This book provides a wide-ranging and in-depth reappraisal of the relation between Marx's economic theory in Capital and Hegel's Logic by leading Marxian economists and philosophers from around the world. The subjects dealt with include: systematic dialectics, the New Dialectics, materialism vs. idealism, Marx's 'inversion' of Hegel, Hegel's Concept logic, Hegel's Essence logic, Marx's levels of abstraction of capital in general and competition, and capital as Hegelian Subject.

The history of reform movements in postwar Eastern Europe is ultimately ironic, inasmuch as the reformers' successes and defeats alike served to discredit and demoralize the regimes they sought to redeem. The essays in this volume examine the historic and present-day role of the internal critics who, whatever their intentions, used Marxism as critique to demolish Marxism as ideocracy, but did not succeed in replacing it. Included here are essays by James P. Scanlan on the USSR, Ferenc Feher on Hungary, Leslie Holmes on the German Democratic Republic, Raymond Taras on Poland, James Satterwhite on Czechoslovakia, Vladimir Tismaneanu on Romania, Mark Baskin on Bulgaria, and Oskar Gruenwald on Yugoslavia. In concert, the contributors provide a comprehensive intellectual history and a veritable Who's Who of revisionist Marxism in Eastern Europe.

Since the collapse of communism in Russia and Eastern Europe in the early 1990s, communist parties are widely regarded as passe or irrelevant. But these parties still exist, act and sometimes thrive in various corners of the world. This comprehensive history describes how the South African Communist Party has not only survived but flourished in a harsh political environment. Formed in 1921 as an affiliation of leftist organizations, the SACP for decades fought against the racist Apartheid regime, ascending to power in 1994 with its senior alliance partner, the African National Congress. Approaching its centennial, the SACP now faces possibly its greatest challenge: working towards a socialist future for South Africa while governing a diverse and complex capitalist country.

Three years before publication of the "Communist Manifesto" Karl Marx began work on a critique of a movement that was gaining popularity as a challenge to capitalism - nationalism, as put forth by the German economist Friedrich List. Long regarded as a major cultural and political force in 19th-century Europe, nationalism was in fact to become directly involved in the conflict between capitalism and socialism, offering an appealing alternative to capitalism's "New World Order" - the doctrine of Free Trade - and socialism's call for a worldwide unification of the workers against the bourgeoisie. In this original new work Professor Szporluk offers a major reinterpretation of Marxism's historical development - one that recognises nationalism as the third contender on the battlefield where Marxism met capitalism. A bold new interpretation of Marx's intellectual biography, showing how the history of Marx and Marxism is to a great extent the story of their confrontation with nationalism before 1848. At the same time, this is a fresh look at nationalism, focusing on the heretofore neglected although increasingly recognized figure of Friedrich List, the first economist whom Marx seriously studied. Professor Szporluk outlines the comprehensive vision of List's nationalism, a vision that constituted a historical alternative - and possible threat - to the Marxian project. Finally, this is the story of the enduring relationship between communism and nationalism that extended beyond 1848 into the 20th century, had enormous implications for Russia in 1917, and still lies at the heart of debates over the importance of allegiance to nation as opposed to social class, the choice between internationalism and national independence, and the role of communism in developing countries.

Sociology is an established academic discipline but there has been continuing debate over its status as a science and the nature of its subject matter. This led to the emergence of a phenomenological sociology and to critiques of positivist sociology. This critical reappraisal of the relevance of Marxian analysis for a science of society shows how these developments within sociology have had their counterpart in Marxism. The author analyses the status of Marx's work and the Marxist 'tradition' in sociology. He focuses upon those concerns which are common to both Marxian analysis and sociology - the question of subjectivity; the nature of social reality; and the dialectical relationship of the 'doing' or practice of a science of society to the social world within which such social analyses are situated. Originally published in 1976.

First published in 1986. This is a collection of editorial and articles covering military Marxist regimes in the African locations of the Horn of Africa, Benin, the People's Republic of Congo, Madagascar, and Burkina Faso.

It has been nearly two centuries since Marx famously turned Hegel on his head in order to repurpose dialectics as a revolutionary way of thinking about the internal contradictions of our social relations. Despite critiques from post-structuralists, post-colonialists, and others, there has been a resurgence of dialectical thought among political theorists as of late. This resurgence has coincided with a rise in the mention of words like class warfare, socialism, and communism among the general public on the streets of Seattle in 1999, in Cairo's Tahrir Square, in the actions of the Greek anarchists and the Spanish indignados, and in the rallying cry of "we are the 99%" of the Occupy Movement, and in academia. This book explores how it is that dialectical thought might respond to the critiques brought forth by those on the left who are critical of Marxism's universalizing and authoritarian legacy. Brian C. Lovato singles out Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe as the key interlocutors in this ongoing conversation between Marxism and post-structuralism. Laclau and Mouffe argue that Marxist theory is inherently authoritarian, cannot escape a class-reductionist theory of revolutionary subjectivity, and is bound by a closed Hegelian ontology. Lovato argues the opposite by turning to two heterodox Marxist thinkers, Raya Dunayevskaya and C. L. R. James, in order to construct a radically democratic, dynamic, and open conceptualization of dialectical thought. In doing so, he advances a vision of Marxist theory that might serve as a resource to scholars and activists committed not only to combatting capitalism, but also to fighting against colonialism, patriarchy, white supremacy, and heteronormativity. The writings of Dunayevskaya and James allow for Marxism to become relevant again in these tumultuous early years of the 21st century.

Unique among the satellites of the Soviet Union, Hungary has data from a series of fourteen substantial surveys from the mid-1960s through to 1994. How do Hungarians think about themselves, their history, their society and other countries and their peoples? Hunyady provides an excellent summary of investigations examining these questions, analysing them against the background of the social psychology literature of stereotypes.

First published in 1981, Capitalism in the UK clearly states the Marxist position arguing that capitalism dominates the world economy, and that the world's trade and multinational enterprises favour the capitalist system. It shows how orthodox economics is not value-free and how orthodox economics implicitly assumes that capitalism is the only possible form of economic organisation for society. Designed for students on Political Economy and Marxists Economics courses, this comprehensive and concise volume provides an important counterweight to traditional first- and second-year introductory textbooks.

Renowned Marxist scholar and critical media theorist Christian Fuchs provides a thorough, chapter-by-chapter introduction to Capital Volume 1 that assists readers in making sense of Karl Marx's most important and groundbreaking work in the information age, exploring Marx's key concepts through the lens of media and communication studies via contemporary phenomena like the Internet, digital labour, social media, the media industries, and digital class struggles. Through a range of international, current-day examples, Fuchs emphasises the continued importance of Marx and his work in a time when transnational media companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook play an increasingly important role in global capitalism. Discussion questions and exercises at the end of each chapter help readers to further apply Marx's work to a modern-day context.

This book familiarizes the English-speaking reader with the debate on the originality of Gramsci's thought and its importance for the development of Marxist theory. The contributors present the principal viewpoints regarding Gramsci's theoretical contribution to Marxism, focussing in particular on his advances in the study of the superstructures, and discussing his relation to Marx and Lenin and his influence in Eurocommunism. Different interpretations are put forward concerning the elucidation of Gramsci's key concepts, namely: hegemony, integral state, war of position and passive revolution.

Renowned Marxist scholar and critical media theorist Christian Fuchs provides a thorough, chapter-by-chapter introduction to Capital Volume 1 that assists readers in making sense of Karl Marx's most important and groundbreaking work in the information age, exploring Marx's key concepts through the lens of media and communication studies via contemporary phenomena like the Internet, digital labour, social media, the media industries, and digital class struggles. Through a range of international, current-day examples, Fuchs emphasises the continued importance of Marx and his work in a time when transnational media companies like Amazon, Google, and Facebook play an increasingly important role in global capitalism. Discussion questions and exercises at the end of each chapter help readers to further apply Marx's work to a modern-day context.

Spring/Summer 2021 issue of Salvage, featuring Kevin Ochieng Okoth, Marianela D'Aprile, Richard Seymour and others. The Disorder of the Future includes an essay on the settler-colonial politics of an airport by Francesco Anselmetti, Kevin Ochieng Okoth on decolonisation and rethinking the cycle of national liberation, Marianela D'Aprile on protesting during a plague, Jonas Marvin and Gary Howe on Brexit, Richard Seymour on fascism, Sharri Plonski on confronting the infrastructural terrain of Gulf-Israel relations, Joseph Tomaras on refusing the tyranny of manhood, and Michael Roberts on modern monetary theory. The artist of this issue is Jesse Darling, and the volume concludes with a short story from Helen Mackreath.

A decade after Francis Fukuyama announced the 'End of History', anti-capitalist demonstrators at Seattle and elsewhere have helped reinvigorate the Left with the reply 'another world is possible'. More than anyone else it was Marx who showed that slogans such as this were no utopian fantasies, and that capitalism was just as much a historical mode of production, no more natural and certainly no less contradictory, than were the feudal and slave modes which proceeded it. Paul Blackledge opens this study with a defence of the Marxist approach to the study of history against what he argues as being the naive empiricism of traditional historians and the relativism of the postmodernists. He moves on to outline Marx and Engels analyses of concrete historical processes and their critiques of the alternative historiographic methodologies of their contemporaries. He then discusses neglected historical works produced by Marxists in the half-century or so after Marx and Engels' deaths. Two central chapters survey recent Marxist debates on, first, the nature of modes of productions, including slave, feudal and tributary systems, and the revolutionary transitions between them; and, second, the methodological debate over the issue of structure and agency in the movement of history. Finally, he shows the political relevance of these debates through a concluding survey of competing Marxist attempts to periodise the present, postmodern, conjuncture. This book should be read by historians, students of cultural, social and political theory and anti-capitalist activists.

As austerity measures are put into place the world over and global restructuring is acknowledged by all as an attempt to bolster the economic system that lead to the crash, there is a great need to come to grips with the economic, political and philosophical legacy of Marx. Of particular interest are Marx's analyses of alienation and the cycles of boom and bust thought to be integral to the functioning of capitalism. Moreover, as the Cold War drifts into the history books, it is possible to reconsider the lasting impact of Marx's analyses without the shadows cast by the Soviet version of communism. Equally, though, scholars are increasingly turning to Marx for insight into the rise of religion and the corresponding demise of political ideologies that seems to mark the contemporary age. Are we witnessing 'the return of Marx'? Few scholars have done as much to tease out the intricacies of Marx, ideology and religion and their overlapping concerns as the eminent writer and Marx biographer, Professor David McLellan. This book brings together a group of internationally renowned academics to reflect upon, develop and criticise McLellan's analyses of these three themes with a view to contributing more broadly to scholarly debates in these fields. This exciting and timely analysis will be of interest to scholars of political theory, the history of political thought (including historical methodology), Marx and Marxism, sociology of knowledge (particularly in relation to discussions of ideology), religion and theology more widely.

Refuting the assumption that orthodox Marxist theory contains anything of relevance on international relations, this book, originally published in 1980, clarifies, reconstructs, and summarizes the theories of international relations of Marx and Engels, Lenin, Stalin and the Soviet leadership of the 1970s. These are subjected to a comparative analysis and their relative integrity is examined both against one another and against selected Western theories. Marxist-Leninist models of international relations are fully explored, enabling the reader to appreciate the essence and evolution of fundamental Soviet concepts as such as proletarian, socialist internationalism, peaceful co-existence, national liberation movement and detente.

This book renews the Marxian theory of the general equivalent by highlighting the contradiction between the social functions of money (unit of account, means of circulation) and its private functions (store of value, accumulation). It draws a clear distinction between the monetary base and the commodity base of money and thus avoids the confusion between money and credit on the one hand, and money and capital on the other, which are found in other heterodox monetary theories. It accounts for the new forms of monetary constraints weighing on the banking systems under and inconvertible fiat money standard, the class relationships underlying the interventions of monetary authorities and governments, and presents a definition of the state which emphasises its mode of intervention on the collective and social conditions of capitalisms which are money and labour power. The emphasis on the contradiction between these two types of monetary functions gives a more fundamental account of the conflict between the international role and the national origin of the dollar than the Triffin dilemma, which has been constantly overcome or deferred by the US since 1960. The author explains this evolution by demonstrating how, from the 1950s onwards, the dollar began a process of acquiring relative autonomy from the US economy. By focusing on the role and international functions of the dollar, he offers a fresh look at the 2008 crisis and its consequences for the international monetary system, but also for a possible post-capitalist financial system - which post-revolutionary Russia experimented with in the form of the NEP, and whose contemporary implementation is foreshadowed by the rise of digital central bank currencies. The book thereby provides a necessary update to the tools and concepts inherited from Marx for analysing and understanding money, capital and the state.

It addresses recent changes in Central and Eastern Europe in order to critically consider the impact of illiberal conservatism on constitutionalism. This book will appeal to constitutional lawyers, as well as to legal and political theorists with interests in contemporary populism and liberal thought.

This second edition of the highly respected Routledge Handbook of Russian Politics and Society both provides a broad overview of the area and highlights cutting-edge research into the country. Through balanced theoretical and empirical investigation, each chapter examines both the Russian experience and the existing literature, identifies and exemplifies research trends, and highlights the richness of experience, history, and continued challenges inherent to this enduringly fascinating and shifting polity. Politically, economically, and socially, Russia has one of the most interesting development trajectories of any major country. This Handbook answers questions about democratic transition, the relationship between the market and democracy, stability and authoritarian politics, the development of civil society, the role of crime and corruption, the development of a market economy, and Russia's likely place in the emerging new world order. Providing a comprehensive resource for scholars, students, and policy makers alike, this book is an essential contribution to the study of Russian studies/politics, Eastern European studies/politics, and International Relations.

Jameson's first full-length engagement with Walter Benjamin's work. The Benjamin Files offers a comprehensive new reading of all of Benjamin's major works and a great number of his shorter book reviews, notes and letters. Its premise is that Benjamin was an anti-philosophical, anti-systematic thinker whose conceptual interests also felt the gravitational pull of his vocation as a writer. What resulted was a coexistence or variety of language fields and thematic codes which overlapped and often seemed to contradict each other: a view which will allow us to clarify the much-debated tension in his works between the mystical or theological side of Benjamin and his political or historical inclination. The three-way tug of war over his heritage between adherents of his friends Scholem, Adorno and Brecht, can also be better grasped from this position, which gives the Brechtian standpoint more due than most influential academic studies. Benjamin's corpus is an anticipation of contemporary theory in the priority it gives language and representation over philosophical or conceptual unity; and its political motivations are clarified by attention to the omnipresence of History throughout his writing, from the shortest articles to the most ambitious projects. His explicit program-"to transfer the crisis into the heart of language" or, in other words, to detect class struggle at work in the most minute literary phenomena-requires the reader to translate the linguistic or representational literary issues that concerned him back into the omnipresent but often only implicitly political ones. But the latter are those of another era, to which we must gain access, to use one of Benjamin's favorite expressions.

When Lenin died and the Russian Revolution began to devour its leaders, Trotsky survived longer than most as an exile in Mexico, until his assassination in 1940. The Essential Trotsky, first published in 1963, demonstrates the significance of this innovative and radical thinker's contribution to the Bolshevik success, the magnetism of his personality, and also a certain tragic heroism discernible throughout his life. The History of the Russian Revolution to Brest-Litovsk was written immediately after the events it describes, when Trotsky was attending the negotiations that extracted Russia from the First World War; The Lessons of October, an answer to his opponents in 1924, matches Lenin in power of analysis; and Stalin Falsifies History, written in 1927, presents the beginning of the distorting process by which Stalin secured his position, and defeated a range of attitudes, many more benign than his own, towards the future of the Revolution. This is a fascinating reissue that will be of value to students with an interest in early-twentieth century Russia, the Russian Revolution and the writings of Trotsky more generally.

" . . . a rich, complex, authoritative, scholarly survey of Germany's socialist heritage." - The Midwest Book Review "Can twenty-three essays present the history of German socialism and communism, as well as those movements' members, supporters, and policies in the context of social history? This fine collection comes close to achieving that difficult task . . . A very high quality work." - Central European History "Certainly the best collection of essays on the SPD and KPD . . . The editors and contributors . . . have provided fresh intrepretations . . . and have set a high standard for present and future scholars." - H-Net Reviews The powerful impact of Socialism and Communism on modern German history is the theme which is explored by the contributors to this volume. Whereas previous investigations have tended to focus on political, intellectual and biographical aspects, this book captures, for the first time, the methodological and thematic diversity and richness of current work on the history of the German working class and the political movements that emerged from it. Based on original contributions from US, British, and German scholars, this collection address a wide range of themes and problems. David E. Barclay is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Western European Studies, Kalamazoo College. Eric D. Weitz is Professor of History at the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis.

This eighth volume covers the period 1942 to 1945 when Mao asserted his status as the incarnation and symbol of the Chinese Revolution and the sinification of Marxism-Leninism.