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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > Marxism & Communism
In this careful historical analysis, Edward Rice-Maximin
documents the reactions of the French Left to the First Indochina
War, 1944-1954. Unlike previous works, which dealt exclusively with
the politics of the French Communists, this book is among the first
to deal with the entire French left and to focus directly on the
role of the Socialists.
The authors examine the nature of the relationship between social
science and philosophy and address the sort of work social science
should do, and the role and sorts of claims that an accompanying
philosophy should engage in. In particular, the authors reintroduce
the question of ontology, an area long overlooked by philosophers
of social science, and present a cricital engagement with the work
of Roy Bhaskar. The book argues against the excesses of
philosophising and commits itself to a philosophical approach more
deeply grounded in the social sciences.
This volume constitutes a rigorous attempt to assess the actual
influence of traditional Marxist theory - the doctrines of Karl
Marx and Friedrich Engels - on developments in revolutionary China.
Employing primary documents, the exposition carries the reader from
the first years of the Chinese Communist Party, through the
stresses of the war of resistance against Japan and the Civil War -
that concluded with the proclamation of the founding of the
People's Republic of China in 1949. An account of the Mao epoch,
inspired by a fundamentally transformed Marxism, is prelude to the
'Second Chinese Revolution' that saw the 'Thought of Deng Xiaoping'
shaping the destiny of the New China. The role of modern China, as
a reactive nationalist, single-party, developmental dictatorship,
is assessed against what we know of such systems, and how they have
influenced our history in the past.
Since the 1920s, scholars have promoted a set of manuscripts, long
abandoned by Marx and Engels, to canonical status in book form as
The German Ideology, and in particular its 'first chapter,' known
as 'I. Feuerbach.' Part one of this revolutionary study relates in
detail the political history through which these manuscripts were
editorially fabricated into editions and translations, so that they
could represent an important exposition of Marx's 'theory of
history.' Part two presents a wholly-original view of the so-called
'Feuerbach' manuscripts in a page-by-page English-language
rendition of these discontinuous fragments. By including the
hitherto devalued corrections that each author made in draft, the
new text invites the reader into a unique laboratory for their
collaborative work. An 'Analytical Introduction' shows how Marx's
and Engels's thinking developed in duologue as they altered
individual words and phrases on these 'left-over' polemical pages.
This timely book explores the unique challenges facing the left in
Latin America today. The contributors offer clear and comprehensive
assessments of the difficult conditions and conflicting forces that
have brought to power the current leftist regimes in Latin American
and the Caribbean and are shaping their development. Avoiding the
widely accepted but simplistic dichotomy of "good" and "bad" left
or democratic and antidemocratic left, the book first sets the
theoretical and historical context for understanding the rise of
the left in the region. It then provides case studies of the
radical left in power in Venezuela, Bolivia, and Ecuador and its
influence in Nicaragua, El Salvador, and Cuba. Thematic chapters
consider social and labor movements and debates over problems
arising from the democratic transition to socialism. The book
points to concrete circumstances in which theoretical issues
related to reform and change have played out in nations where the
left is in power. These include prioritization of social over
economic objectives, the role of the state in the democratic road
to socialism, and ecological as opposed to developmentalist
strategies. Finally, the book examines the opposition to radical
governments in power coming not only from the right but also from
movements to their left. With its balanced and thorough assessment,
this study will provide readers with a deep and nuanced
understanding of the complexity of the political, economic, and
sociocultural reality of contemporary Latin America and the
Caribbean. Contributions by: Marc Becker, Roger Burbach, George
Ciccariello-Maher, Hector M. Cruz-Feliciano, Steve Ellner, Federico
Fuentes, Marcel Nelson, Hector Perla Jr., Camila Pineiro Harnecker,
Thomas Purcell, Diana Raby, William I. Robinson, and Kevin Young
Part of a definitive English-language edition, prepared in
collaboration with the Institute of Marxism-Leninism in Moscow,
which contains all the works of Marx and Engels, whether published
in their lifetimes or since. The series includes their complete
correspondence and newly discovered works.
What makes some Eastern European countries politically victorious
and economically prosperous while others have failed in both
regards? Zuzowski deals with fundamental changes in the area after
the demise of communism. He argues that the past is important
because it is usually a reliable indicator of things to come in the
near future. He also states that if systemic transformation is to
succeed, a new totalism or comprehensive change introduced swiftly
and based on justice and a rule of law is necessary. After a
general discussion of Eastern Europe, Russia, Poland, and the Czech
Republic are examined in detail. In addition, the West's approach
to Eastern Europe after the collapse of communism is analyzed. This
significant assessment will be of value to scholars, researchers,
students, and policy makers involved with economic, political, and
social change, post-communism, and Eastern Europe.
The attention economy is a notion that explains the growing value
of human attention in societies characterised by post-industrial
modes of production. In a world in which information and knowledge
become central to the valorisation process of capital, human
attention becomes a scarce and hence increasingly valuable
commodity. To what degree is the attention economy a specific form
of capitalist production? How does the attention economy differ
from the industrial mode of production in which Marx developed his
critique of capitalism? How can Marx's theory be used today despite
the historical differences that separate industrial from
post-industrial capitalism? The Attention Economy argues that human
attention is a new form of labour that can only be understood
through a systematic reinterpretation of Marx. It argues that the
attention economy belongs to a general shift in capitalism in which
subjectivity itself becomes the territory of production and
exploitation of value as well as the territory of the reproduction
of capitalist power relations.
The concepts of alienation and its overcoming are central to Marx's
thought. They underpin his critique of capitalism and his vision of
future society. Marx's ideas are explained in rigorous and clear
terms. They are situated in the context of the Hegelian ideas that
inspired them and put into dialogue with contemporary debates.
This volume seeks to spur a lively discussion on Marxist feminist
analysis of biblical texts. Marxism and feminism have many mutual
concerns, and the combination of the two has become common in
literary criticism, cultural studies, sociology and philosophy. So
it is high time for biblical studies to become interested. This
collection is the first of its kind in biblical studies, bringing
together a mixture of newer and more mature voices. It falls into
three sections: general concerns (Milena Kirova, Tamara Prosic and
David Jobling); Hebrew Bible (Gale Yee and Avaren Ipsen); New
Testament (Alan Cadwallader, Jorunn Okland, Roland Boer and
Jennifer Bird). Thought-provoking and daring, the collection
includes: the history of Marxist feminist analysis, the work of
Bertolt Brecht, the voices of prostitute collectives, and the
possibilities for biblical criticism of the work of Rosemary
Hennessy, Simone de Beauvoir, Juliet Mitchell, Wilhelm Reich and
Julia Kristeva. All of which are brought to bear on biblical texts
such as Proverbs, 1 Kings, Mark, Paul's Letters, and 1 Peter.
Denis Janz argues that the encounter with Marxism has been the
defining event for twentieth century Christianity. No other
worldview shook Christianity more dramatically and no other
movement had as profound an impact on so many. Now the Cold War is
over and as we approach the end of the century we need, Janz says,
to ask ourselves what happened.
This book is the first unified and comprehensive attempt to
analyze this historic meeting between these two antagonistic worlds
of thought and action. The intellectual foundation of this
antagonism is to be found in Karl Marx himself, and thus the book
begins with an account of Marx's assault on Christianity. All the
diverse philosophical and political manifestations of Marxism were
ultimately rooted in Marx's thought, and supporters based their
greater or lesser hostilities toward Christianity on their reading
of his critique. Janz follows this with an overview of Christian
responses to Marx, extending from the mid-19th century to the onset
of the Cold War. He argues that within this time frame
Christianity's negation of Marx was not absolute; the loud "no" to
Marx bore with it an important, if muted, "yes."
With this intellectual groundwork in place, Janz turns to an
examination of the encounter as it unfolded in specific national
contexts: the United States, the Soviet Union, Poland, Nicaragua,
Cuba, China, and Albania. The experiences of these countries varied
widely, from Poland where Christianity maintained its strongest
independence, to Nicaragua where a Christian alliance with Marxism
contributed to revolutionary change, to Albania where a Stalinist
government attempted to abolish religion entirely. From this survey
emerges theevidence that world Christianity has clearly
internalized some of the prominent features of its antagonist,
suggesting that the "Marxist project" is not as utterly defunct as
many have assumed.
By looking at state-sponsored memory projects, such as memorials,
commemorations, and historical museums, this book reveals that the
East German communist regime obsessively monitored and attempted to
control public representations of the past to legitimize its rule.
It demonstrates that the regime's approach to memory politics was
not stagnant, but rather evolved over time to meet different
demands and potential threats to its legitimacy. Ultimately the
party found it increasingly difficult to control the public
portrayal of the past, and some dissidents were able to turn the
party's memory politics against the state to challenge its claims
of moral authority.
As widely applied as Marxist theory is today, there remain a host
of key western thinkers whose texts are rarely scrutinized through
a Marxist lens. In this philosophical analysis of Marx's
never-before translated German notes on Machiavelli, Montesquieu,
Rousseau, and Lewis Henry Morgan, Norman Fischer points to a strain
of Marxist ethics that may only be understood in the context of the
great works of Western political theory and philosophy particularly
those that emphasize the republican value of public spiritedness,
the communitarian value of solidarity, and the liberal values of
liberty and equality.
The foremost collection of essays from one of Britain's most
important 20th century Marxist writers Considered by many to be the
most innovative British Marxist writer of the twentieth century,
Christopher Caudwell was killed in the Spanish Civil War at the age
of 29. Although already a published writer of aeronautic texts and
crime fiction, he was practically unknown to the public until
reviews appeared of Illusion and Reality: A Study of the Sources of
Poetry, which was published just after his death. A strikingly
original study of poetry's role, it explained in clear language how
the organizing of emotion in society plays a part in social change
and development. Caudwell had a powerful interest in how things
worked - aeronautics, physics, human psychology, language, and
society. In the anti-fascist struggles of the 1930s he saw that
capitalism was a system that could not work properly and distorted
the thinking of the age. Self-educated from the age of 15, he wrote
with a directness that is alien to most cultural theory. Culture as
Politics introduces Caudwell's work through his most accessible and
relevant writing. Material will be drawn from Illusion and Reality,
Studies in a Dying Culture and his essay, "Heredity and
Development."
This collection of multiple perspectives on the "war on terror" and
the new imperialism provides a depth of analysis. Looking at the
imperialism and the "war on terror" through a lens focused on
gender and race, the contributors expose the limitations of the
current popular discourse and help to uncover possibilities not yet
apparent in that same discourse.
The Marxist theory of capitalist growth and transformation has
often been shrouded in obscurity, either by endless recapitulation
of Marx's texts or by excessive use of mathematical formalism. This
short book presents an integrated and rigorous view of capitalist
development - technical change, class relations, trends in the
profit rate and share, cyclical and long-term crisis - in a form
that is accessible to serious readers with or without prior
training in economics or familiarity with Marxist thought.
North Carolina's 1963 speaker ban law declared the state's public
college and university campuses off-limits to ""known members of
the Communist Party"" or to anyone who cited the Fifth Amendment in
refusing to answer questions posed by any state or federal body.
Oddly enough, the law was passed in a state where there had been no
known communist activity since the 1950s. Just which ""communists""
was it attempting to curb? In Communists on Campus, William J.
Billingsley bares the truth behind the false image of the speaker
ban's ostensible concern. Appearing at a critical moment in North
Carolina and U.S. history, the law marked a last-ditch effort by
conservative rural politicians to increase conservative power and
quell the demands of the civil rights movement, preventing the
feared urban political authority that would accompany desegregation
and African American political participation. Questioning the law's
discord with North Carolina's progressive reputation, Billingsley
also criticizes the school officials who publicly appeared to
oppose the speaker ban law but, in reality, questioned both
students' rights to political opinions and civil rights
legislation. Exposing the University of North Carolina at Chapel
Hill as the main target of the ban, he addresses the law's intent
to intimidate state schools into submission to reactionary
legislative demands at the expense of the students' political
freedom. Contrary to its aims, the speaker ban law spawned a small
but powerfully organized student resistance led by the Students for
a Democratic Society at the University of North Carolina. The SDS,
quickly joined by more traditional student groups, mobilized
student ""radicals"" in a memorable effort to halt this breach of
their constitutional rights. Highlighting the crisis point of the
civil rights movement in North Carolina, Communists on Campus
exposes the activities and machinations of prominent political and
educational figures Allard Lowenstein, Terry Sanford, William
Friday, Herbert Aptheker, and Jesse Helms in an account that
epitomizes the social and political upheaval of sixties America.
"Aging Political Activists" is at once a series of political
autobiographies, a set of personal narratives of social commitment,
a model for qualitative research, and a challenge to current theory
and practice in the social and behavioral sciences. It presents and
examines the life stories of four individuals--close friends and
former members of the Communist Party USA--revealing the ways they
have developed and sustained their personal values and political
outlook through a lifetime of involvement in movements for social
change. Shuldiner approaches the interviews as a collaborative
effort with his subjects who both describe their identities and
experiences and critique the interview process, offering alternate
readings of the content of their narratives or new directions for
inquiry. These portraits of older activists challenge notions about
the role of the personal in the development of political identity,
while shifting the debate among gerontologists between activity
versus disengagement in old age to a discussion of the dialectical
relationship of these two aspects of human behavior throughout a
lifespan.
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