What is at the heart of political resistance? Whilst traditional accounts often conceptualise it as a reaction to power, this volume (prioritising remarks by Michel Foucault) invites us to think of resistance as primary. The author proposes a strategic analysis that highlights how our efforts need to be redirected towards a horizon of creation and change. Checchi first establishes a genealogy of two main trajectories of the history of our present: the liberal subject of rights and the neoliberal ideas of human capital and bio-financialisation. The former emerges as a reactive closure of Etienne de la Boetie's discourse on human nature and natural companionship. The other forecloses the creative potential of Autonomist Marxist conceptions of labour, first elaborated by Mario Tronti. The focus of this text then shifts towards contemporary openings. Initially, Checchi proposes an inverted reading of Jacques Ranciere's concept of politics as interruption that resonates with Antonio Negri's emphasis on Baruch Spinoza's potential qua resistance. Finally, the author stages a virtual encounter between Gilles Deleuze's ontology of matter and Foucault's account of the primacy of resistance with which the text begins. Through this series of explorations, The Primacy of Resistance: Power, Opposition and Becoming traces a conceptual trajectory with and beyond Foucault by affirming the affinity between resistance and creation.

In 1980 Polish workers astonished the world by demanding and winning an independent union with the right to strike, called Solidarity--the beginning of the end of the Soviet empire. Jack M. Bloom's Seeing Through the Eyes of the Polish Revolution explains how it happened, from the imposition to Communism to its end, based on 150 interviews of Solidarity leaders, activists, supporters and opponents. Bloom presents the perspectives and experiences of these participants. He shows how an opposition was built, the battle between Solidarity and the ruling party, the conflicts that emerged within each side during this tense period, how Solidarity survived the imposition of martial law and how the opposition forced the government to negotiate itself out of power.

Before Stalinism: The Rise and Fall of Soviet Democracy is an historical study of democratic life and institutions and their decline in the early years of the Russian Revolution. Rather than an event-by-event description of this period, it is an attempt at interpretation and synthesis of the vast and relatively recent specialist literature on a subject usually neglected by those analysing Soviet politics for the public at large.

Capitalism drives our global food system. Everyone who wants to end hunger, who wants to eat good, clean, healthy food, needs to understand capitalism. This book will help do that. In his latest book, Eric Holt-Gimenez takes on the social, environmental, and economic crises of the capitalist mode of food production. Drawing from classical and modern analyses, A Foodie's Guide to Capitalism introduces the reader to the history of our food systemand to the basics of capitalism. In straightforward prose, Holt-Gimenez explains the political economics of why--even as local, organic, and gourmet food have spread around the world--billions go hungry in the midst of abundance; why obesity is a global epidemic; and why land-grabbing, global warming, and environmental pollution are increasing. Holt-Gimenez offers emblematic accounts--and critiques--of past and present-day struggles to change the food system, from voting with your fork, to land occupations. We learn about the potential and the pitfalls of organic and community-supported agriculture, certified fair trade, microfinance, land trusts, agrarian reform, cooperatives, and food aid. We also learn about the convergence of growing social movements using the food system to challenge capitalism. How did racism, classism, and patriarchy become structural components of our food system? Why is a rational agriculture incompatible with the global food regime? Can transforming our food system transform capitalism? These are questions that can only be addressed by first understanding how capitalism works.

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.

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.

La actualidad del Socialismo como Sigfredo HILLERS DE LUQUE ideologia o doctrina politica es evidente. Sobre todo en el s. XX pero incluso todavia en el s.XXI. Pensemos que la "Internacional Socialista" no se ha disuelto. Sigue siendo la organizacion que aglutina a todos los partidos que se declaran socialistas en el mundo. No obstante es evidente el confusionismo reinante. Mientras unos hacen rotunda distincion entre Socialismo marxista, Socialismo democratico y Socialdemocracia, otros afi rman rotundamente que no existe Socialismo fuera del marxismo. Despues de la II Guerra Mundial, con la Union Sovietica dentro de los grandes vencedores, la poderosa maquinaria de la propaganda sovietica, hizo creer "urbi et orbi" (intelectuales incluidos) que el verdadero Socialismo; los autenticos representantes del pensamiento de Karl Marx, era el denominado "marxismo-leninismo," en tanto que el Socialismo de los paises occidentales era un Socialismo "rosa" o "moderado," conocido como "Social-Democracia." Es uno de los "mitos" fabricados por la poderosa propaganda sovietica. (*) Aunque en la URSS siempre se reconocio que el interprete indiscutible de Karl Marx fue Friedrich Engels, se oculto que sus discipulos predilectos fueron Karl Kautsky y Eduard Bernstein, a quienes nombra albaceas testamentarios suyos (con poderes para revisar, publicar o destruir sus escritos). Kautsky y Bernstein, bajo la direccion de Engels (residente en Inglaterra), ya muerto Marx, son quienes logran imponer -en largos y profundos debates en el Congreso de Erfurt de 1891- la doctrina de Marx en el Socialismo aleman. Alemania y Austria con los partidos socialistas mas numerosos y mejor organizados de Europa (y los mejores conocedores de la doctrina de Marx y Engels) se imponen en la Internacional Socialista. Tambien se pretende ignorar que Lenin y su partido bolchevique no fueron admitidos en la Internacional Socialista, ante la decidida y razonada opinion de Kautsky y Bernstein, discipulos doctrinarios directos de Marx y Engels. Incluso Kautsky publica en 1918 su libro "La dictadura del proletariado" ("Die Diktatur des Proletariats") y en 1919 su demoledor "Terrorismo y comunismo" ("Terrorismus und Kommunismus"). La "venganza" de Lenin no se hace esperar. Publica su libro: "La revolucion proletaria y el renegado Kautsky," dedicando igual califi cativo a Bernstein, claro esta. De ahi que al no poder utilizar el adjetivo de "socialista" ni el de "marxista" para su partido bolchevique, lo denomina "Partido Comunista" y los sucesores de Lenin deben utilizar el "truco" de bautizar su doctrina como "marxista-leninista," i.e. una "derivacion" del Socialismo marxista. Nada que objetar ya, doctrinalmente hablando. Debemos anadir que el nombre del partido socialista aleman fue -ya antes de la muerte de Marx y Engels- y sigue siendo (antes y despues de Willy Brandt) el de "Partido Socialdemocratico de Alemania" (SPD: Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands). Para los lectores espanoles, anadir que Pablo Iglesias -fundador del partido socialista espanol (PSOE) 1879, cuando en sus escritos se referia a Kautsky, le denominaba "el maestro Kautsky."

In 1919 American Communist Party member Benjamin Gitlow was arrested for distributing a "Left Wing Manifesto," a publication inspired by the Russian Revolution. He was charged with violating New York's Criminal Anarchy Law of 1902, which outlawed the advocacy of any doctrine advocating to the violent overthrow of government. Gitlow argued that the law violated his right to free speech but was still convicted. He appealed and five years later the Supreme Court upheld his sentence by a vote of 7-2.

Throughout the legal proceedings, much attention was devoted to the "bad tendency" doctrine-the idea that speakers and writers were responsible for the probable effects of their words-which the Supreme Court explicitly endorsed in its decision. According to Justice Edward T. Sanford, "A state may punish utterances endangering the foundations of organized government and threatening its overthrow by unlawful means."

More important was Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes' dissent, in which he argued that the mere expression of ideas, separated from action, could not be punished under the "clear and present danger" doctrine. As Holmes put it, "Every idea is an incitement"--and the expression of an idea, no matter how disagreeable, was protected by the First Amendment. While the majority disagreed, it also raised and endorsed the idea that the Bill of Rights could be violated by neither the federal government nor individual states--an idea known as "incorporation" that was addressed for the first time in this case.

In recreating Gitlow, Marc Lendler opens up the world of American radicalism and brings back into focus a number of key figures in American law: defense attorney Clarence Darrow; New York Court of Appeals justices Roscoe Pound and Benjamin Cardozo; Walter Pollak of the fledgling ACLU; and dissenting justices Oliver Wendell Holmes and Louis Brandeis. Lendler also traces the origins of the incorporation doctrine and the ebb and flow of Gitlow as a precedent through the end of the Cold War.

In a time when Islamic radicalism raises many of the same questions as domestic Communism did, Lendler's cogent explication of this landmark case helps students and Court-watchers alike better understand "clear and present danger" tests, ongoing debates over incitement, and the importance of the Holmes-Brandeis dissent in our jurisprudence.

Mikhail Lifshitz is a major forgotten figure in the tradition of Marxist philosophy and art history. A significant influence on Lukacs, and the dedicatee of his The Young Hegel, as well as an unsurpassed scholar of Marx and Engels's writings on art and a lifelong controversialist, Lifshitz's work dealt with topics as various as the philosophy of Marx and the pop aesthetics of Andy Warhol. The Crisis of Ugliness (originally published in Russian by Iskusstvo, 1968), published here in English for the first time, and with a detailed introduction by its translator David Riff, is a compact broadside against modernism in the visual arts that nevertheless resists the dogmatic complacencies of Stalinist aesthetics. Its reentry into English debates on the history of Soviet aesthetics promises to re-orient our sense of the basic coordinates of a Marxist art theory.

Georg Lukcs stands as a towering figure in the areas of critical theory, literary criticism, aesthetics, ethical theory and the philosophy of Marxism and German Idealism. Yet, despite his influence throughout the twentieth century, his contributions to the humanities and theoretical social sciences are marked by neglect. What has been lost is a crucial thinker in the tradition of critical theory, but also, by extension, a crucial set of ideas that can be used to shed new light on the major problems of contemporary society. This book reconsiders Lukcs intellectual contributions in the light of recent intellectual developments in political theory, aesthetics, ethical theory, and social and cultural theory. An international team of contributors contend that Luk ideas and theoretical contributions have much to offer the theoretical paucity of the present. Ultimately the book reintegrates Lukcs as a central thinker, not only in the tradition of critical theory, but also as a major theorist and critic of modernity, of capitalism, and of new trends in political theory, cultural criticism and legal theory.

Value without Fetish presents the first in-depth English-language study of the influential Japanese economist Uno Kozo's (1897-1977) theory of 'pure capitalism' in the light of the method and object of Marx's Critique of Political Economy. A close analysis of the theories of value, production and reproduction, and crisis in Uno's central texts from the 1930s to the 1970s reveals his departure from Marx's central insights about the fetish character of the capitalist mode of production - a departure that Lange shows can be traced back to the failed epistemology of value developed in Uno's earliest writings. By disavowing the complex relation between value and fetish that structures Marx's critique, Uno adopts the paradigms of neoclassical theories to present an apology rather than a critique of capitalism.

What does a Dutchman have to do with the rise of the Chinese Communist Party? Finding Allies and Making Revolution by Tony Saich reveals how Henk Sneevliet (alias Maring), arriving as Lenin's choice for China work, provided the communists with two of their most enduring legacies: the idea of a Leninist party and the tactic of the united front. Sneevliet strived to instill discipline and structure for the left-leaning intellectuals searching for a solution to China's humiliation. He was not an easy man and clashed with the Chinese comrades and his masters in Moscow. This new analysis is based on Sneevliet's diaries and reports, together with contemporary materials from key Chinese figures, and important documents held in the Comintern's China archive.

In How to Be a Marxist in Philosophy one of the most famous Marxist philosophers of the 20th century shares his concept of what it means to function fruitfully as a political thinker within the discipline and environs of philosophy. This is the first English translation to Althusser's provocative and, often, controversial guide to being a true Marxist philosopher. Althusser argues that philosophy needs Marxism. It can't exist fully without it. Similarly, Marxism requires the rigour and structures of philosophy to give it form and focus. He calls all thinking people to, 'Remember: a philosopher is a man who fights in theory, and when he understands the reasons for this fight, he joined the ranks of the struggle of workers and popular classes.' In short, this book comprises Althusser's elucidation of what praxis means and why it continues to matter. With a superb introduction from translator and Althusser archivist G.M. Goshgarian, this is a book that will re-inspire contemporary Marxist thought and reinvigorate our notions of what political activism can be.

Anton Pannekoek discusses the viability of workers' councils as an effective means of administrating a socialist society, as contrasted to the centralized doctrines of state communism or state capitalism. Conceived as an alternative way to establish and sustain socialism, the workers councils have so far never been successfully established at a national scale. Part of the problem was disagreements among revolutionaries about their size and responsibilities; while Lenin supported the notion during the revolutionary period, the councils were phased out in favor of a centralized state, rather than diffused through the strata of society. Pannekoek draws on history for his ideas, noting the deficiencies of previous revolutions and the major objectives a future revolution should hold. The various tasks a state of worker's councils must accomplish, and the enemies that must be overcome - notably fascists, bourgeois elements and big business - are listed.