This book is a meticulous argument for the contemporary value of Marx's democratic theory as an interpretive key for the postmodernism debates. Landry uses the works of Derrida, Foucault, and Lyotard to represent the poststructuralist camp and the writings of Habermas to represent the rationalist camp. Viable social critique, argues Landry, mediates between pure social constructivist and pure realist metaphysics. Postmodernism, although critical of Marx, aided the broader project of critical social theory, particularly Marx's critique of social-material contexts of oppression. Indeed, significant positive affiliations among Marx, Habermas, and the poststructuralists are found in their commitment to criticizing ideological aspects of bourgeois Enlightenment rationality and modernity.

Landry employs a fruitful tension strategy as seeking rapprochement among the modern and postmodern positions on hotly debated contemporary issues such as subjectivity, criticism, and the nature of reason. Marxism continues to provide critical tools for articulating productive conflict within the postmodernism debates, advancing of strategies of critique beyond identity politics toward a more self-reflective ideological discussion of the multiple axes of power and oppression in political struggles over democracy. In this unique study, complex philosophical issues are described lucidly and their relevance for today is established compellingly.

China's Economic Development, 1950-2014: Fundamental Changes and Long-Term Prospects is a comprehensive and up-to-date analysis of Chinese economic development from 1950-2014 focusing on current world-wide attention to the economic reform. Chu-yuan Cheng covers a wide range of topics, including the cultural effects and ideological influences on China's economic development; the process of China's transition from a planned to a market economy, leadership changes and the root of the Cultural Revolution; the machine-building industry and scientific and engineering manpower in China; China's new development plans in the twenty-first century and the process and consequence of the "Quiet Revolution"; the international economic relations including the U.S.-China, Sino-Japanese economic relations and access to WTO; economic relations across the Taiwan Strait and the formation of the Greater China Economic Sphere; and the long-term development prospect of the Chinese economy in the twenty-first century and beyond.

One of early-twentieth-century America's most fertile grounds for political radicalism, the Pacific Northwest produced some of the most dedicated and successful socialists the country has ever seen. As a radicalized labor force emerged in mining, logging, and other extractive industries, socialists employed intensive organizational and logistical skills to become an almost permanent third party that won elections and shook the confidence of establishment rivals. At the height of Socialist Party influence just before World War I, a Montana member declared, "They are all red out here."

In this first book to fully examine the development of the American Socialist Party in the Northwest, Jeffrey A. Johnson draws a sharp picture of one of the most vigorous left-wing organizations of this era. Relying on party newspapers, pamphlets, and correspondence, he allows socialists to reveal their own strategies as they pursued their agendas in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Montana. And he explores how the party gained sizable support in Butte, Spokane, and other cities seldom associated today with left-wing radicalism.

" "They Are All Red Out Here" " employs recent approaches to labor history by restoring rank-and-file workers and party organizers as active participants in shaping local history. The book marks a major contribution to the ongoing debate over why socialism never grew deep roots in American soil and no longer thrives here. It is a work of political and labor history that uncovers alternative social and political visions in the American West.

In the first dialogue of its kind after the abandonment of communism in Eastern Europe, philosophers from Russia, Hungary, Canada, and the United States engage in a timely and searching exchange of views. In a critical examination of MarxisM's theory and practice, they ask: What in it was true and relevant to human progress? What are its successes, limitations, and failures? How can it be improved?

This volume brings together scholars from Russia, Hungary, Canada, and the United States to analyze and discuss the past, present, and future status of Marxist philosophy. Their contributions take on special significance in light of the changes in the economies and governments of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, and the displacement of Marxism as the official state philosophy.

The essays examine questions fundamental to Marxist philosophy: the hegemonic and post-hegemonic role of Marxism in social movements; the creative presence of Marxism in the history of philosophy and thought; its successes and the causes of its failures in theory and practice; the pathways of correction; the need to broaden Marxism by making use of Western concepts; and many other critical questions that must be raised to understand the ongoing development of Marxist thought. Essential reading for all scholars and researchers concerned with the place of Marxism in history and thought.

In Projectland, anthropologist Holly High combines an engaging first-person narrative of her fieldwork with a political ethnography of Laos, more than forty years after the establishment of the Lao PDR and more than seven decades since socialist ideologues first "liberated" parts of upland country. In a remote village of Kandon, High finds that although socialism has declined significantly as an economic model, it is ascendant and thriving in the culture of politics and the politics of culture. Kandon is remarkable by any account. The villagers are ethnic Kantu (Katu), an ethnicity associated by early ethnographers above all with human sacrifice. They had repelled French control, and as the war went on, the revolutionary forces of Sekong were headquartered in Kandon territories. In 1996, Kandon village moved and resettled in a plateau area. "New Kandon" has become Sekong Province's first certified "Culture Village," the nation's very first "Open Defecation Free and Model Health Village," and the president of Laos personally granted the village a Labor Flag and Medal. High provides a unique and timely assessment of the Lao Party-state's resettlement politics, and she recounts with skillful nuance the stories that are often cast into shadows by the usual focus on New Kandon as a success. Her book follows the lives of a small group of villagers who returned to the old village in the mountains, effectively defying policy but, in their words, obeying the presence that animates the land there. Revealing her sensibility with tremendous composure, High tells the experiences of women who, bound by steep bride-prices to often violent marriages, have tasted little of the socialist project of equality, unity, and independence. These women spoke to the author of "necessities" as a limit to their own lives. In a context where the state has defined the legitimate forms of success and agency, "necessity" emerged as a means of framing one's life as nonconforming but also nonagentive.

This book is unique in its utilization of the natural sciences to explain and illustrate key concepts of communist philosophy. In its recapitulation of the spirit of Engels's unfinished manuscript, The Dialectics of Nature, it relies on the physical sciences developed since Engels's time to reaffirm the validity of materialist dialectics, a point which is more easily made in the context of natural phenomena than it is in social phenomena. The basic philosophical tenets underlying Communist ideology are all supported by the natural sciences. The book is situated within the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist tradition. Its overarching theme is the need to reclaim our most fundamental weapon of that tradition-it's methodology or philosophy-which has been vitiated or even scrapped by well-intentioned revolutionaries throughout the 20th century. In particular, some of Mao's philosophical formulations are found to be erroneous and in opposition to his practice. With the rapidly accelerating deterioration of the global capitalist order in progress since 2007, the urgency of this reclamation cannot be over-emphasized.

China Miéville's brilliant reading of the modern world's most controversial and enduring political document: The Communist Manifesto. 'It's thrilling to accompany Miéville... as he wrestles – in critical good faith and incandescent commitment – with a manifesto that still calls on us to build a new world' Naomi Klein 'Read this and be dazzled by its contemporaneity' Mike Davis 'A rich, luminous reflection of and on a light that never quite goes out' Andreas Malm 'Reading with [Miéville] today sharpens our senses to contemporary internationalist movements from below' Ruth Wilson Gilmore '[Written] with diligence and a ruthlessly critical eye worthy of Marx himself' Sarah Jaffe In 1848, a strange political tract was published by two German émigrés. Marx and Engles's apocalyptic vision of an insatiable system, which penetrates every corner of the globe, reduces every relationship to that of profit, and bursts asunder the old forms of production and of politics, remains a picture of our world. And the vampiric energy of that system is once again highly contentious. The Manifesto shows no sign of fading into antiquarian obscurity, and remains a key touchstone for modern political debate. China Miéville is not a writer hemmed in by conventions of disciplinary boundaries or genre, and this is a strikingly imaginative take on Marx and what his most haunting book has to say to us today. Like the Manifesto itself, this is a book haunted by ghosts, sorcery and creative destruction.

Hamilton provides an interdisciplinary explication and assessment of Marxism, of Marxist revisionism, and of Leninism, and delineates the major propositions of the three theories. Because the propositions cover a wide range of subjects, including the growth of cities and large factories, the changing quality of work, declining real incomes, economic crises, working-class organizations, and revolutions, Hamilton assesses them from the viewpoints of urban and industrial sociology, economic and political history, and social movements. Hamilton concludes that little empirical support is found for the claims of Marxism and Leninism, while modest support is found for the revisionist claims. Where others texts fail to provide serious reviews of evidence or references to critical studies or to relevant appropriate sources, this book remedies those deficiencies in a brief, clear, and thoroughly documented format.

The 20th century has been dominated by a clash between capitalism and communism or, put differently, between the underlying theories, liberalism and Marxism. Although central to the recent history, these contending theories are poorly understood. To remedy this misunderstanding, the book begins with brief straightforward explications of liberalism, Marxism, and two variants of the latter, revisionism and Leninism. It then moves on to a more detailed examination of each theory, offering an assessment of the propositions from a variety of social science perspectives. Hamilton completes the work with his conclusions regarding the validity and adequacy of these theories.

The Egalitarian Conscience pays tribute to the highly influential work of Professor G. A. Cohen. Professor Cohen is a philosopher of international stature and tremendous achievement, who has been vital to the flourishing of egalitarian political philosophy. He has a significant body of work spanning issues of Marxism and distributive justice, consistently characterized by original ideas and ingenious arguments. The high standard of rigour he sets for progressive thinkers, particularly himself, has been a source of inspiration for colleagues and students alike. The volume honours Professor Cohen with first-rate essays on a number of significant and fascinating topics, reflecting the wide-ranging themes of Professor Cohen's work, but united in their concern for questions of social justice, pluralism, equality, and moral duty. The contributors are scholars of international stature: Joshua Cohen, Jon Elster, Susan Hurley, Will Kymlicka, Derek Parfit, John Roemer, T. M. Scanlon, Samuel Scheffler, Hillel Steiner, and Jeremy Waldron. There is an afterword by G. A. Cohen.

This much needed perspective represents a first step in the exploration of a long-ignored dimension of Marxist thought. Contributors, both Marxist and non-Marxist, from various countries reflect on such concerns as: the spiritual implications of Marxism and its critiques of economic determinism, alienation, and religion; what Marxism has to say to the more urgent spiritual issues of our time; and legacy of Marxism in a post-Soviet world.

Spirituality here refers less to religion than to questions of moral and esthetic value; issues of freedom, creativity, transcendence, and community; the meaning of life and of the struggle to create a better world. This book begins with a brief section from Trotsky and Che Guevara, and Vivian Gornick's work on American Communism, and with overviews of questions of spirituality in pre- and early Soviet Russian thought and in Western Marxism. It then presents the views of several contemporary Marxists, and concludes with contributions on spiritual issues in MarxisM's dialogues with Christianity in both East Europe and Latin America, and with Buddhism.

The Conquest of Bread is Peter Kropotkin's famous critique of capitalism, wherein he excoriates that system in favor of anarcho-communism; a form of government he believed could ensure fairness for all. Kropotkin had an alternate vision of the way society, work, and population should be organized - in The Conquest of Bread, he interweaves his plans for a social revolution with critiques of the prevailing orthodoxy. We receive outlines of how his propositions will eliminate poverty and scarcity - conditions Kropotkin believed were artificially enforced in order to maintain control upon the working populace. As a philosopher and scientist, Peter Kropotkin abhorred the manner in which abject poverty characterized industrialized society. He also held a great resentment for centralized authority of government and the owners of capital, which he felt acted in concert to undermine the majority of humanity.

This book offers a new interpretation of the origins of Russian Marxism, placing it firmly within the folds of the western European socialist movement. Moira Donald argues that the chief theoretician of German Marxism, Karl Kautsky, was a primary influence on Lenin and the Russian Social Democratic Party, and that only the revolution of 1917 severed the Bolsheviks from mainstream orthodox Marxism. Donald contends that Lenin's thought was neither original nor especially significant in the development of Marxism, but that his ability lay in adapting his ideas to fit his revolutionary strategy. She places Lenin's writings in their historical context, showing that they were written as individual pieces, each with a specific aim and often directed within the Party. Lenin was a tactician rather than a thinker, says Donald, and even those areas of his thought that seem most original - the party, the role of the intelligentsia, and imperialism - reveal his significant debt to Kautsky. According to Donald, Lenin was not the only Russian Marxist to borrow ideas from Kautsky: Trotsky's theory of permanent revolution, which was to prove crucial when it was taken up by the Bolsheviks in 1917, was also influenced by Kautsky's thought. Kautsky's relationship with the Russian Social Democratic Party has been widely underestimated because of the later split between them. Using a wide range of published and unpublished sources, Donald reveals how important Kautsky's role was in formulating the ideology of the Bolsheviks - the only effective revolutionary party in the socialist movement. Moira Donald was lecturer in history in the Department of History and Archaeology at Exeter University.

With Guerrilla Prince, syndicated journalist Georgie Anne Geyer calls on her twenty-five years of experience covering Latin America to create an extraordinary biography that finally reveals the untold story of Fidel Castro. Based on hundreds of interviews with unique sources - including four extensive personal interviews with Castro - Guerrilla Prince is an intimate and revealing portrait, charged with all the electricity of the charismatic man himself. In this edition, Geyer adds a preface and an extensive epilogue to her 1991 hardcover text, addressing the changes since that time - the collapse of the Soviet Union, the internal unrest, and the growing anticipation of a post-Castro Cuba.

This is the first original book-length study of corruption in the People's Republic of China. The work relates the corruption issue to ongoing political processes and policies of the Chinese Communist Party by examining the broader context of social transformation, consolidation, and modernization in post-1949 China. The study has a twofold goal: (1) to present fresh source material on corruption in China, much of it previously unavailable in the West; and (2) to provide an analysis of China's corruption using a novel approach--the policy outcomes perspective. More specifically, it examines three levels of policies adopted by the Chinese Communist Party (general policies, organizational policies, and anti-corruption policies) to see how certain policy patterns have affected the identification of corruption, corruption forms, and anti-corruption measures.

Born after 1940 and finishing higher education between 1965 and 1982, a generation of Russia's best, brightest, and most privileged came of age in the Brezhnev era. Using recently declassified archival material to uncover bother personal and professional beliefs, this study explores the formative experiences of this group, who now hold key positions in all parts of the government and society. Comparison of these official documents with letters, petitions, and complaints published in the Soviet press provides new insight into the dynamic interaction between the Brezhnev regime and Soviet times.

Confined by the Brezhnev regime's parameters and stability, young Soviet specialists developed an ethos that focused personally upon humanism and individualism, and professionally upon dignity and autonomy. Censored and manipulated, they came to hold a complex system of beliefs, frustrations, and expectations that stood in stark contrast to many of the ideals of the Soviet Union. Ruffley analyzes the ethos of this generation via the prism of domination-resistance studies to offer unique insight into a generation largely ignored by conventional historical inquiry.

Marx, the Body, and Human Nature shows that the body and the broader material world played a far more significant role in Marx's theory than previously recognised. It provides a fresh 'take' on Marx's theory, revealing a much more open, dynamic and unstable conception of the body, the self, and human nature.

Useful to both students and scholars of the social sciences and humanities, this book provides a guide to fundamental issues in twentieth-century Marxist thought. Outlining the two distinct and incompatible critiques of vulgar Marxism-- Marxist-Leninism and humanistic Marxism--that gained prominence in the aftermath of World War I, this book presents both an historical overview of these two dominant traditions and a critical analysis of their philosophical roots. Challenging the viewpoints of Marxist thought which have prevailed in this century, Richard Hudelson, argues that the supposed philosophical breakthroughs claimed by both Marxist-Leninism and humanistic Marxism rest upon flawed reasoning. With a careful critique of these prevailing views he presents his own view which while receptive to the social scientific work of current analytical Marxism, de-emphasizes the importance of philosophy in the study of Marxism.

Hudelson contends that developments in contemporary philosophy of science will allow for an appreciation of the scientific Marxism of the Second International without recourse to the philosophical theories of humanistic Marxism and Marxist-Leninism. Also, using some of the more recent developments in the philosophy of science, this book makes possible a fruitful exchange between analytical Marxism and Marxist-Leninism. Divided into three parts, the book first presents a historical introduction which identifies positions and arguments of historical significance. This is followed by an analytical look at various arguments to determine where the strongest position lies. Finally, the author offers some concluding remarks on the significance of his analysis for current directions within Marxist philosophy.

Originally published in June of 1850, this book which is now more than one-hundred fifty years old is still one of the most popular books published. The author, Frederic Bastiat was a statesman and French economost. At the time of this writing, French was quickly becoming a socialist state. This work by Mr. Bastiat studies, explains and critiques each socialist policy which he witnessed in his role in the French legislative assembly. This text is a valid read today as these socialistic beliefs are still used in the modern French government and the United States of America. This text should be a required reading for those who study political science, civics, government and law or those who are employed in government.

This book explores the development of state welfare in Taiwan, focusing on the interconnection between capitalist development and state welfare from 1895 to 1990, using an integrated Marxist perspective to which the capitalist world system, state structure, ideology, and social structure are considered simultaneously. It argues that neither citizenship nor welfare needs were the concern of Taiwanese social policies. A decline in legitimacy and risen social movements forced the state to expand welfare, namely the National Health Insurance, in the 1980s.