Advocating nuclear war, attempting communication with dolphins and taking an interest in the paranormal and UFOs, there is perhaps no greater (or stranger) cautionary tale for the Left than that of Posadism. Named after the Argentine Trotskyist J. Posadas, the movement's journey through the fractious and sectarian world of mid-20th century revolutionary socialism was unique. Although at times significant, Posadas' movement was ultimately a failure. As it disintegrated, it increasingly grew to resemble a bizarre cult, detached from the working class it sought to liberate. The renewed interest in Posadism today - especially for its more outlandish fixations - speaks to both a cynicism towards the past and nostalgia for the earnest belief that a better world is possible. Drawing on considerable archival research, and numerous interviews with ex- and current Posadists, I Want to Believe tells the fascinating story of this most unusual socialist movement and considers why it continues to capture the imaginations of leftists today.

This work explores the question of defining ideology from a Marxist perspective. Advancing beyond the schemas of discussion presented in current Marxist literature, the author offers an account of how the concept of ideology should be defined and what role it plays within historical materialism. Through a close reading of Karl Marx's relevant writings, this volume demonstrates that while there is no coherent, single account of ideology in Marx's work, his materialist framework can be reconstructed in a defensible and 'non-deterministic' way. The definition of ideology presented is then articulated through a close reading of Antonio Gramsci's Prison Notebooks. Efforts are also made to demonstrate that Gramsci's interpretation of historical materialism is indeed consistent and compatible with Marx's. A systematic articulation of a theory of ideology that combines the works of Marx and Gramsci, as well as adding elements of Pierre Bourdieu's social theory and William James's psychology, this volume will appeal to scholars of social and political theory with interests in political economy and Marxist thought.

Originally published in 1981 Practice and Progress is a collection examining the changes that have occurred in the theories, methodologies and practices of sociology, in the institutional and educational setting of the subject, and in British society. The themes pursued include the professionalization of sociology its development and standing in the universities; the impact on it of Marxism and feminism and the major debates over positivism and empiricism, quantitative methods, linguistic analysis; and numerous other crucial methodological and theoretical concerns.

While Marxian theory has produced a sound and rigorous critique of capitalism, has it faltered in its own practice of social transformation? Has it faltered because of the Marxian insistence on the hyper-secularization of political cultures? The history of religions - with the exception of some spiritual traditions - has not been any less heartless and soulless. This book sets up a much-needed dialogue between a rethought Marxian praxis of the political and a rethought experience of spirituality. Such rethinking within Marxism and spirituality and a resetting of their lost relationship is perhaps the only hope for a non-violent future of both the Marxian reconstruction of the self and the social as also faith-based life-practices. Building on past work in critical theory, this book offers a new take on the relationship between a rethought Marxism and a rethought spirituality (rethought in the life, philosophy and works of Christian thinkers, anti-Christian thinkers, Marxian thinkers, those critical of Marxist Statecraft, Dalit neo-Buddhist thinkers, thinkers drawing from Judaism, as well as thinkers drawing critically from Christianity). Contrary to popular belief, this book does not see spirituality as a derivative of only religion. This book also sees spirituality as, what Marx designated, the "sigh of the oppressed" against both social and religious orthodoxy. In that sense, spirituality is not just a displaced form of religion; it is a displaced form of the political too. This book therefore sets up the much needed dialogue between the Marxian political and the spiritual traditions. The chapters in this book were originally published in Rethinking Marxism - A Journal of Economics, Culture and Society.

This volume offers new perspectives on the appeal and profound cultural meaning of socialism over the past two centuries. It brings together scholarship from various disciplines addressing diverse national contexts, including Britain, China, France, Germany, Norway, Sweden, and the USA. Taken together, the contributions highlight the aesthetic, narrative, and religious dimensions of socialism as it has developed through three broad phases in the modern era: early nineteenth-century beginnings, mass-based political organizations, and the attainment of state power in the twentieth century and beyond. Socialism did not attract millions of people primarily because of logical argument and empirical evidence, important though those were. Rather, it told the most compelling story about the past, present, and future. Refocusing attention on socialism's imaginative dimensions, this volume aims to revive scholarly interest in one of the modern world(1)s most important political orientations.

Towards a Political Aesthetics of Cinema: The Outside of Film is a contribution to an aesthetics of cinema rooted in Marxist theory. Rather than focusing on the role that certain films, or the cinema as an institution, might play in political consciousness, the book asks a different question: how can the subject of politics in film be thought? This problem is presented in a systematic-theoretical rather than historical manner. The main aim of this book is a retrospective rehabilitation of the psychoanalytical concept of "suture," whose political core is progressively revealed. In a second step, this rereading of "suture"-theory is mediated with the Marxist aesthetics of Fredric Jameson. From the perspective of this reconfigured aesthetics of negativity, films by Hitchcock, Antonioni, Haneke and Kubrick are analyzed as articulations of a political unconscious.

Amadeo Bordiga was one of the greatest figures of the Third Communist International. The Science and Passion of Communism presents his Soviet and internationalist battles in the revolutionary post-WWI period until that against Stalinism, and those in the post-WWII period against the triumphant U.S. capitalism and for an original, updated re-presentation of Marxist critique of political economy.

The complete collection of Samir Amin's work on Marxism value theory Unlike such obvious forms of oppression as feudalism or slavery, capitalism has been able to survive through its genius for disguising corporate profit imperatives as opportunities for individual human equality and advancement. But it was the genius of Karl Marx, in his masterwork, Capital, to discover the converse law of surplus value: behind the illusion of the democratic, supply-and-demand marketplace, lies the workplace, where people trying to earn a living are required to work way beyond the time it takes to pay their wages. Leave it to the genius of Samir Amin to advance Marx's theories--adding to them the work of radical economists such as Michal Kalecki, Josef Steindl, Paul Baran, and Paul Sweezy--to show how Marxian theory can be adapted to modern economic conditions. Amin extends Marx's analysis to describe a concept of "imperialist rent" derived from the radically unequal wages paid for the same labor done by people in both the Global North and the Global South, the rich nations and the poor ones. This is global oligopolistic capitalism, in which finance capital has come to dominate worldwide production and distribution. Amin also advances Baran and Sweezy's notion of economic surplus to explain a globally monopolized system in which Marx's "law of value" takes the form of a "law of globalized value," generating a super-exploitation of workers in the Global South. Modern Imperialism, Monopoly Finance Capital, and Marx's Law of Value offers readers, in one volume, the complete collection of Samir Amin's work on Marxian value theory. The book includes texts from two of Amin's recent works, Three Essays on Marx's Value Theory and The Law of Worldwide Value, which have provoked considerable controversy and correspondence. Here, Amin answers his critics with a series of letters, clarifying and developing his ideas. This work will occupy an important place among the theoretical resources for anyone involved in the study of contemporary Marxian economic and political theory.

This book, first published in 1980, addresses the questions raised by the death of Mao Zedong and the arrest of the 'Gang of Four'. Was China reverting to a capitalist form of development, and abandoning Mao's policies? Was China's leadership remaining loyal to Mao's strategy but correcting damage done by the 'Gang of Four'? The essays in this book analyse these questions and illustrate differences in interpretation amongst the post-Mao leadership. Individual chapters deal with disagreements over political line, the role of the CCP, economic policy and industrial management, policy towards the rural sector, controversies over the role of art and literature, the nature and function of the education system and the incorporation of China into the international economy.

This book, first pubished in 1998, collects the final letters and articles of Chen Duxiu (1879-1942). He founded the Chinese Communist Party in 1921, after a revolutionary career in the movement that overthrew the Manchus and brought in the Republic. Between 1915 and 1919, he had led the New Culture Movement that electrified student youth and laid the intellectual foundations for modern China, and he also helped found the Chinese Trotskyist Opposition, which he then led. Between his release from prison in 1937 and his death in 1942, he wrote the pieces collected here.

This book, first published in 1977, sets out two models of administration and participation used in Communist China, one worked out by the CCP during the war against Japan and one imported from the Soviet Union in the 1950s. These models have given rise to different policy positions, studied here, and the models provide a framework within which to examine the nature and structure of the CCP, state structures, the army, rural and urban policy, and the incorporation of national minorities.

This book, first published in 1992, provides a detailed analysis of the reform programme in post-Mao China. In it, a distinguished group of specialists show how the dramatic events that came to a head in Tiananmen Square in 1989 were the result of a profound crisis in the reform programme launched in 1978. Individual chapters examine the roots of this crisis: the inability to deal sufficiently with the Maoist legacy; insufficient political reform; the clash between Deng's revolution from above and society's revolution from below; the imbalances created by the new economic programme; and the relationship between these domestic changes and China's foreign policy.

This book, first published in 2001, uses key oral histories to confirm and explain the professional and private lives of post-1949 Chinese intellectuals through the focal point of Chen Renbing, a man personally criticised by Mao Zedong. Intellectuals have faced unique perils in modern Chinese history, thousands of whom were targeted by Mao. Mao's Prey provides invaluable insight into their experiences and fates.

This study analyses enterprise development and entrepreneurship and their relationship with the state and market building in Russia. It focuses on continuities and changes in the factory regime, drawing on existing literature and the author's own research and evaluation.

This book develops a comprehensive systematic economic theory, conceiving how the dynamic of market relations generates an economy dominated by the competitive process of individual profit-seeking enterprises. The author shows how, contrary to classical political economy and contemporary economics, the theory of capital is an a priori normative account properly belonging to ethics. Exposing and overcoming the limits of the economic conceptions of Hegel and Marx, Rethinking Capital determines how the system of capitals shapes economic freedom, jeopardizing the very rights in whose exercise it consists. Winfield thereby provides the understanding required to guide the private and public interventions with which capitalism can be given a human face.

First published in 1977. This book describes the growth of revolutionary organisations in Britain from 1900 onwards. It shows that there was an indigenous movement that developed quite independently from the left in other countries, although its basic outlook was remarkably similar to that of the Bolsheviks in Russia. The study concentrates the activities of the Socialist Labour Party, a small group of dedicated revolutionaries, whose impact on working-class politics had not been fully recognised. The most controversial section of the book deals with the Russian influence on the machinations that led to the formation of the British Communist Party. It is critical of Lenin, who sometimes gave advice on the basis of insufficient knowledge, and of Comitern agents, like Theodore Rothstein, with dubious political backgrounds. This title will be of great interest to students of politics, philosophy, and history.

This book examines decision-making at the highest level of the Soviet political system, from the conclusion of Stalin's power in 1927 until his death in 1953. It explores the nature of the Stalin dictatorship in terms of a broader comparative understanding of dictatorial regimes. It examines the way the decision-making process operated, and the informal mechanisms of power. It explores the patterns of decision-making in different policy fields, drawing on new archival sources.

The decade of the 1980s began in China with great expectations of the societal benefits of modernisation, and ended with gunfire in Tiananmen Square. This book, first published in 1991, presents essays that explore the political and economic reform policies that emerged in post-Mao China under Deng Xiaoping. In general, they conclude that the advent of partial marketization and structural reform tended to magnify structural contradictions rather than solve them.

This book, first published in 1981, is a study concerned with the leadership and the people of China during the 1942-1962 period. It analyses the attempt made by the CCP to develop new policies of administration in the wartime base areas and the subsequent transformation of these policies after the Communists came to power. The problems of establishing control over China are detailed, as are those associated with adopting the Soviet model. The rejection of that model led to the adoption of the strategy that led to the Great Leap Forward, and its attendant problems are also studied here.

This book, first published in 1977, attempts to show Mao Tse-tung in his relationship with the Chinese people. The author makes extensive use of a number of interviews with a cross-section of Chinese people, as well as examining the written records made by foreign visitors.

The 'end of history' has not taken place. Ideological and economic crisis and the status quo of neoliberal capitalism since 2008 demand a renewed engagement with Marx. But if we are to effectively resist capitalism we must truly understand Marx: Marxism today must theorise how communication technologies, media representation and digitalisation have come to define contemporary capitalism. There is an urgent need for critical, Marxian-inspired knowledge as a foundation for changing the world and the way we communicate from digital capitalism towards communicative socialism and digital communism. Rereading Marx in the Age of Digital Capitalism does exactly this. Delving into Marx's most influential works, such as Capital, The Grundrisse, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts, The German Ideology and The Communist Manifesto, Christian Fuchs draws out Marx's concepts of machinery, technology, communication and ideology, all of which anticipate major themes of the digital age. A concise and coherent work of Marxist media and communication theory, the book ultimately demonstrates the relevance of Marx to an age of digital and communicative capitalism.

Marxism, Psychology and Social Science Analysis applies Marxist theory, psychology, and the work of Lucien Seve to specific research in the social sciences. It shows in practical terms what guidance can be offered for social scientific researchers wanting to incorporate Seve's view of personality into their work. Providing case studies drawn from different social sciences that give the book significant breadth of scope, Roche reviews the impact of "Taking Seve Seriously" across the study of international relations theory, economics, law, and moral philosophy. The book begins by placing the work of Lucien Seve in context and considers the development of psychology in relation to Marxism, before going on to summarise the work of Seve in relation to the psychology of personality. It considers the opportunities for refreshed research in social relations based on developments by Seve, before examining Marxist biography and the implications of Seve's views. The book also includes chapters on the social discount rate, on constructivism in international relations, on the concept of promising in moral philosophy and the Marxist conception of individual responsibility. It addresses not only how research should be carried out differently, but whether utilising the theoretical framework of other writers, even non-Marxists, can deliver a similar outcome. With its use of five distinct case studies to analyse the work of Lucien Seve, this unique book will be of great interest to academics, researchers and postgraduate students in the fields of psychology, philosophy and social sciences.

The publication of the first three volumes of Open Marxism in the 1990s has had a transformative impact on how we think about Marxism in the twenty-first century. 'Open Marxism' aims to think of Marxism as a theory of struggle, not as an objective analysis of capitalist domination, arguing that money, capital and the state are forms of struggle from above and therefore open to resistance and rebellion. As critical thought is squeezed out of universities and geographical shifts shape the terrain of theoretical discussion, the editors argue now is the time for a new volume that reflects the work that has been carried out during the past decade. Emphasising the contemporary relevance of 'open Marxism' in our moment of political and economic uncertainty, the collection shines a light on its significance for activists and academics today.