
    What did the phrase 'dictatorship of the proletariat' mean to Marx and to his contemporaneous readers?
  8. How to Defend Israel
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1948
    Out of the night of national hatred in Palestine, from the ranks of the working class there, there can arise a real Zion, a Middle East in which Jew and Arab build together a workers, a world without exploitation and oppression.
  9. The 'Inevitability of Socialism'
    The Meaning of a Much Abused Formula
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1947
    It is our conviction that the socialist revolution will triumph. There is no question of 'equal possibility.' But this conviction is based on an examination of evidence - in the first place, upon our Marxist analysis of the social forces at work, the truth of which, like all human truth, is tested and confirmed only in practice (in struggle). It is not the same as saying that the socialist revolution is inevitable.
  10. Israel's Arab Minority: The Beginning of a Tragedy
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1956
    Excerpt:

    Without in the least derogating this moral indignation at the treatment of the Arab minority, which is richly justified, one aspect of the denunciation misses the mark. The moral indignation should not be visited in the first place against the miserable, harassed, driven Jewish DPs from Europe who, in their fear and need, were used as pawns to grab the land and property of the dispossessed Arabs. They were steered and pushed into this position by those who knew what they were doing - Zionist arms like the Jewish Agency, Zionist authorities in the armed forces and government, both by design and by toleration.
    Zionism - the ideology of Jewish chauvinism - showed that it was and is one of the deeply reactionary conceptions of the political world. The child of anti-Semitism, it became the father of another form of ethnic oppression; if genocide means the murder of a people as such, then there should be a word for the robbery of a people as such.
    What Zionism created in Palestine in 1948 was the first act of a tragedy.
  11. Israel's Arab Minority: The Great Land Robbery
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1957
    Something that is disturbing about those Israeli liberals who do tell the truth about the Arab minority is that they tend to pass the guilt off onto the backs of "the Jewish people." They ask how could "the Jewish people" do this to "a helpless minority" when it has itself been the victim of robbery and exploitation and has so often vowed itself to righteousness and justice? One must respect the motives of this breast-beating, but the content is distressing. It was not "the Jewish people" who did this but the Zionist authorities, the Zionist movement, and the Zionist government that bear the responsibility; and the difference is enormous.
  12. Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution 
    Volume I: State and Bureaucracy
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1977
    A wide-ranging and thorough exposition of Marx's views on democracy.
  13. Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution 
    Volume II: The Politics of Social Classes
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1978
    Draper ranges through the development of the thought of Marx and Engels on the role of classes in society.
  14. Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution
    Volume III: The Dictatorship of the Proletariat
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1986
    Hal Draper examines how Marx and Marxism dealt with the issue of dictatorship in relation to the revolutionary use of force and repression, particularly as this debate has centered on the use of the term "dictatorship of the proletariat." Draper strips away the layers of misinterpretation and misinformation that have accumulated over the years to show what Marx and Engels themselves meant by the term.
  15. Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution 
    Volume IV: Critique of Other Socialisms
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1990
    Much of Karl Marx's most important work came out of his critique of other thinkers, including many socialists who differed significantly in their conceptions of socialism. Draper looks at these critiques to illuminate what Marx's socialism was, as well as what it was not.
  16. Marx and the Economic-Jew Stereotype
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1977
    The real Jewish question in Marx's time was: For or against the political emancipation of the Jews? For or against equal rights for Jews?
  17. Marx-Engels Chronicle, The
    A Day-by-Day Chronology of Marx and Engels' Life and Activity. Vol. 1 of the Marx-Engels Cyclopedia
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1985
  18. Marx-Engels Glossary, The
    Glossary to the Chronicle & Register, & Index to the Glossary. Vol. 2 of the Marx-Engels Cyclopedia
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1986
  19. Marx-Engels Register, The
    A Complete Bibliography of Marx Engels' Individual Writings. Vol. 3 of the Marx-Engels Cyclopedia
    Resource Type: Book
    First Published: 1985
    The Marx-Engels Register contains a detailed bibliographical listing of all the individual writings of Marx and Engels. Each entry in the Register gives all the basic data about a given work: English-language title, language of the original text, original-language title (if not English), date and circumstances of writing, date and circumstances of publication, reprints or republications of the original text, etc. The volume alsp provides "Sources and Translations" lists and some appendiices. An inclusive title index provides access to the Register by title alone.
  20. Marx on Democratic Forms of Government 
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1974
    Marx's socialism (communism) as a political programme may be most quickly defined, from the Marxist standpoint, as the complete democratization of society, not merely of political forms. For Marx, the fight for democratic forms of government - democratization in the state - was a leading edge of the socialist effort; not its be-all and end-all but an integral part of it all.
  21. Marxism and the Trade Unions
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1970
    Draper argues that essentially, no Marxist group has ever carried on any systematic revolutionary work in trade unions.
  22. The Principle of Self-Emancipation in Marx and Engels 
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1971
    For Marx and Engels, there was a direct relationship between the revolutionary (literally subversive) nature of their socialism and the principle of emancipation-from-below, the principle that, as Engels wrote, "there is no concern for ... gracious patronage from above."
    Marxism, as the theory and practice of the proletarian revolution, therefore also had to be the theory and practice of the self-emancipation of the proletariat. Its essential originality flows from this source.
  23. Statement of Principles of the Independent Socialist Club
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1964
    Our view of socialism is both democratic and revolutionary, both humanist and working class; and it is only as a revolutionary-democratic movement of opposition to the Establishments that socialism can present a third choice for the world, a choice for a new world of freedom, peace and security.
  24. The Student Movement of the Thirties
    A Political History
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1965
    Most of the references one hears to the student movement of the thirties, and most published references too, are quite wrong in one basic respect: they speak as if 'the thirties' represented a single, homogeneous period for the student movement. But the biggest single fact about the history of this movement is that it went through a sweeping change in spirit, methods, and politics, which changed its face completely in mid-course.
  25. Toward a New Beginning - On Another Road
    The Alternative to the Micro-Sect
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1970
    To Marx, any organization was a sect if it set up any special set of view (including Marx's views) as its organizational boundary; if it made this special set of views the determinant of its organizational form.
    Neither Marx nor Engels ever formed or wanted to form a Marxist group of any kind - that is, a membership group based on an exclusively Marxist program. All of their organizational activity was pointed along a different road.
  26. The Two Souls of Socialism 
    Socialism from Above vs. Socialism from Below
    Resource Type: Article
    First Published: 1960   Published: 1970
    It was Marx who finally brought the two ideas of socialism and democracy together, because he developed a theory which made the synthesis possible for the first time. The heart of the theory is this proposition: that there is a social majority which has the interest and motivation to change the system, and that the aim of socialism can be the education and mobilization of this mass-majority. This is the exploited class, the working class, from which comes the eventual motive-force of revolution. Hence, a socialism-from-below is possible, on the basis of a theory that sees the revolutionary potentialities in the broad masses, even if they seem backward at a given time and place. Marxism came into being in self-conscious struggle against the advocates of the Educational Dictatorship, the Savior-Dictators, the revolutionary elitists, the communist authoritarians, as well as the philanthropic dogooders and bourgeois liberals.