>Is it any different with our academic Marxist superstars like Brenner and
>Wood? With a lifetime of blue ribbon awards and graduate students showering
>adulation on them, we must expect a decline in self-critical awareness.
>
>=====
>
>How does this square with your earlier criticism of peer review as the
>residue of the katheder?
>
>Michael K.
There is peer review and there is peer review. If you are part of the old
boy's network, you don't have to worry about being published. For example,
Ellen Meiksins Wood decided that John Bellamy Foster's tribute to Paul
Sweezy was unpublishable. She was overriden because of his long-standing
ties to Magdoff and Sweezy and she got canned herself. The in-grown
character of publications like Science and Society, MR, New Left Review,
etc. is largely a product of the kind of social networking that tenured
professors and established journalists have cultivated for many years. The
same sort of log-rolling goes on in other circles as well, from academic
departments to the literary world.
To crack into this world is a Kafka-esque venture, especially for those who
don't have the proper credentials. For example, I am friendly with Paul
Buhle who is probably the most respected and prolific historian of the US
left. Paul wanted me to write a guest column for him in Jim O'Connor's
journal. I supplied 4 different articles, all of which were tip-top. (One
finally made it into Foster's journal). But they were all rejected for no
good reason. The same thing goes on at MR. I can tell you one atrocity
story after another about articles that were much better than those that
ordinarily get published because the people submitting them were not
celebrities.
Just to show you how there is a growing perception of the problem, this is
from the latest MR:
---
Recently, we learned from one of our readers that although he was an
enthusiastic admirer of MR he felt that the magazine was relatively closed
to contributions by "outsiders." It has occurred to us that our practice,
where appropriate (as in the case of four out of the five authors to the
present issue), of signaling that an individual is a "frequent
contributor," "longtime contributor" or "close friend" (all of which we
consider honorific titles) may have encouraged the view that articles in MR
are mainly written by "insiders."
---
Louis Proyect
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