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Books > Social sciences > Politics & government > Political ideologies > Marxism & Communism
What was it like to live under the police and a criminal justice system in a socialist society and in a country governed by Marxist-Leninists? This is the first book-length study of criminal justice in the German Democratic Republic. Based on first-hand research conducted over a six-year period from 1985 to the present, the case study analyzes how the society has been transformed politically, socially, and economically since the 1989 revolution and reincorporation with the rest of Germany. This volume should be of interest to students, teachers, and professionals in criminal justice and sociology, political science, law, and European history. This analysis of policing in a socialist society reports on the work of the People's Police and the State Security Police and how principles of criminal justice and methods of governance changed with the dissolution of the GDR. The study relies on primary source materials and extensive interviews of police professionals and academicians in the field of criminal justice.
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.
"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.
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.
This book presents the capitalist system as a function of the interaction of the three basic classes in the capitalist social formation. Through this, it shows how the corresponding conflicts and clashes of interests between those classes - industrial capitalists, wage labourers and landed proprietors - are unavoidable for understanding contemporary economic structures. Analysing these economic structures in relation to the forms of property ownership, as well as the typical processes of production connected with them, the author points out how Karl Marx's theory of the capitalist social formation is closely connected with the emergence and existence of a national money market. At the same time, the book places a special emphasis on Marx's theory of ground rent and modern landed property, an aspect misinterpreted by many authors; and through an evaluation of the most important Marxian categories regarding the analysis of the world market and its development, further emphasis is placed on the concept of differences in labour intensity between nations. This evaluation illustrates how the main categories of capital, wage labour and landed property acquire a completely different internal relation in poor countries compared to Western capitalist societies. Class and Property in Marx's Economic Thought aims at exposing a method for analysing contemporary capitalism through focusing on the basic relations of population groups in the capitalist social formation. It will be of interest to students and researchers within the field of economics, as well as other social sciences.
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.
In contrast to the traditional Marxist interpretation of emerging capitalism and a revolutionary bourgeoisie, this book shows that commodified labor, fundamental to the existence of a capitalist bourgeoisie, did not take shape in eighteenth-century France. The mass of the population consisted of peasants and artisans in possession of land and workshops, and embedded in autonomous communities. The old regime bourgeoisie and nobility thus developed within the absolutist state in order to have the political means to impose feudal forms of exploitation on the people. These class relations explain the crisis of 1789 and the revolutionary conflicts of the 1790s.
Throughout history, strong-willed Russian autocrats have rescued their country from foreign domination, disorder, and possible chaos, often using the cruelest means to achieve their ends. Gorbachev tried to implement socialism with a human face in the Soviet Union, but failed. In the early 1990s, once again, Russia needed a strong hand to pull it out of chaos. In August 1991 Boris Yeltin emerged as such a leader, but unlike earlier strong leaders, he was determined to pull Russia out of the Communist morass and affect his country's integration with Western democracies through democratic means. Felkay carefully analyzes the impact of Yeltsin on the newly evolving relationship between Russia and the Western democracies. But separating the process of formulating foreign and domestic policies would be impossible. From the onset, Yeltsin kept both reins of decision-making firmly in hand. Accordingly, Felkay assesses Yeltsin's effectiveness in moving his country toward democracy and a market economy, and he shows the ups and downs of his pro-Western foreign policies. This book provides an important analysis for scholars, students, and other researchers involved with Russian studies, international relations, and comparative politics.
This comparative survey of the secularization policies of the Soviet Union and China looks at the suppression, survival, and revival of religion in both countries. "Religion and the State in Russia and China" explores the religious nature of man through the cases of forced secularization in the Soviet Union and China. The book provides an in-depth account of the failure and successes of both countries' secularization policies. Starting with the theological innovations that led to atheistic theorizing, it then looks at the policies that were implemented to speed up the suppression of religious beliefs and what ultimately led to today's resurgence of religion. Russia and China are ideal cases for a comparative study as both experimented with the idea of eradication of religion under Marxist-Leninist parties and regimes. However, they differ in their relationship with their states, religious denominations, and societies. The research for this project includes extensive fieldwork in both Russia and China, including participant-observation at rallies and demonstrations as well as interviews with scholars, religious believers/non-believers, and religious leading figures. "Religion and the State in Russia and China" offers original research for an in-depth survey that will interest anyone studying politics and religion, policies, as well as theories of desecularization.
This is undoubtedly the best study of Lenin the political leader written to date, and it is likely to remain so for some time.' - John Barber, London Review of Books; ...Robert Service...has provided a rich, balanced portrait of the Bolshevik leader that presents the case for the defence as well as the prosecution.' - John Keep, Times Literary Supplement;The final volume of Robert Service's major trilogy on Lenin's political life takes the account from the Brest-Litovsk Treaty of 1918 to the Bolshevik leader's death in 1924. Attention is paid to the military, political and economic conditions as they changed; to the internal pressures of the party's politics; to ideological imperatives; and to one man's reaction to events and situations he had only imperfectly anticipated. The volume incorporates not only the post-1985 documentary revelations but also the results of the author's searches in the Moscow archives since 1991.
Karl Marx's critque on capitalisn iss the major thrust in his Communist Manifesto.. Written over 150 year4s ago in 1858, a period of history with great upheaval, it continues to be an important work of political economy, especially as we enter the dawn of global economy. Politicians, business leaders, academics and students of different persuasions find the 'manifesto' a basic and essential treatise to be understood. It has had a tremend effect history and will continue to influence the future on mankind. "Wages, Price and Profit" is an examination of the relationship between these absolute realities - the theory of these realities and how they affect economies. A Collector's Edition.
This book aims to explore precisely how modern Japanese poetry has remained central to public life in both Japan and its former colony of Taiwan. Though classical Japanese poetry has captivated the imagination of Asian studies scholars, little research has been conducted to explore its role in public life as a discourse influential in defining both the modern Japanese empire and contemporary postcolonial negotiations of identity. This book shows how highly visible poetry in regular newspaper columns and blogs have in various historical situations in Japan and colonial Taiwan contested as well as promoted diverse colonial imaginaries. This poetry reflects both contemporary life and traditional poetics with few counterpoints in Western media. Methodologically, this book offers a defense of the public influence of poetry, each chapter enlisting a wide range of social and media theorists from Japan, Europe, and North America to explore specific historical moments in an original recasting of intertextuality as a vital feature of active inter-evental material engagements. In this book, rather than recite a standard survey of literary movements and key poets, the approach taken is to examine uses of poetry shown not only to support colonialism and imperialism, emerging objectionable forms of exploitation as well as the destruction of ecologies (including old-growth forests in Taiwan and the Fukushima Disaster), but also to present a medium of resistance, a minor literature for registering protest, forming transnational affiliations, and promoting grass-roots democracy. The book is based on years of research and fieldwork partially in conjunction with the production of a documentary film, Horizons of the Rising Sun: Postcolonial Nostalgia and Politics in the Taiwan Tanka Association Today (2017).
King seeks to understand how the transition from state-socialism to capitalism was accomplished in Eastern Europe. The purpose of studying the process of transition is uo understand the end-point of the transition; that is, the structure of the postcommunist economy results from the different ways that private property was made by enterprise level actors. King identifies strategies of transition employed by postcommunist economic elites to transform property and acquire various property rights discusses, the conditions under which different strategies are likely to be selected, lists and, the resources used by actors to implement these strategies. As King illustrates through his case studies, when aggregated, these strategies are primarily responsible for the structuring of the postcommunist capitalist systems. This is done through the creation of different types of property (such as multinationals or management buy-outs) and integrating mechanisms (such as markets or state redistribution). The resulting property forms and integrative mechanisms that emerge from this process are assessed for their possible effect on economic performance and long-term development. Differences that exist among the various postcommunist economies are explained by the institutional legacies from the reform period of communism. This book is of particular interest to scholars, students, and researchers involved with East European studies, political and economic sociology, and international political economy.
Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, and Nikolai Bukharin were the three leaders of the Russian Revolution who shaped the new society most, both through their theories and their political leadership. All three were motivated by the ideal of building a utopian collective. Once in power, they tirelessly tried to put their vision into practice, but the Soviet system that resulted was nothing like the one they tried to create. In Spontaneous Order and the Utopian Collective, Nell takes her cue from the personal writings and documents of Lenin, Trotsky, and Bukharin to consider them anew from an Austrian theoretical perspective, analyze the divergence between theory and practice using a spontaneous order framework, and identify three interconnected prerequisites necessary for a utopian collectivist society. Nell then asks whether it might be possible to create this utopian collective somehow, and avoid the pitfalls of planning.
The collection brings together proponents and critiques of the post- Fordist thesis. The debate focuses on the relation between crisis and societal as well as political restructuring. The collection provides an introduction to, and a critique of, the post-Fordist debate. The articles represent the fields of political economy, state theory, value theory, Marxist philosophy, and general questions of Marxist methodology. The volume includes, alongside the original debate between Werner Bonefeld, Bob Jessop and John Holloway, hitherto unpublished material by a wide range of authors.
Is the battle against inflation in China now over? Can Zhu Rongji, the economic guru turned Chinese premier who has successfully reduced the skyrocketing inflation of the mid-1990s to a near zero level, while yet maintaining high economic growth through the new millennium, relax? These are the key questions raised by China's current economic transition towards a market-based system, and they both revolve around the institutional economics that is the focus of this volume. Dealing specifically with the giant state-owned enterprises (SOEs), Industrial Reform and Macroeconomic Instability in China unravels the intriguing dynamics between industrial deregulation and inflation, in the context of China's continuous search for sustained, stable economic growth without runaway inflation. This book is unique among western studies: it addresses the very core, but to date least reformed sector of the Chinese economy. SOEs have monopolized key industrial supplies, commanded the bulk of national investment, disctated much of the nation's credit and finance, and have been the single most important source of state budget revenue. Continually faced with enormous internal wage pressures, all attempts at marketization and price liberalization are inherently inflationary. Based upon an independently, specifically designed set of questionnaires administered to 300 large and medium-scale state industrial enterprises in six major industrial cities, this book provides an in-depth analysis of the first decade of the reforms of the 1980s. The findings are formulated as pointers for understanding the macroeconomic vicissitudes that occurred after the launching of the campaign to create a 'socialist market economy' in the early 1990s. This book will be of use to China analysts, students, and businessmen who are interested in learning about the progress made, the remaining obstacles that the state-owned enterprises face, and their inevitable impact on China's economic growth and stability.
The clash between Communism and Islam in the Soviet Union pitted two socio-political systems against one another, each proclaiming ultimate truth. This study examines the first decades of the struggle in Central Asia (1917-1941), where an ancient religious tradition faced an aggressive form of secular modernity. The Soviets attempted to break down Muslim culture and remold it on Marxist-Leninist lines. Central Asians played complex roles in this effort, both defending and attacking Islam, but mostly trying to survive. Despite Stalin's totalitarian aims, the Soviet regime in Central Asia was often weak even into the 1930s, and by 1941 the opposing systems had reached a standoff. The Communist Party pursued the destruction of Islam in stages, which reflected the development of Soviet political strength. The party developed propaganda that both attacked Islam and extolled the new Soviet culture. However, the entire process was plagued by inefficiency, ignorance, and disobedience. By 1941, the Communists had inflicted tremendous damage, but customs such as circumcision, brideprice, and polygyny had merely gone underground. Central Asians had not exchanged the fundamental identity of Muslim for Marxist-Leninist. Keller utilizes documents from Moscow and Tashkent, including the now-closed former Communist Party Archive of Uzbekistan.
Atheist Secularism and Its Discontents takes a comparative approach to understanding religion under communism, arguing that communism was integral to the global experience of secularism. Bringing together leading researchers whose work spans the Eurasian continent, it shows that appropriating religion was central to Communist political practices.
As the world's largest country struggles with itself to build `rule by law', how is this process reshaping Communist Party rule? The Politics of Lawmaking in China examines how China's political and legal structure is quietly but dramatically changing from within, rather than being overthrown from below as in Eastern Europe. Examining the changing relationship between the National People's Congress and the Communist party hierarchy, this book casts light on China's fight to move toward law and democratization.
This volume offers a full account of the December 1989 revolution that toppled the Communist dictatorship of Nicolae Ceausescu in Romania. Based on the author's personal investigation and interviews, extensive screening of the Romanian and international press, and critical examination of sources and interpretations, it offers a full and objective analysis of a complex, often puzzling series of events. Nestor Ratesh explores the economic, social, and human disaster that led to the uprising, and then chronicles the seven days of the revolution from its inception in the western city of Timisoara to its climax in Bucharest on December 22, 1989, when Ceausescu fled the city. The bloody and confused aftermath is examined from different angles, with surprising details and telling portraits of the main players, some of whom the author knows personally. Ratesh skeptically scrutinizes the revelations, hints, and rumors of conspiracies that reportedly either caused the revolution--or hijacked it. Evidence available so far points toward a genuinely spontaneous popular uprising during which large segments of the army and secret police slowly realized that the fall of the regime was imminent. They first blinked, then searched for ways to save themselves--forcing Ceausescu to flee and bringing into power both new and old politicians who represented change to the masses but maintained relative stability in the power structure. The paradox that an essentially anti-Communist revolution would produce a regime controlled by former Communists has dominated most of the developments since then. The book concludes by examining the ensuing months of dislocation and commotion. Clearly the December revolution remains unfulfilled, entangled in a myriad of contradictions, obstacles, intrigues, lies, rivalries, ineptitude, and plain wrongdoing.
This is a collection of essays which were published variously between 1973 and 1985 in the CSE journals "Bulletin of the Conference of Socialist Economists" and "Capital and Class" which investigate from a variety of viewpoints fundamental categories of Marxian economics. It includes the English translation of Marx's "value-form" appendix to the first German edition of "Capital I" and a 1920s commentary on Marx's categories by the Russian economist I.I. Rubin. The remaining essays each include a postscript in the early 1990s.
The Soviet attempt to propagandise the "new Soviet woman" through the magazines "Rabotnitsa" and "Krest'yanka" from the 1920s to the end of the Stalin era is explored here. Women were expected to play a full role in the construction of socialism, but they also had to reproduce the population. Balancing work and family did not prove easy in a climate of shifting economic and demographic priorities, and the periodic changes made to the model are charted here. |
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