|
Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > Marxism & Communism
This book seeks to explicitly engage Marxist and post-colonial
theory to place Marxism in the context of the post-colonial age.
Those who study Marx, particularly in the West, often lack an
understanding of post-colonial realities; conversely, however,
those who fashion post-colonial theory often have an inadequate
understanding of Marx. Many think that Marx is not relevant to
critique postcolonial realities and the legacy of Marx seldom
reaches the post-colonial countries directly. This work will read
Marx in the contemporary post-colonial condition and elaborate the
current dynamics of post-colonial capitalism. It does this by
analysing contemporary post-colonial history and politics in the
framework of inter-relations between the three categories of class,
people, and postcolonial transformation. Examining the structure of
power in postcolonial countries and revisiting the revolutionary
theory of dual power in that context, it appreciates and explains
the transformative potentialities of Marx in relation to
post-colonial condition.
'A REMARKABLE BOOK... AN AMAZINGLY AUDACIOUS AND COMPLETELY
INNOVATIVE WAY OF WRITING HISTORY... IMMEDIATE AND GRIPPING' -
WILLIAM BOYD In Petrograd a fire is lit. The Tsar is packed off to
the Urals. A rancorous Russian exile crosses war-torn Europe to
make his triumphal entry into the capital. 'Peace now!' the crowds
cry... German soldiers return from the war to quash a Communist
rising in Berlin. A former field-runner trained by the army to give
rousing speeches against the Bolshevik peril begins to rail against
the Jews... A solar eclipse turns a former patent clerk from
Switzerland into a celebrity, shaking the foundations of human
understanding with his revolutionary theories of time and space...
In Paris an American reporter in search of himself writes ever
shorter sentences and discovers a new literary style... Lenin and
Hitler, Einstein and Hemingway, Sigmund Freud and Andre Breton,
Emmaline Pankhurst and Mustafa Kemal - these are some of the
protagonists in this dramatic panorama of a world in turmoil.
Emperors, kings and generals depart furtively on midnight trains
and submarines. Women are given the vote. Artistic experiments
flourish. The real becomes surreal. Marching tunes are syncopated
into jazz. Civilisation is loosed from its pre-war moorings. People
search for meaning in the wreckage. Even as the ink is drying on
the armistice that ends the war in the west in 1918, fresh
conflicts and upheavals erupt elsewhere. It takes six years for
Europe to find uneasy peace. Crucible is the collective diary of an
era: filled with all-too-human tales of exuberant dreams, dark
fears, grubby ambitions and the absurdities of chance. Encompassing
both tragedy and humour, it brings immediacy and intimacy to a
moment of deep historical transformation - with consequences which
echo down to today.
This book provides a concise overview of Marx's philosophy and
political economy, tracing various changes of his theoretical views
over time through his practical and theoretical engagements with
contradictions of capitalism from the unique perspective of
Japanese Marxism. While it offers an objective introduction to
Marx's critique of capitalism, Sasaki uniquely pays particular
attention to the concept of "metabolism," whose disruption under
the capitalist mode of production causes exhaustion of labour-power
as well as natural resources. Sasaki reconstructs Marx as a
revolutionary thinker, whose devoted his entire life for the sake
of establishing a more free and equal society beyond capitalism.
Sasaki's book shows that Marx's passion for the socialist
revolution in his last years is recorded in his late excerpt
notebooks that become available through the
Marx-Engels-Gesamtausgabe.
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.
Located in the far-western Tarai region of Nepal, Kailali has been
the site of dynamic social and political change in recent history.
The Partial Revolution examines Kailali in the aftermath of Nepal's
Maoist insurgency, critically examining the ways in which
revolutionary political mobilization changes social relations-often
unexpectedly clashing with the movement's ideological goals.
Focusing primarily on the end of Kailali's feudal system of bonded
labor, Hoffmann explores the connection between politics, labor,
and Mao's legacy, documenting the impact of changing political
contexts on labor relations among former debt-bonded laborers.
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.
In Kerala, political activists with a background in Communism are
now instead asserting political demands on the basis of indigenous
identity. Why did a notion of indigenous belonging come to replace
the discourse of class in subaltern struggles? Indigenist
Mobilization answers this question through a detailed ethnographic
study of the dynamics between the Communist party and indigenist
activists, and the subtle ways in which global capitalist
restructuring leads to a resonance of indigenist visions in the
changing everyday working lives of subaltern groups in Kerala.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Accounts of the relationships between states and terrorist
organizations in the Cold War era have long been shaped by
speculation, a lack of primary sources and even conspiracy
theories. In the last few years, however, things have evolved
rapidly. Using a wide range of case studies including the British
State and Loyalist Paramilitaries in Northern Ireland, as well as
the United States and Nicaragua, this book sheds new light on the
relations between state and terrorist actors, allowing for a fresh
and much more insightful assessment of the contacts, dealings,
agreements and collusion with terrorist organizations undertaken by
state actors on both sides of the Iron Curtain. This book presents
the current state of research and provides an assessment of the
nature, motives, effects, and major historical shifts of the
relations between individual states and terrorist organizations.
The articles collected demonstrate that these state-terrorism
relationships were not only much more ambiguous than much of the
older literature had suggested but are, in fact, crucial for the
understanding of global political history in the Cold War era.
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 how the communist cult of the individual was not
just a Soviet phenomenon but an international one. When Stalin died
in 1953, the communists of all countries united in mourning the
figure that was the incarnation of their cause. Though its
international character was one of the distinguishing features of
the communist cult of personality, this is the first extended study
to approach the phenomenon over the longer period of its
development in a truly transnational and comparative perspective.
Crucially it is concerned with the internationalisation of the
Soviet cults of Lenin and Stalin. But it also ranges across
different periods and national cases to consider a wider cast of
bureaucrats, tribunes, heroes and martyrs who symbolised both
resistance to oppression and the tyranny of the party-state.
Through studying the disparate ways in which the cults were
manifested, Kevin Morgan not only takes in many of the leading
personalities of the communist movement, but also some of the
cultural luminaries like Picasso and Barbusse who sought to
represent them. The cult of the individual was one of the most
fascinating, troubling and revealing features of Stalinist
communism, and as reconstructed here it offers new insight into one
of the defining political movements of the twentieth century.
Christian Lotz argues that Immanuel Kant's idea of a mental
schematism, which gives the human mind access to a stable reality,
can be interpreted as a social concept, which, using Karl Marx, the
author identifies as money. Money and its "fluid" form, capital,
constitute sociality in capitalism and make access to social
reality possible. Money, in other words, makes life in capitalism
meaningful and frames all social relations. Following Marx, Lotz
argues that money is the true Universal of modern life and that, as
such, we are increasingly subjected to its control. As money and
capital are closely linked to time, Lotz argues that in capitalism
money also constitutes past and future "social horizons" by turning
both into "monetized" horizons. Everything becomes faster, global,
and more abstract. Our lives, as a consequence, become more mobile,
"fluid," unstable, and precarious. Lotz presents analyses of
credit, debt, and finance as examples of how money determines the
meaning of future and past, imagination, and memory, and that this
results in individuals becoming increasingly integrated into and
dependent upon the capitalist world. This integration and
dependence increases with the event of electronics industries and
brain-science industries that channel all human desires towards
profits, growth, and money. In this way, the book offers a critical
extension of Theodor Adorno's analysis of exchange and the culture
industry as the basis of modern societies. Lotz
argues-paradoxically with and against Adorno-that we should return
to the basic insights of Marx's philosophy, given that the
principle of exchange is only possible on the basis of more
fundamental social and economic categories, such as money.
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.
Major political and economic shifts have marked the turn into the
21st century: the collapse of the Soviet bloc; the rise to
prominence of ecological issues; social changes generated by
globalization; and, most recently, one of the worst world financial
crises ever. These developments compel us to examine the capitalist
system with a critical eye and to reflect on the need for
alternatives. The 150th anniversary of the birth of the
International Workingmen's Association (IWA) (1864-2014) offers an
important opportunity to compare present mainstream paradigms and
the political platform developed by the IWA in order to better
address our contemporary crisis?] and theorize solutions. This
sourcebook introduces and contextualizes the most valuable notes
and proceedings from these legendary meetings, and includes letters
and commentary surrounding the events themselves, many appearing
for the first time in English. The carefully compiled materials
reach beyond Marx's writings through the history of the IWA to
include the cooperative movement, trade union reformism,
collectivism, and anarchism. In his introductions to these texts,
acclaimed scholar Marcello Musto provides accessible critical
evaluations and explanations. The text also highlights how certain
themes--self-emancipation of the working class versus communist
vanguardism and the taking of political power to achieve social
ends versus oppressive Soviet-style state control--find sharp
discontinuity between Marx's thought as a political leader of the
IWA and the tradition of Soviet Marxism. Carefully selected and
painstakingly translated, this volume is an invaluable resource for
all those interested in the foundations of modern political and
labor history.
|
You may like...
La Sorciere
Jules Michelet
Paperback
R651
Discovery Miles 6 510
|